What are /r/worldbuilding's favorite Products & Services?

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I have news for you!

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Edit: I’ve been told that site isn’t secure, so here’s something better!

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Alternativly, you can just head down to your local Walmart and pick this stuff up.

These stones appeared seemingly put of nowhere, their origin is unknown as is their purpose. Some believe them to be relics of a lost civilization, such as Atlantis, whilst others wonder if they perhaps came from another world.

The stones hover silently, no pattern in their dispersal can be found and they seem to non discriminatly scatter themselves across the entire worlds oceans.

What happens next remains to be seen, until further notice these monoliths are off limits to all, including military and governing bodies.

Artstation

Instagram

In terms of creating a fleshed out main character, this may be a good place to start. I think using this to create a character in coherence with your world will be useful.

There might be some things I've missed/overlooked. If people enjoy this and think of some more things to include, I will make an updated version.

edit: Now that this post has gotten popular, I kind of wish I hadn't made this in MS Paint.

Another thing people have said is that this isn't a mind map but a mind cloud which is correct.

People have also stated that I organized things poorly, and to that I have one thing to say: yeah you're right.

My only real aim was to get people thinking about character motivation, not a step by step guide on to create a character. That being said, /u/RazomOmega and /u/ThatFanficGuy have both formatted and categorized my points much better here and here.

Glad I helped some people with their creativity, feel free to crosspost this to relevant subreddits.

That sounds awesome! I'm currently building a world for a book. And something like this seems super helpful. Do you think it's the same as this one, even though the cover isn't quite the same? https://www.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Guide-Medieval-England/dp/1439112908

I designed the characters using a miniature maker called Hero Forge: https://www.heroforge.com/# (Highly recommended) I then traced basic outlines using Inkscape: https://inkscape.org/en/ Applied a filter to make the lines look more organic and then coloured the whole thing in Photoshop

Hi folks, thought you might like this. Been working on it in my lunch breaks and while waiting for other stuff to "compile". It's pretty crude at the moment but simulated unit production for each block and attacking/invading neighbour blocks. You can download my app with the link below if you want to try it out.

Next thing I'll be working on will be sending reinforcement units to neighbouring friendly blocks.

http://www.filedropper.com/countrybuilder

EDIT: I'll upload the source code soon too, if you want to tinker around.

I think you'd face about the same chances as any of the New England Colonists, remember that predatory species is pretty low down on the vastly huge list of native threats to a settlement. Food is the big issue, first finding the things which are edible, then finding the ones which you can cultivate, then finding enough fertile land to cultivate enough to feed 500 people, then finding enough that can safely stored ready for the winter months, and even then, between cultivation, you need to find shelter for these 500 people, enough warm clothing and firewood, again, ready for winter, you also have to prepare tools and find storage...
I recommend a game called Banished as an insight into the issues faced by those who have striken off into the wilderness, no matter what century those issues will still prevail and still need to be resolved.

EDIT: Not to say it's impossible, but expect that number of 500 to very quickly plummet before any sense of security and stability is reached.

If anyone wants a fast, lightweight, offline version of a wiki for their worldbuilding, I recommend wikidpad. It has let me focus more on content than formatting articles or web page maintenance, and I've managed to get about 170 articles in it so far.

Well, the app uses a UI framework called Quasar that can be found here: https://quasar.dev/

However, most of the choices of what parts to where, how to show them, colors, etc. are all done by me.

You can, but the reason they are uncommon is because someone has to sit there making content. Maintaining passion for one project over a long period of time is already rare.

Spaceengine and Transcendence are both examples which have been long in development.

As to how to make one, make an engine for your modular system then go and enjoy it.

FYI: You can run a local version of the MediaWiki software that Wikipedia uses on your own computer, copy over any WP infobox templates you like, and set up a full alternate Wikipedia to use for developing your own world.

Thanks! here's a link to the kindle version.

