Jump to content

Let's worldbuild!


Ixthos

Recommended Posts

Hi everyone! I have a suggestion - let's practice worldbuilding, with on-the-fly suggestions and feedback. This can be a little like "Whose-Line-is-it-Anyway?" improv mixed with a general critique, as well as a chance to show off your process.

How this is proposed to work:

  1. You can do up to three things in this thread:
    1. You can propose world building ideas and list an example of them in existing fiction
    2. You can use ideas suggested in the thread to world build
    3. You can give feedback on what someone else has world built, remembering to be descriptive rather than proscriptive, and focusing on the good while not neglecting the bad
  2. You may do any combination of the above in a single post
  3. The first few posts - and any subsequent ones later - should be the world building ideas, preferably listing an example of how it was done before SO THAT WHAT IS BUILT USING IT IS NOT A COPY. For example, if the idea proposed is "mythological creatures that have been genetically engineered", then an example listed would be "The Dragon Riders of Pern", so that if someone uses that suggestion they know to try to push the world building in a different direction to Pern's
  4. After a few posts have been made with world building suggestions subsequent posts can then include people selecting from among those suggested and doing some basic work with those ideas, again trying to push them in a different direction than the source
  5. Ideas proposed can be worn out cliches, terrible ideas, etc., or your favourite tropes from your favourite series. They are seeds to be used by anyone who chooses to use them. The way they are used is up to whoever decides to use them
  6. After world building someone may then critique the setting, which can be subsequently revised afterwards

 

So, with that said, here are a few world building suggestions:

  • Space faring civilisation of explorers (Star Trek)
  • Mythological creatures that have been genetically engineered (The Dragon Riders of Pern)
  • Single undesirable planet the source of something the civilisation needs (Dune)
  • Gender specific magic (The Wheel of Time)
  • Knights from a religious order trained by mystics from another religion (The Elenium)
  • Organisation that is tracking down and containing mysterious artefacts (Warehouse 13)

 

Hope you have fun!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A few ideas:

  • Nations divided by whether they use genetic engineering tech or steampunk (the Leviathan Trilogy)
  • Magic users are oppressed (Broken Earth Trilogy)
  • Fairy tale fantasy with a lot of horror elements (The Witcher)
  • Giant sentient prison (Incarceron)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll start by taking one idea from each of my posts, and all four of @ILuvHats's ideas. So, mythological creatures that have been genetically engineered, nations divided by whether they use genetic engineering or steampunk, magic users oppressed, fairy tale horror, giant sentient prison, and symbiosis based magic.

(Note, you don't have to use as many ideas at once, you are free to select as many or as few as you want, but preferably two or more.)

This post will cover the initial design - I suspect there will be at least three posts on world building for this, so this is post one. This post will cover first examining the ideas and how they have been used in the example stories so as to design in a different direction, and then looking at the new direction they can go and some initial links.

 

Post 1: General direction

I'll start by listing how those ideas were used in each. For some of these I will have to look up a little about the series if I'm not familiar with them:

  • Mythological creatures that have been genetically engineered: in Pern there is a native form of life that resembles a small dragon, and had the ability to teleport, form simple psionic bonds with a human, fly, and breath fire. They were the planet's response to a periodic threat that rained from the sky - a spore called thread - and the humans were initially unaware of this, so when it happened during their settling on the planet they weren't prepared. By forming a new species based off of these fire lizards and restructuring their society, the Pernese were able to survive, with a new class of society formed of the Dragon riders, who protected the planet during thread fall.
  • nations divided over using genetic engineering or steampunk: The Leviathan is an alternate version of history, when during WW1 the German, etc. side uses steampunk machines, and the British, etc. side uses genetically engineered animals as vehicles - so this is set during a period of war
  • magic users oppressed: in the Fifth Season - from what I have read - magic users are either killed on sight by a fearful populous, or forced to work for an organisation called the Fulcrum, which is hardly better. The populous fears them because they can accidentally kill those around them, and have the ability to break the earth with their powers.
  • fairy tale horror: as I understand the setting, Witchers are magical super soldiers, who battle monsters to protect humans. The setting has elves, dwarves, and gnomes, as well as werewolves, dryads, etc., with at least elves and dwarves as second class citizens. According to TV Tropes, the Witcher also deconstructs fairy tales.
  • giant sentient prison: as I understand it, the prison in Incarceron was designed to rehabilitate prisoners to make a perfect society, but something went wrong. The prison is vast, sprawling, has many prisoners, and is always watching, able to kill at a whim.
  • symbiosis based magic: in the Stormlight Archive spren are sentient pieces of magic shaped by human and other ideas, and connected to ten forces. By bonding with someone, who then progresses the bond by making and keeping oaths, this person can access two of those forces, the two depending on the type of spren, as well as use their spren as a weapon, and more besides. The forces based abilities, and general physical enhancements, requires taking in stormlight, a source of magic on the planet that also is tied to the ecosystem. The powers granted can be argued to be an extension of this general symbioses in the ecosystem, as lesser spren likewise bond with other creatures on the planet in order to allow them to function in this environment, such as allowing creatures to grow larger than their mass otherwise would let them.

