Tag Archives: Worldbuilding

RPGBA Carnival – Unusual Dungeons – Wrap-Up

2015-06-01WorldbuildingDungeons, Fantasy, RPG, WorldbuildingNils

May comes to an end, and so does the Unusual Dungeons RPG Blog Carnival.

After a somewhat slow start, we’ve had a number of submissions:

From Grimnir, we had the Tower of Gamaldur.
Alan Kellogg posted on how handling situations can make them unusual, rather than the setting.
Phil Magpie brainstormed up a Secret Temple.
Mark from Creative Mountain Games writes about subverting players’ expectations and creating something that is recognizable, rather than unusual in its physical setup.
Johnn Four takes his characters to McDonald’s (nice one) and into the Astral Plane with the help of a spelljammer ship.
General Tangent posted thoughts on inspiration for unusual dungeons.

James Introcaso was the most prolific contributor this month, supplying us with a series about a prison for dragons:

And from myself:

Phil, from Tales of a GM, is taking over for June – with the appropriate subject “Summerland” (Summer in RPGs). Take it away, Phil!

(And of course, if you’d like to read up on past carnivals or check on future subjects, head on over to the RPGBA Carnival archive page.)

E2015: The Moons of Enderra

2015-05-10E2015, Enderra, WorldbuildingConworld, Enderra 2015, Fantasy, WorldbuildingNils

Back when I first designed Enderra, I decided that it had three moons and a (thin) ring system. I did this mostly for the imagery, not really thinking about the consequences much. Multiple large moons can have severe effects on the planetary environment. Universe Today has a summary of some of the effects of adding a second, Moon-sized, moon to Earth.

The scenario they describe is extreme, and I am not quite sure where they get some of their numbers (tides “thousands of feet” in height seem off) but I am sure they know more about this stuff than I do. Anyway, even with lessened effects, I have come to think of three moons as excessive.

At the same time, I do like the “exotic” visuals. Let’s ditch one moon and the ring system.

I’ve done some math to make sure the moons don’t cause huge problems. I mostly used GURPS Space for this, since I couldn’t find formulas easily, and ran the numbers for the Moon (of Earth) through the same process – for verification. Even when the two moons align, their effect on tides should be at most twice that of Earth’s Moon. The actual tidal levels, though, depend a lot on geography and local conditions. Yes, we will have some tides that are more extreme than on Earth, but it won’t mess with the fundamental state of affairs. Nights will be a bit brighter, and there will be a little bit more volcanism on Enderra than on Earth.

Both moons are tidally locked to Enderra – that is, they always show the same face to Enderra. The White Moon’s synodic month is 30.33 days, the Red Moon’s is 43.22.

What’s in a Name?

The two moons are simply named “the Red Moon” and “the White Moon”, similar to how Earth’s moon is just called “the Moon”. I might give them name later (the three original moons had names) but I think I like the simplicity of “Red Moon” and “White Moon”.

Blog Carnival: A New Year, A New World

2015-01-01Blog Carnival, WorldbuildingBlog Carnival, Exploration, New Worlds, WorldbuildingNils

The start of a new year is traditionally a time that motivate people to change. For some people this means an attempt to lose a bad habit, but true adventurers are in the last stage of preparation for their spring departure – to go over the next hill, across the ocean, down into the depths of subterranean realms, or into deep space, to explore the strange new lands that lie beyond.

This month’s RPG Blog Carnival is about new worlds, about their discovery and about the women, men, and other sentient humanoids who explore and colonize them. Do you run an exploration-centric campaign? Maybe a hexcrawl in a fantasy world, or about setting up a colony on an alien planet? Share your methods – what aspects do you emphasize, and how do you handle them? How do you create a sense of wonder, and maintain it? What strange lands are your characters exploring? What equipment are they using? What vehicles or other means of transportation – a wagon train, flotilla of barques, or slower-than-light Sleeper Ship? Who are your explorers, what motivates them, and who are their patrons and followers? What equipment helps them? What obstacles lie in their paths?

Share your new lands with us, if you can do so without spoiling them for your party. Show off your maps and designs. How do you approach setting up your worlds? Share your favorite world-building tips!

The RPGBA Blog Carnival

The Blog Carnival provides a monthly topic to inspire RPG bloggers to post about. December’s topic was “With A Twist”, check out the round-up post; and a full archive of topics is available if you’d like to see what was done in the past.

To participate, you simply post about the topic in any shape, way or form and post a link to your article as a comment to this introduction post. At the end of the month I’ll post a round-up with links to every post so readers have one central place to look up everything.

Enjoy… and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Update, February 1st: The Roundup has been posted.

Some assorted links, as usual:

The BBC checked Isaac Asimov’s predictions for 2014. As always, these things are an amusing read.
Old, but check out Joss Whedon’s Top 10 Writing Tips.
Six Real Planets That Put Science (and cracked.com) to shame. Some cool exoplanets.
Science Fiction Atmospheres. An essay on atmospheres and climate conditions depicted in science fiction novels. I wish this was more exhaustive.
What medieval Europe did with its teenagers. Good read if you want to build a more interesting fantasy setting than the usual D&D yearn.
The Pulp-o-Mixer lets you put together faux pulp magazine covers. Pretty cool.
And this has been all over the news: A giant rat was captured and photographed in Sweden. Next time your players complain about the trope of giant rats, point them to this article!