There's a paperback version available as well but I haven't gotten my proof copy yet to make sure there no printing errors so I'm a little more hesitant to advertise it right now.

First designed in 2593 A.D. by Astrica Armourtech, the M-30C has become the standard issue skin of the Astral Drop Units of the Sublime Draknisid Imperium. Designed primarily with mobility across open ground in mind, the M-30’s key asset is its Hotzone Mobility Suite, a series of ion boosters, gyroscopic systems and mobility packs that allow the occupying Astral to leap and slide nimbly around the battlefield. M-30C occupants, as a result of this ability, have been nicknamed “Battle-Dancers” by occupants of M-27 models and older, who more relied on their gear’s durability to weather incoming projectiles and concussive forces.

Unlike some older models of battle skin, the M-30C gives its occupant a mobility advantage after the drop, allowing for quick access to cover while stabilisation and automove suites allow for the occupant to release targeted fire on the move. To boost mobility, the M-30C relies on a set of shock-absorbing footpads commonly found on many of Astrica's combat skin designs if not older. These pads (which lift the user's foot from the floor) coupled with shock collectors throughout the leg allow the armour to withstand greater impact forces, allowing the M-30C's occupant to hit the ground with speeds that would cause severe injury when performed in flat-foot models.

Despite subsequent designs like the M-32 proving capable in their own right, the M-30C remains a steadfast choice for its ease of use, reliability and most importantly ease of procurement. As with all orbital skins, Astrica Armourtech designed numerous variants to accommodate for the many species serving within the Astral Corps.

The Astrals themselves, and their methods of battle take prominence in the short story Saints In Death.

Implying there are no mountains, hills, valleys, etc. in reality?

'Plane' is definitely the word you'd want for this.

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Elemental_Plane

https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/The%20Planes%20of%20Existence#content

Practice, my dude. You'll be surprised how quickly you improve. I'd recommend drawing random stuff to begin with, that way it's not nearly as frustrating when you mess up.

If you're interested in digital art then you can't go far wrong with GIMP or Krita (both free).

1 pixel in this map image consists of 1 block placed. What you are seeing is the area surrounding the spawn point, Green Mountain. The image has been created by Azuros who was kind enough to share it. We're a big community and two indie devs working on it full-time, please feel free to ask me any questions here or visit yourself and draw, chat and build along with us.

4 weeks after the initial discovery of these ominous stones, The GC (Global Command) passes a law that allows a few select researches to come in contact with what are now known as Monoliths. They targeted the closest Monolith to the shore, chaining it up and pulling with a slew of helicopters, it moved with ease. Once above ground, the Monolith ceased it's hovering and fell to the sand, being relatively close to the ground it did not damage any of the aircraft as it fell.

Over the course of the next few months, numerous tests were conducted to further understand the Monoliths. A very small amount was gleaned from these tests, apart from the fact that it had been hand carved, yet nothing of it's age, ability to hover or from where it came could be understood. No radiation, no known source of power, just stone.

Artstation

Instagram

I feel you have used Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator improperly--you're supposed to regen it at least 213 times before deciding on a map layout, start building the world, then scrap it for another 324 random spins on Azgaar's.

ps-- I love and support Azgaar's map generator. But it is addictive.

Snakes are actually an incredibly interesting caveat. There's a surprisingly well-supported theory that human eyesight and even sapience evolved in parallel with predatorial snakes, through which most people have an innate fear (or fixed action pattern) of snakes, one that doesn't need to be learned.

https://www.amazon.com/Fruit-Tree-Serpent-Why-Well/dp/0674061969

When I was describing my characters to an illustrator and her friends there were plenty of those moments:

• First of all we couldn't agree on the colors, I said desertic but colorful, like the sonoran desert you know, the place we live in, but she was set it didn't get more colorful than Mad Max Fury Road, which only really has two colors, the infamous orange and blue combo.