 

Taking these ideas, pushing them in different directions than from the example, this results in:

  • The creatures are engineered without an existing bases organism, and not to protect the planet but rather to change it
  • A cold war rather than a hot one, and the divide more like the East and the West, with two groups each coming up with their own approach - one genetic engineering and the other steampunk - but between them there is a mixture, and trying to make their form the dominant one
  • Magic users are oppressed for reasons unrelated to their abilities, or their abilities are not directly a threat, and they aren't forced to work for an organisation
  • Fairy tales, and the darker parts of them, but reconstructed rather than deconstructed, showing how they can work. Also, elves, dwarves are present, but they are the first class citizens
  • A large prison, but not a single complex. Rather, the idea of a prison that is distributed, massive and monitoring, but not physical - a prison that is a prison for the mind
  • the magic doesn't require taking in anything but rather it produces magic which needs to be bled off, and rather than the magical organism forming the bond it is instead formed by a human to try to reduce the impact of the magic produced

 

Combining these, we have a base!

  • Magical creatures genetically engineered by one nation or group - a nation of elves or dwarves - who are trying to use the magic produces by the genetically engineered mythical creatures to change the world, and another nation - a nation of elves or dwarves - are developing steampunk technologies to try and stop it
  • Human are caught in the crossfire, and are bonding the magical creatures to try and take control of the magic and prevent it from changing the world, as well as trying to stop the other nations steampunk technology - any creature they bond has its magic restrained
  • The prison is something made by the steampunk faction to try to stop the other nation from making the genetically engineered creatures, the prison being a device worn by the prisoners that they can't take off, which makes them live both in their bodies and in an alternative world where their magic is being drained away in a complex maze ... but if they can find their way out then they can take the device off
  • A mythical creature lives in and controls the prison system, and feeds on the magic - the magic being what allows someone to make the genetically engineered organisms, but different to the magic the genetically engineered creatures produce
  • The story is based on one or more fairy tales. Options include Snow White, Red Riding Hood, The Little Mermaid, Jack and the Beanstalk, and so on.

 

That's it for the moment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I'll do another world building update for this setting later - I'm thinking of adding an elemental system, as well as some of the natures of the societies, as well as the prison - but I'll only do that in a week or two or three. Until then, here are some other ideas - and please, if you like, post here also :-)

 

  • Nobles have abilities that the serfs/peasants don't, but interbreeding has allowed some to gain these abilities (Mistborn)
  • One nation that was once part of another and is smaller and weaker but whose royalty once ruled the nation it came from (Warbreaker)
  • Knights in magic power armour (Stormlight Archive)
  • Hero with the memories of other heroes (The Wheel of Time)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

I had an idea for a magic system/world where the magic was based on the mind, kind of a telekinesis/mind reading hybrid, with levels of power in the magic. I don't know any current books with something like this, though I'm sure there is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/10/2020 at 2:35 PM, Matrim's_Dice said:

I had an idea for a magic system/world where the magic was based on the mind, kind of a telekinesis/mind reading hybrid, with levels of power in the magic. I don't know any current books with something like this, though I'm sure there is.

*Hides notes to my magic system which has the exact same idea*

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Matrim's_Dice said:

No way lol. Mine is not that developed actually.