Some assorted links:

What makes a subsector popular? – an analysis of Traveller subsectors which should be helpful to any GM.
Desert Do’s and Desert Don’ts
James Wyatt’s Map scale discussions at Wizards of the Coast
CCP Games’ talk about Seeding the Universe has some good info on populating a game setting; nothing too revolutionary but I found it interesting nevertheless.
Photo Yun has great photos and a very permissive license. Check it out!
Quantum Entanglement may be using wormholes as a communications mechanism. I have no idea how plausible this is, but it may make for cool sci fi either way.
Map of Ganymede
This account of the Antarctic expedition of Douglas Mawson should serve as a “Post Scriptum” for the Icy Embrace of Winter carnival – and give you a good deal of inspiration for your own harrowing arctic tales

Lots of assortedness:

Airships. I love airships and The Atlantic has some nice photos.
Earth-sized Lava World has been discovered
Stone Lake – so called because it petrifies (literally) animals.Awesome, awesome, awesome setting, as Realmwright points out. I do have some doubts about the validity of this, and even if it actually works about the details mentioned on Gizmodo, but for a fantasy / sci fi story, you can always bend reality enough to make use of it.
Living on the Ocean: For your waterworlds.
Piracy pays: If you need to rationalize piracy in a modern or a Sci Fi setting, then Somalia is your friend.
Technovelgy is an old site that keeps track of reality’s imitation of science fiction.
As many as one in five suns may host habitable planets.
Abandoned toy factories – Creepy dolls everywhere make for an awesome setting
Is it right to waste Helium on party balloons? – Interesting thoughts, plus: It turns out the US had a strategic helium reserve established in the time of airships. What awesome plot point that would make…

Not a lot this month, but hey, I’ve been busy.

Stuff

The Odds – Novel with a cover based on my art is now available. Congrats, Robert J. Peterson! And thanks for the stuff you sent me, I did not have time to check it out yet unfortunately.
Radiation has lasting effects on tree growth – Always interesting for post-apocalyptic scenarios

Spaaaaaaaace! and the Future

Low-mass exoplanet imaged – It also “poses a challenge” to theories about Gas Giant formations.
The City of 2050 – Nothing too original but probably worth a look if you are working on Sci Fi
Not strictly Sci Fi: Check out Project Iceworm. Seems that in the early 60s, the US Army attempted to build a huge nuclear missile launch facility under the ice of Greenland. Valuable leads if you intend on ‘building’ an under-ice colony or lair for your supervillain. Also, see the propaganda video for some impressive visuals.

More odds and ends:

Chinese Copy-Cat towns – I imagine something like this would happen if we ever explore space and colonize worlds around other stars; people will feel nostalgic for the Earth they left behind and might actually even build places that remind them of home.
The Town that spent 25 years under water – Awesome photos, would make a great setting
Glass rain may give planet blue hue – You couldn’t make this up.
Galactic Empires – A 1983 article on interstellar empires, by Robert A. Freitas Jr.
Las Vegas Tunnel People – People living in flooded tunnels under Las Vegas. And it’s not about Fallout:NV.
Mos Eisley threatened by dune.
Buildings that change over time – another neat Sci Fi technology

Game Design:

The League of Legends lead designer talked a bit about player needs vs wants, a worth-while read. This is not exactly news to anybody who has even dabbled in the field, but he expresses it well – and many players do not realize these principles.
Geeks On had an episode on RPG design.

Tools of the Trade

Dungeon Mapping using Excel and Paint – I have to admit that I did not try it, but if it works it is awesome.

Question for you guys: Should I keep posting these here, or just on Facebook – or both?

Not much actual world-building stuff for March, but I came across a bunch of articles and sites I thought were share-worthy:

Helicoprion was a spiral-toothed fish and shows that very weird-looking creatures did indeed exist…
We can now re-grow teeth.. it’ll be a while for commercial availability, but the shiny future may sole all dental problems.
Chuck found a nice photo website called Phototravel, lots of nice visuals there.
Paleos.com – Life Through Deep Time is cool resource if you need to figure out what lived on Earth when.
The BBC has an article up describing a Future Without Antibiotics.

Thanks to Adam for pointing out that the downloads of Shakespeare & Dragons episodes 10 and 13 were broken. I think it happened when Google updated Docs to become Drive. Anyway, I have fixed them, now hosting them on my own server.

As a VERY SPECIAL BONUS… I noticed that I actually have a 16th episode, “The Missing Ingredient”, which I never uploaded because for some reason it also does not show up in my iTunes. It’s now been added – enjoy!

Links:

Episode 10 – Plot Part Three, Structuring Plot from Character Desires and Forces of Antagonism
Episode 13 – Setting Part Two, Creating Cultural Attributes
Episode 16 – The Missing Ingredient

Enderra – Worldbuilding and Games

Fiction, World Building, and Art

Tag Archives: Worldbuilding

RPGBA Carnival – Unusual Dungeons – Wrap-Up

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E2015: The Moons of Enderra

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Blog Carnival: A New Year, A New World

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