beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I haven't been having much to say just lately
because wandering the internet looking for how even the agriculture, ecosystem, and supply chains would have to work
to make Adventurer Clothes
with all the pockets
just keeps raising questions
that I'm not sure how to make a story answer.

The thing is though, agriculture was bloody difficult, and getting enough to live on was the daily work of the vast majority of humanity for the vast majority of history
and I never get a feeling that rpg adventure worlds really grok that.
( Read more... )

If we take a science fiction approach then there's story upon story after each individual change to the way the world works. Stack them up like these fantasy worlds do and things get incredibly far out.

But it's all a backdrop to seeing how hard the fighter can hit things, which is a tad bit weird, really.


So: I want to figure out where the interesting stories are by treating the sort of damage spells do as the plainly least interesting bit of the setting.

But after a while if the interesting bits are teleportation and bioengineering and the possibility the neighbours are diversified post humans, you're doing science fiction with very retro fashions on.



Shall ponder more.

I was just now thinking, it's got to be really difficult to design WCs for fantasy worlds.
I mean, even the standard Pathfinder dudes need loos ins Small and Medium sizes.
And Small will do for children of Medium, but Small still have children too, so really you need Tiny loos.
And what if a Large visits?
But you'd still need wheelchair access, because disability still exists even if wheelchairs aren't industrial standardised yet.
But the wheelchairs would be in all those sizes too?
And then there's like Locathah who are usually aquatic and you wonder what merperson loos are like but probably don't want to know.
And there's Tengu who are like birds, don't know what facilities they'd need.
Lots of different kinds of humanoid ish species.
And that's just for starters.

I mean I'm sure centaurs and driders need the loo too, somehow. I'm not sure they'd fit in a regular building. They should though, people is people is people.

And I was thinking all this because the Lavatory building is up to four squares, and they can be separate squares, five by five feet.

That is just not a lot of toilets.

There's no game advantage to buying extras but... that's really not a lot of room for all the humans you can fit in a building, let alone everyone else.

( Read more... )


Fantasy sewers are a whole problem of their very own.


I started out thinking about accessability across multiple races, I end up finding out the sewer ecosystem is suitable for level seven adventurers at least.

A building needs a Sewer Access room to connect to the town's sewers.

I now realise decent locks and so forth on that are essential.

Unless you want sewer based customers.




So okay. Fantasy world bathrooms. Way more complicated than you'd think.

All the pictures of Pathfinder orcs or half orcs are green, but all the descriptions say even orcs who are not half can be 'sallow pink' or grey or green, and half orcs can take after their human parent and be any of those plus any human. And the hair is always black in the pictures, but the description says always dark, most often black, but possibly grey or dark red.

So now I'm thinking there's a representation problem on Golarion, like when all the characters are white men, only it's just depicting every orc as green. And usually there'd be grumbles and wondering where the pink and grey orcs are at, only orcs have such a terrible reputation in universe it seems like it'd be more like there's all these terribly racist stories that seem like they're about orcs, to humans, but to orcs seem like they're about those particular green orcs. Which generates more stories, like, orcs being racist to other orcs and being hella surprised when a human lumps them in to the same stereotype. How can they think all orcs are the same? Look! Pink vs green! Opposites!

But humans would care nothing for skin color? Even while all painting them green always...

Don't know how that works.

Also, if you search for Sallow Pink, you find a sort of a moth I think, which seems to me to be orange. Don't know why it's called that. Has interesting patterns. Now I'm thinking of camo pattern orcs, which seems to me pretty plausible, given freckles and coat patterns and so forth.

I'm sure sallow pink is intended to be a color in a human range, but if it's a pink pink and could go with dark red hair then you'd get like seasonally contrasting orcs, with the pink ones next to the green ones looking all vivid.