• Instead of armor some of my characters wear full body rope harnesses that allow them to use more strength without damaging their joints and it also has the side effect that it prevents them from bleeding out if they get shot on a limb. She thought that would look like some fetish thing.

• Using a jacket tied around the waist instead of an obi to carry a katana was just too weird in their opinion.

• Codpieces are a no-no

• Split toe shoes

• Pleated pants

• Muscular women

• Weird skin colors

• Fantasy without magic

• Fantasy with cars

• Flamberge swords

• And fucking rad horses but genetically modified to be camo patterned but that was too difficult to draw and I admit it is kind of stupid

Yeah, we just weren't on the same page at all, I later realized that I didn't really want her doing the illustrations and she seemed to think the same since I haven't heard back from her. I dealt with it by buying Bert Dodson's Keys to Drawing and Keys to Drawing with Imagination, and I must say I'm happy about having done that, I'm improving very fast, I think in 2 months, by the time summer vacation's over I'll have something to show for it.

The GIF starts with the first human settlements, and ends with the Akaian Empire (blue) at it's peak. Shortly after this the empire breaks up, and borders are harder to define as there is so much disagreement. Eventually though, it is organised with the creation of The Central Union.

More information about the rest of this world can be found here: https://imgur.com/a/onNKZ#0

Desena is my Nationstates country which has been my largest worldbuilding project for years now, although it has gone through a couple complete overhauls. I decided to make this after the most recent one to get a better idea of how it's run.

Obviously modeled after the Venetian government, with a little bit of eastern influence. The chart itself is based off those used on Wikipedia, e.x. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Political_System_of_Germany.svg

I used to use World Scribe

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.averi.worldscribe

It's fairly decent, especially if you want to do things away from an internet connection.

Personally, I'd recommend World Anvil if you don't mind about having it all stored online instead of locally. There's no app at this point but the website works fine (for the most part, there are a few layout issues) on mobile.

In the (wonderful) novel The Postmortal the cure for aging and most disease is discovered... right around now.

Civilization as we know it doesn't make it to 2100.

As far as the immortality story is important to your world building you should give it a read (Also because I love the book and recommend it whenever possible)

from http://horizon.nmsu.edu/overview.html "In fact, only about 1/4 of all desert surfaces are made of sand - the rest are dirt, clay, rock, ice or some other mixture of organic and inorganic materials"

http://www.britannica.com/place/Gobi "much of the Gobi is not sandy desert but bare rock."

"The Gobi consists of the Gaxun, Junggar (Dzungarian), and Trans-Altai Gobi in the west, the Eastern, or Mongolian, Gobi in the centre and east, and the Alxa Plateau (Ala Shan Desert) in the south."

"Large areas of the Alxa are sand-covered."

Gobi desert area is twice the size of France, it is caused by rain shadow formed by Himalaya range.

yay :) It's for the game NationStates. So it's not a map for a whole world, just a country/small region. The nation I'm building is a near-future, semi-Scandinavian social democracy.

I made a version of it with labels but I'm not entirely happy with it yet, I want to revisit it.

Look at <u>The Sparrow</u> and <u>Children of God</u> by Mary Doria Russel for this exact scenario!

Things were rather stable, until alien interlopers came in to ask WTF the incredibly loud parties were all about.

In addition to where food comes from, I'd want to know where the waste goes. Is there a gutter running along the stairs constantly draining excrement to the lower levels? I'd assume that would make a (relatively expected) social strata where people who lived on higher levels are considered to be higher class / cleaner as the lower you go the more waste accumulates (and good god if that gutter gets blocked up somehow).

If you go with the chasm idea, people will likely build pulley / elevator systems on the edge if they have the materials available to do so.

Beyond food, where do materials come from? Wood and stone to build the buildings, metal to build steam engines, gunpowder components, etc?

You could take a look at The Infinite Staircase from D&D's planar mythology or Ravnica from Magic the Gathering for some ideas to help flesh out the idea. Neither are exactly what you're talking about, but they have some overlapping idea space.