I have it mostly worked out but I'm trying hard not to break the way society works, so I had to build in some powerful handicaps.

Edited by Frustration
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Frustration said:

I have it mostly worked out but I'm trying hard not to break the way society works, so I had to build in some powerful handicaps.

The way I tried to keep society work was

  1.  make the setting entirely un-Earth related
  2.  have the people who can use the magic be in like a secret guild or group, almost like the white tower in the way that most people like in the Two Rivers aren't even sure if Aei Sedai are real- but I don't know how the magic is gained in a person. 

But I dunno, honestly kinda forgot it existed until I saw this thread

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Matrim's_Dice said:

The way I tried to keep society work was

  1.  make the setting entirely un-Earth related
  2.  have the people who can use the magic be in like a secret guild or group, almost like the white tower in the way that most people like in the Two Rivers aren't even sure if Aei Sedai are real- but I don't know how the magic is gained in a person. 

But I dunno, honestly kinda forgot it existed until I saw this thread

 

I have another magic system, that people can use to turn the first one off. Now I have to limit the second system.:D(I have some limit's in place, but I'm leaning toward adding another)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Okay, its taken me longer than I had expected to get back to this, sorry about that. I haven't been giving much thought to this lately, but I do still want to put down some more of the ideas I've had for this story from before. These are just a few points for the setting, but later I'll try to expand on them slightly.

 

Post 2: Focusing

I've decided that the magic is actually shared by both groups, but used in different ways, the one binding them entirely to organic beings and trying to increase the amount of magic in the world, the other trying to harness that magic and restrict it, keeping it contained and under their control. Also, as dwarves are in mythology actually a type of elf, I'll make all the elves actually dwarves, but different human cultures that interact with them see some as one type, and others as another type - as in, their contact with one group in person makes them think of them as traditional elves or dwarves, but their indirect contact with the other means they think they are a different species, and so they view the other group as traditional dwarves or elves, or even orcs and goblins.

 

Elemental magic system.

I like to do variations on elemental systems, and usually with five elements, so lets use that idea, and tie it into the genetic engineering and prison system. Also, unless the abilities are tied to a mythical creature, they CANNOT be used as standard attacks, so no fireballs or throwing rocks - they can only be used as part of these systems:

  • Fire: Energy and power sources, including running the steampunk engines
  • Aether: Dimension affecting, so affecting time and space as well as accessing other universes, including the universe where magic comes from
  • Water: ties to genetics and manipulating life, so allowing one to form mythical creatures, which themselves can be bound to one of the elements, giving them abilities, such as dragons having fire and one or more of the other elements, nymphs having water, giants having earth, and the Minotaur which is in the prison system having aether. This power is mainly used by the genetic engineering dwarves, and they also combine it with aether to allow the mythical creatures produced to be a source of magic, in essence making each - except the Minotaur - act as an inflowing portal from the world where magic originates. The Minotaur, however, is produced by the steampunk dwarves, based on something the genetic engineering faction produced, that acts as the reverse, a portal that flows the other way, sending magic back
  • Earth: Steampunk material working, so forming the materials and giving them certain abilities - in essence metalurgy and materials science amplified with magic, someone with these abilities able to forge and craft materials with magical properties
  • Air: flight, weight, and tying machines together, so a leaver will affect something at a distance, but this requires tying it to aether

 

Fairy tales to try to use, and a mixture from across the planet, and parts to focus on:

  • The Soldier and Death (Russian) - soldier who traps death
  • Theseus and the Minotaur (Greek) - battling the Minotaur in the labyrinth
  • Pandora (Greek) - how misery entered the world, possibly tie to how magic came about
  • Various tales with Anansi the spider (Africa) - mainly the story of trying to gather wisdom and then wisdom being scattered. TIE TO PANDORA
  • Jake and the Beanstalk, Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks (Europe) - various, but mainly involving humans interacting negatively with monsters, not always the monster's fault
  • Various animal brides stories, and The Little Mermaid (all over the world) - various, but mainly involving humans interacting positively with monsters
  • Repunzel (Europe) - escaping a prison. TIE TO MINOTAUR

 

Look more at various fairy tales around the world.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...