I wonder if anyone goes sci fi and tries to figure out the chemistry that could make them colors. I mean many things are green but those things are not often also grey. Green and assorted shades of red and yellow, yes. ... oooh, orcs in foliage colors, cooooool... also there is grey foliage but it don't tend to mean grey grey. It's like greeny white and called silver.

Foliage orcs have a much nicer pallette, I'm believing in foliage orcs now.

Otherwise they're just green without it being useful. Or just grey. Like rhinos or elephants I guess. Those aren't boring. Bit textural though.



I'm not really thinking of making half orc Mick Rory be green, but if he's wandering around being all discriminated against and being white, that feels like that thing the stories do where dystopias are like 'what if *x thing that really happens a lot* but to white people'. Like, I have no problems deciding the barbaric aggressive race can be white people, but if there's prejudice based on a stereotype of barbaric aggression and they turn out to be good authors and then they're white people, that seems... awkward.

Making him leaf pinks could be fun.



I was thinking of making my default elf look like Zoe Saldana. Elves in fantasy illustration have the white people problem. Slim white people with blonde hair. Except the descriptions make it clear they adapt to their environments so they can be lots of looks. There's even descriptions of 'wild elves' who lives in tribes and have darker skin, but the only picture apparently paints themselves white? And then there's a few blue ones, for aquatic elves, because that covers it? And then there's Drow, who are Evil and Black, which, you know, ugh. So. By decree. Elves is black people now. They can be the long lived very civilised first race driven out of their lands by cataclysm, their homes long looted. I mean it's sad but I don't see why the ones with the longest history are all white and blonde.



I have not been being very productive of late.

Oh well.

So like Malfoy Manor is based off a national trust property and would be worth £14.5 million according to the radio times. The Malfoys are Rich.

But how did they get rich?

Like, I don't know anything, I just read fic, fic has them owning a house and just... bank vaults. And like, typically vaults need filling? On the regular? Vaults that are not refilled are why most houses end up with the National Trust, there's a whole money goes out problem.

So what resources do the Malfoys have that they're turning into money?

( Read more... )

But if one old family has land, they can make money through rent, and through the magical plants and beasts and all sorts that might live on that land. For rent you want there to be more people, for the other stuff... only maybe. Either way it might get crowded, or feel crowded compared to a mere century ago.

And the new wizards wouldn't have resources of their own, not from within the existing economy, they'd be all looking to buy their ingredients and wands and so forth but they'd have had to change currencies from pounds first.

If we knew how people were making their money and how their money was doing in the present conditions then we'd know a bunch of motives for them being bastards, and those things would still need sorting out even after everyone has agreed that prejudice is a bad thing.

But like, sorted by growing more and being nicer to growing things, possibly.

Not the way the Dark tried it.

http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10821

This theory explains there’s several interlocked economies in a high magic fantasy world and taking payment in each has risks. Food units are rations, gold and such only works where you don’t have to travel to spend it, and magic items are as dangerous as they are shiny, not least because killing people and nicking their magic items is what adventurers do. Having the most force so you can kill whoever for whatever is another kind of rich, and why saving up shiny might not be worth it, if it attracts predators. And favors are essential.

it makes a lot of sense. and I hadn’t thought of much of it before.



Now I want to express the assumption that $1 in GURPS is a loaf of bread in terms of calories as a fraction of daily needs. Loaf varies, how much you need to eat varies, it won't be tidy, but if a loaf is a ration then it has a logic.


D&D assumptions about the value of hold and how common it is pretty much make sense if everyone who gets the magic to try it just goes *tada, gold* for generations. Way more gold, buying way less.

The thing with GURPS is that I think I like it for its versatility and flexibility and diversity
and the way there's a rule for just about everything
and then when I sit down and decide what things to actually use
I simplify.

( Read more... )


When inventing religion for the new fantasy world I... first decided that world without Jews would put me in bad company and so clearly Jews got Banestormed there, and then I read a lot of fics about Captain Cold, and then I ended up with a corner of plot about Cold as jew in a fantasy world, but I have absolutely no idea how to write it without just copying that one fic I rad, I don't even know enough to start learning more.