> Any tips on how to make this world unique and interesting?

Sure, want to narrow it down even more?

> mutated humans and animals

Add a dash of arctic gigantism, and you're already off to a good start

Yeah, so this is actually based on a Blender script and source file named Shipyard.. and it's basically an awesome blend file FULL of nicely modelled spaceship parts, which is free to use..

http://opengameart.org/content/shipyard

edit: theres a bunch of different versions.. I had to chase up the newest one... but they are niiice...

You could try the old abandonware UMS or War College: http://www.old-games.com/download/5681/war-college-the-a-k if you can find something that will run it, or you could use the scenario editor for more modern games like Civilization to create the wars or battles and fight them out. For maximum distance from bias, choose a program that would let you set both sides as AI.

Well, I subscribe to the theory that there are 2 ways to build a world:

Macro-building:starting from the top down, building the universe first, then the world, then the nations, then cities, etc. Good for straight up building.

Micro-building: Starting from the POV of a character, and building up as the character experiences different things. Good for books or RPG games, if you prefer minimizing the amount of content necessary/content seen.

I personally am building a world just for the fun of it, located here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BxmM1R9cuvzneE1xZHVTdW8yYmc&amp;usp=sharing

Write down every idea you have, no matter how small it may seem, because it may blossom into something big.

I was playing Red Alert 3 the other day and saw the airships and thought "that would be cool in my world (which is medieval)" That one little idea has turned into the Dwarven Empire, a constant threat to the rest of the world, and the largest group of Technomancers in existence.

Thats all my basic advice, happy worldbuilding and msg me with any questions. :)

The Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology is a great resource for descriptions of the basic features of numerous mythologies. Amazon has a bunch of editions of it from very low prices. Here's one of them:

https://www.amazon.com/Larousse-Encyclopedia-Mythology-Felix-Guirand/dp/0517004046/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1480319480&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=larousse+encyclopedia+of+mythology

It covers Egyptian, Assyro-Babylonian, Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Celtic, Teutonic (including Norse), Slavonic, Finno-Ugric, Persian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, North and South American, Oceanic, and African.

There's a lot of stuff there. The myths of the Finns have wizards instead of gods. In Chinese Mythology heaven is populated by a vast bureaucracy with regulatory responsibility for everything in the universe. Indian mythology has a vast number of gods and demons, all of whom are ultimately manifestations of a single universal god. Persian mythology has a good god and a bad god; they are equally matched and locked in mortal combat to decide the fate of the universe. Roman is heavily influenced by Greek, but isn't the same. For one thing, the Romans had minor gods of families, households, and other features of everyday life that were not versions of anything from Greek mythology. For another thing, some of the Roman gods were very different from their Greek parallels. The most obvious example is Mars, who is supposed to be courageous, noble, and virtuous, versus Ares, who is supposed to be pretty much the opposite of all those things.

There's just lots of good stuff you can find in there.

It doesn't have everything. It doesn't have Wirikuta from Huichol mythology or Kokopelli from the Hopi. It doesn't cover the loa of Voodoo or the hybrid Yoruba/Roman Catholic mythology of Santeria. But it's a good place to start.

So, you can use this spreadsheet as a tool to help you out. Hopefully the guide I created is enlightening enough to help you through. The tab named "Hephaestus" is a planet similar to the one you're describing, except for being part of a double planet system. It would be a great place to start. The nice thing is, the spreadsheet will do a lot of the complex calculations for you - average temperature, orbital period, determining if the planet is tidally locked to its sun through gravitational forces, etc. I have put a lot of time into this.

Feel free to ask me any questions! This is an area where I have a fairly ridiculous amount of expertise.

I'm playing through it again (having just discovered openmw) and one of the things I love about it is how everything you know about the world comes to you through unreliable and politically biased sources. It's up to you to decide which version of history or cosmology is more reliable.