This is how I end up writing nothing, my failure to be omniscient enough to be a narrator.

But.

Fantasy world religion, based on the months of the year, so there's twelve different gods. Except secretly there is a thirteenth, who is god of gates and doors, beginnings and endings, and intercalary days, because I always incite Janus. But if they had Gate magic my plots would work out very different. So.

Twelve gods who grant their priests twelve spells each, except there's secretly thirteen and so each priesthood has a secret spell.

( Read more... )



Okay, I didn't get as far as trying to figure out spell sets, and this computer needs recharging. I'll post this and come back to it later.


Pantheons are hard though, you really need to go back and forth with your plot and figure out who you need, and twelve seems too many and too few.

Four are for living things, four for crafts, and four for ways of organising humans. That could work.


Ugh, power plug.

google is frustrating me. I was inventing pantheons for fantasy worlds, and the AD&D book said that Luck is usually a Lady, so of course I wanted to flip that. So I was thinking of all those Lady Luck pin up girls and tattoos and so forth, and now I want something like that, but with a guy. A pretty, slutty guy, because we know Luck is a tease who everyone wants.

And I can't find even the basic concept.

Google keeps on asking if I actually mean bad luck.

No, no I do not, I mean genderswap Luck, rule 63 Luck, possibly queer Luck depending on if you assume the viewer is a guy because somehow the flirty show off guys seem to read queer because straight guys don't work it (ugh).

But I don't know how to get a search engine to cough up, even if such a picture exists.

I would at this point settle for a particularly butch Lady Luck, but searching on that kind of string leads to the discovery that there's a lesbian dating service called Lady Luck, which, good name, great, but not what I was looking for. Today.

Meanwhile all this worldbuilding is, as per usual, far less useful than just sitting down and taking some characters for a walk would be.



I have a problem with bad guys. Or antagonists even. I mean, I sit down and try and make a world that works, and that part is interesting, but then I have to break it so there's some sort of conflict, and that part is less good. I'm interested in trade routes that cross continents and bring new and interesting diseases with them, and the inefficacy of castles in the face of rising maintenance costs and how the force projection embodied in the architectural projects of Edward I kind of stalled out before the Black Death even got here, and of course after that everyone had a great many more problems. I kind of want to write a post apocalyptic after the plague story where only 20% of the known to the characters world survived. Except I don't like post apocalypse stories because they tend to be mean. And I don't know what my characters would do really.

This is why Fantasy invents dragons. Actual problems tended to be weather patterns and droughts and floods and plagues. The occasional invading horde could manage it because of unusual weather and got turned back when everything went muddy again. Empires rose until smallpox swept through. What humans do doesn't seem to be the deciding factor across much of history. So, dragons. We can at least kill a really big lizard. For the win.

... okay, bolshy kings did make a significant impact on history. I'm just... increasingly unconvinced it was the deciding factor. Yaay for antibiotics and the green revolution.

The potential post antibiotic post global warming epic soil erosion era is quite concerning.

The more I read magic books, the more I feel the Plant college would make more of a difference than anything else could do. I mean, the ability to control minds is all very well, you could puppet a king real good, but the ability to fill your fields real fast is a world changer.

... I think it was one of astolat's Merlin fics that went there, pointing out that full fields win wars? Yeah, http://archiveofourown.org/works/40561 , The Crown of the Summer Court, "This isn't a power that wins challenges. It's a power that wins wars."

That story managed to be interesting with pretty much no bad guys. I know it can be done. I just... haven't got the hang of it.



Also, it's a demonstration of my priorities that my recent reading and extending knowledge is just making me cranky that I haven't turned it into fiction yet. Learning is good in and of itself. I should keep that in mind.

Have been listening to Prodigy while thinking about martial arts movies.

One of the Highlander characters with the same name as me tells her student "Choose your ground, choose your weapon, and face what is to come."

I think a lot of people skip over step one. But the ground is key.

( Read more... )


well that ramble wasn't much about what I started out thinking on. I'll go do something else instead.

I tried to start a game on tumblr of Starship Crew, add a person and pass it on. Then imagine what kind of adventures would need that crew, and who that crew would need to have adventures. But I don't know many people yet so it not working as a game.

With a starship for storytelling purposes, you need adventures, you need a slightly lopsided crew that has needs they can't meet, it's more like designing an RPG party than anything sensible. Real life ships can go all the way up to floating cities. Sensible well designed crews have someone to do almost any job you can think of.

Space colonies need that, only more so. Any skill you do not bring with you either needs to be book/video learning compatible, or it will die out in that colony. The next generation cannot have a skill that the first generation lack, unless they teach it to themselves. There could be much reinvention of the wheel involved.

So I was wondering who to bring. ( Read more... )

I need to study a different degree. ... I don't think society design is a degree, but I'm sure there's lots of things that are like all the parts.

( Read more... )

If you pack people in priority of how difficult it would be to reinvent it yourself or learn it from videos, you get a very different list than if you pack people based on how often their work is needed. Since on the whole carers are needed much more often than acrobats. And if you sort it by how likely people are to want to reinvent it themselves you sift things different again.

So many possibilities.

By the numbers in the Magical Medieval City Guide my made up city has
377 taverns, 110 inns, and 9 restaurants
So, I started trying to name them.

I used a random names generator but there are few enough components they get repetitive inside of 100, and that's 400 short. Also they don't sound much like real pubs.
So I went to lists of real pubs. Except they aren't just a huge long list with only the names - unless someone knows a link like that - they're pubs and reviews and stars and stuff I don't want to copy paste. So I have copied, by typing, about a hundred pub names.
And that's still 300 short.
( Read more... )



Anyways. I'm only still awake because I forgot to sleep
and the cleaner is here
(I need bin bags for the big bin and also bleach and can't find the right notepad, I write it in the middle of this and I'm sure I'll remember.)
no, wait, the cleaner just left
so I can stop being strange with namings and maybe sleep now.

Or not. the big lorry is extremely screechy.

and I should probably stay awake until evening to try and get right way up again.

(but I should quit it with the names. too many names. too many.)

My GURPS books I bought myself for xmas have arrived, Horror and Low Tech.
I have started reading little bits of Low Tech.
So far, China invented everything first. Everything. By several centuries.
They had some very useful plants, like bamboo, and insects, like mulberry silkworms and some lacquer bugs.
They also figured out how to make small quantities of high quality steel several centuries before everyone else.
There are also a whole stack of things where Arabic writing people got there first.
Honestly, Europe doesn't seem to be much cop at all in the first four tech levels.
We are not impressive.

If I'm thinking post apocalyptic low tech though it should be a bit different. Like, a lot of their problem was not having the theory. Trying to figure out chemistry without the periodic table of elements, or with working with earth water air fire as your basic elements, rather complicates things. Being unable to distinguish between different salts also makes things tricky, with recipes saying salt from location x because that was the closest they could get to saying a particular chemical. If you've had all that knowledge, and have posters of the periodic table, what happens after the fall? You no longer have an industrial tech base, post atomic zombies or whatever, so some things are not available. If global travel shuts down then some elements just aren't going to be available locally... at least without a lot of recycling. All tech would look like Tony in the cave, smashing up the incredibly advanced but useless to get at the 2 grams of shiny shiny metals. So what tech level would that be?

Alternate tech paths are usually written as TL (2+1) or whatever, but I'm thinking more TL (8-4). They're medieval again, not actually medieval.




Of course once you've ever had nanotech we're into sufficiently-advanced-science territory, and I'm just using the Magic rules for it. But that's kind of sidestepping the point.

Still, it's easier to use the rules for Soul Jar than to figure out a tech path that leads to brain mapping of a sort that's still useful to the select few.