This includes offering you multiple interpretations of your own actions through the main quest, since it's a self-fulfilling prophesy to some degree.

One tool I think you'll find useful is Space Engine, it's a free tool that has thousands of currently known stars in our own galaxy as well as detailed information about all of them. I like to set the Sun as the focal point and zoom out as far as I want my empire to have expanded so that I can see what celestial objects are within its jurisdiction. On top of that, you can zoom all the way in to see details on the surfaces of the planets or the clouds and rings of gas planets. You can "land" on surfaces so you can see what it would look like to see Jupiter from one of its moons.

I have varying tools. My most common is to just get a bunch of word documents and jot down what's in my head in various set categories.

I discovered one tool a while ago that's interesting called The Guide. It functions like a wiki but on your desktop, and it saves files in RTF, so you have a lot of the functionality you'd want on your average word processor put into something that can organize pages for you like an actual wiki does. It's been a very helpful tool for when I write up stuff for D&D. I recommend giving it a try.

First of all, if you're timeline is less than 10,000 years, this program could be useful.

My world is high fantasy, so my timeline is the entire 24,000 year history of time. Because of this, I've been using this format in a Google doc:

• *x*E (*x*th era)
  • x*E*x (*x*th year of the *x*th era)
    • (date)

This isn't optimal for visualization, but it does keep everything in order and allows me to control+F search to find a particular event, date, year, or era.

Ah, so it's a fascist state!

Any system that requires a test of any sort to earn voting rights is prone to corruption and abuse; I would say that it is inevitable. Those in power can set testing parameters -- or even manage access to the education necessary to pass the test -- so as to exclude segments of the population from voting and thus from participation in democratic governing.

This happened in the US as recent as the early 1960's. Though the most egregious racist voting tests were eradicated by the 1965 Voting Rights Act (though some states still try to limit access by other means)

Please be advised that per our rules on plagiarism, you must disclose and credit non-original artwork; while this image has a clear watermark on it, which is borderline acceptable, it would highly preferable to link back to it in your comment, stating that it is your source material.

Also note that you are not meeting the terms of the Creative Commons licence under which these maps are licensed. The summary (which is not the binding legal terms, which is what you should refer to for a definitive understanding of your rights and responsibilities wrt the work under this licence) state:

> Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

Sure!

The Cosmos of Mystic Darkness from https://tapas.io/series/The-Power-of-Stardust

Context: Third part of the map of the cosmos from The Power of Stardust. The cosmos of mystic darkness is the result of light from the cosmos of supernal light acquiring mutations as it moves further away from the Eye of Light at the summit of all things. Where supernal light responds to thoughts, mystic darkness has thoughts all its own. Where supernal light is molded into dreamworlds, the mystic dark contains all possible realities and are attracted to the resonance of similar ideas.

&#x200B;

Supernal Light is all potential. Mystic Darkness is all action.

An interesting book you might want to check out is The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier.

Basically, Collier states that in our world there are certain commonalities among very poor nations. These include:

The Conflict Trap: That the nations often fall into a cycle of coups and civil wars that leave the nation without the stability to grow, and promotes individuals and groups that profit from conflict.

The Resource Trap: Countries that have natural resources available for export tend to be worse off than those that don't. Consequences include lack of having to tax so citizens don't demand accountability, the price of the natural resource messes with the other aspects of the local economy so that other industries become less viable due to weird currency valuations (the dutch disease). And that resources lead to governments that take personal profit off of them versus public investment.

Landlocked- Not having ports to trade with the rest of the world is bad.

Bad Neighborhood- If you are surrounded by poor countries, yours will probably be poor too. No close by markets and conflict and unrest spill over borders.

Bad Governance of small countries: A large country can often weather a bad government or series of bad governance because of size and having more reserves. A small country can't do that. A Bad government can wreck things quicker.