Now I just have to decide what size gem they use for a jar, and where is most convenient to place ( Read more... )




Okay, so, if I found it as easy to write my dissertation as I do to design entire worlds, I would probably be done by now.

but then if I found it as easy to write the stories as do the worldbuilding, I'd have at least two novels worth done, from the worldbuilding for Incorrupt and for the Stone Circle.

Probably a lot more, those are just last year and the year before.




A lot of this stuff, I don't really start with the rule books, I have characters in my head and bits of plot and I just go through the rules to sift out interesting bits to build on.

I'd never roll something up and go oh no I can't make that work now.



This stuff is fun.


Even with a headache.
(Headaches are annoying.)

I've been poking websites to find out what 'city' meant at different bits of history. Turns out early on it usually meant somewhere smaller than Dereham. Like, Norwich: "The Domesday Book states that it had approximately twenty-five churches and a population of between five and ten thousand." (wiki). Or "By the time of the Domesday Book, in 1086, Norwich was one of the largest towns in England with a population of about 6,000. Although that seems tiny to us settlements were very small in those days, a typical village only had 100 to 150 inhabitants. By the 14th century the population of Norwich had probably grown to about 10,000." Dereham's 15K would be, like, woah, huuuuuuuge! Entire millennia of human history couldn't get their head around having that many people in one place.

I feel I have learnt this before, but I can't get my head around the scaling down necessary to imagine this stuff. I mean, my town is tiny, it only has five churches and two high schools and a weekly market! ... ah, yes, that's quite a lot, really.

( Read more... )


Fantasy novels seem to have scales set at 'one spectacularly large city', the fantasy equivalent of a London or Venice, anomalously huge, or 'at least one continent'. I can't think of one set between a couple of counties. Stories wander all over the map, and the map is gigantic. I know we can blame Tolkien for just about everything, but I also blame America. ( Read more... )

Place names from real history can work excellent well for fantasy versions. Like, from the War of the Roses, there were battles of Wakefield, Mortimer's Cross (complete with signs and portents), and Hexham, that I think sound like an Undead campaign waiting to happen.

Casualty figures for Wakefield on wiki: about 2500 casualties.
That seems a lot more in fractions-of-Norwich.

The Battle of Towton is on a whole other scale. Wiki: "largest and bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil".
"According to chroniclers, more than 50,000 soldiers from the Houses of York and Lancaster fought for hours amidst a snowstorm on that day, which was a Palm Sunday. A newsletter circulated a week after the battle reported that 28,000 died on the battlefield."

That's actual multiples of Norwich. *shudders*

Sometimes looking at history for inspiration feels really ghoulish.
... hence the undead armies...



I looked earlier in history as well. Tudors and that have had a whole lot of story about them already, hard to be remotely original or file the serial numbers off enough. Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms covered much smaller chunks of Britain and still managed to have a whole lot of fighting.

Also I like it when Anglia was a Kingdom. And some of the others had good names, like Mercia, which was the Midlands. It's supposed to be meaning border people, but it's only Mercy if you don't look it up.
( Read more... )

So I wandered around looking at maps and forgot my original population-research aims. But found plenty of good inspiration places.



At some point I will do actual work. It's just actual work requires actual concentration, and if you end up skating off to learn the history of the Brythons it's a problem, rather than a refreshing changes.

Been thinking on epic fantasy stuff:

Two kingdoms having a big fight, two sets of mountains with a plain between that has basically turned into a really big battlefield.
When battles start out there the dead rise and fight.
Each side blames the other for summoning them, but really it's just that they remember the fighting and get up to join in.

It's not some big horde of mindless enemy, it's the way after a fight has been going on long enough it's never just this one fight here and now, it's the echoes of what their great grandparents did to yours.





Discovering the truth about them undead armies and how to make them lie down again be the big plot, so if I were going to write this then this be big spoilers, but with my track record, I just bounce the idea out to see if it works.