I am sure there are other reasons but this might help as a start.

miMind seems like a good option. While it's not a family tree app, you really just need something that facilitates making tree diagrams. It may even be better for worldbuilding purposes as it has the features necessary to make other types of diagrams that could come in handy for a fictional family tree.

Y'know the ol' "give a man a fish, teach a man to fish" expression? Cool. The Art of War by Sun Tzu isn't just a mark on your intellectual bragging scorecard, it's darn educational. Long book made short, I would summarize it with, "Every location is a strategic location if you know how to use it."

I'm not a mapologist, I think you're map looks neat as it is.

Only thing I can think of along those lines would be Spore Creature Creator, though it's getting on in years and I'm not sure how well it works on modern systems. I believe the full Spore game includes the creature creator as well, but also costs more.

This is what it would look like if the planet closest to the star in my system transited in front of the star. The planet in question is 7.67 times the diameter of Earth. It is a gas giant 51.58 times more massive than the Earth. It orbits at 0.18 AU at a whopping 70 km/s on average. This is what it would look like from the third planet at 0.85 AU

I made the animation with a free 3D program called Blender

(Wonderdraft!)[https://www.wonderdraft.net/]

It's an incredible tool for mapmaking, and the subreddit for it is incredibly active as well, constantly providing new assets, feedback, and maps. The creator also frequently updates the program with performance optimization, as well as the introduction of a ton of new tools. Its well worth the price, in my opinion, if you're looking for something a bit more powerful than something like inkarnate, but maintains it's pretty intuitive level of use.

You can use some program like Gimp or Photoshop to import a picture of your hand-drawn map as a layer and draw the actual map over it. That way you can use your original hand drawing as a guideline for the end result.

You sound like someone who might enjoy a trip into the wonderful world of <strong>Flavortown</strong>, a Guy Fieri-inspired RPG podcast my group played recently (served on a fresh ciabatta bun).

I don't think our argument about whether hotdogs are sandwiches made the final edit (they aren't), but one of the PCs played a Human Sandwich Artist, so you'd better believe there was a lot of sandwich talk!

I use a program cleverly called... wait for it... Timeline.

It's an amazing program because it makes it very easy to organize it all.

You can create multiple categories (for example: wars, special days/events, battles, elections, etc) and then view or hide them.

You could use colors on events and the background of the timeline (!) to make it even more organized.

You can add additional information and images when clicking on an event.

It supports custom dates and supports searching. As far as I know it doesn't have an end date.

I'm OBSESSED with worldbuilding. The more detailed the better. This map adorns my new book, Progeny of Gods (Available now on Amazon), and depicts the kingdom in which the book takes place. I'm trying out a new type of setting here. One I've never seen before. I'm calling it "Tree Punk," because the trees here grow seven miles tall and house many of the kingdom's cities, as well as yield bark to construct the airships they use to traverse this enormous landscape.

But my biggest goal with this world was to create a place that HAD that medieval feel, and used to be in that age, with lore and kings and such, but has since evolved into a modern society. I think the possibilities are endless in a kingdom with such a deep and unique history.

I also talk a lot about it on my YouTube if you guys are interested ;)

Please note that this hasn't been given out to anyone and the landing page isn't real as it's still in beta. The idea is to pivot our book writing software to focus mostly on fiction authors and worldbuilding: https://www.squibler.io/

You'll notice we fleshed out some of the product already, but it has a long way to go.

Do you think it has to do with this mysterious plotting JK Rowling does? http://www.openculture.com/2014/07/j-k-rowling-plotted-harry-potter-with-a-hand-drawn-spreadsheet.html

If you know about this, please answer me at /r/writing: http://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/380ikw/jk_rowling_revealed_she_plotted_harry_potter_down/

I have recently implemented a zoom able map using Leaflet. Almost 90 thousand images for 9 levels of zoom and that's just to cover a decent sized island.

I could do a write up but it gets a bit technical.

I like cats too! Here is one!

^^Beep ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot. ^^reply ^^if ^^there's ^^a ^^bug ^^^v0.6 ^^Source ^^downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^in ^^24 ^^hours

I'm using DokuWiki.

You may find this response useful for the extra content I'm using. :)

DokuWiki has on-a-stick version (such as bundled with MicroApache for Windows) so if you're not yet interested in hosting your wiki online and you just want it to organise internally you can literally just start the local server up by running a single script and get to work on your wiki. Obviously if you actually set up an actual server later and want it to be online you already have all your content and configurations for the wiki itself sorted, so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle!

If you've got any further questions, let me know. I'm far from an expert but I've encountered plenty of odd little quirks and solutions which aren't immediately obvious and people getting started may have. ;)

I would suggest finding a resource which would allow you to build up Japanese names and words from their etymological roots. I would recommend Wiktionary. The Online Etymology Dictionary is another great resource.

https://www.wiktionary.org/

http://www.etymonline.com/

Lolth reminds me of the name Lilith, which is a mythological demon figure of Jewish folklore. I did some digging, and apparently 'Ririsu' is the Japanese translation of Lilith. You might be able to use it as the consort's name.

As for the archipelago that you are naming, I would just play around with various etymological pieces until you get a name that sounds appropriate. Japan in the Japanese language translates as Nippon, which in turn translates as 'sun's origin'. You could take 'balance land' or something similar and build the word up from there, perhaps even given the region an English translation for the players.

Download: Here

I posted the previous version of my program here.

Since then I have added

• Plateaus

• Fault Block Mountains

• Island arches

• A proper heightfield that can be used in 3D rendering programs like Blender.

Current Features:

1 Shapes: Basic outline of Geological Features. This is what I imagine mapmakers will work on.

2 Height Field: The actual terrain. This is usable in 3D rendering programs like Blender or Maya.

3 Biomes: Very approximate biome assigned based on latitude and height.

4 Political: Very approximate Countries by joining adjacent regions. Usually mountain ranges will stop countries from spreading. There will be some gray unclaimed regions.

5 Stylized Image: This is my attempt to generate an image that a cartographer might create, with icons. Does not look as good as I hoped :P. I might scrap this in favour of cleaner representation.

CnC welcome.

Still TODO: Temperature, Wind, Rainfall, Climate.

The source is part of the jar. You will need Java 1.6 to run it. Just double clicking on the file should work.

EDIT: Export now shows Save dialog instead of Open dialog.

I use the Timeline Project. It's pretty great and does exactly what I want.

You can set dates, but also set periods. Add pictures into the description, so when you hover over it you can see that picture. Also, you can add hyperlinks in the description, maybe you can link it to your textfiles too but I'm not sure on that.

EDIT: They are still updating it now and then, so if you encounter any problems or bugs I'm pretty sure the devs can help you out.

For some reason the cover reminded me of those old castle cross-section books from years past. Like this one on amazon, but I'm pretty sure there was a series and not just one of them. They went over how castles functioned too, so a good resource for fleshing out functioning castles.

You mean like writing stories? Here is some advice from Stephen King's On Writing: think of What if senarios. I can't speak for your world, but it helps me to think and let your mind wander on what could happen. And don't plot out your stories. Let them flow freely and take you where you might not have.

If you have the time, give On Writing a shot. Its a fantasic read, IMHO.

Gwendolyn Godfrey. Her skills are absolutely unparalleled, and she can master practically any weapon the second she creates it or picks it up. She prefers swords, and she can make a laughingstock of just about any swordsman in Guardia with even a regular sword. There's a few people close to her level, but on terms of sheer skill, there's no chance of coming close to her

Not to rain on your parade, but this is the premise behind Galaxy Harvest. It's still a compelling idea, but the likely answer is "screw those apes, we need that biomass to perpetuate our own species." dakka dakka dakka

Is it cheating if I submit a link to my writeup on the Microgg that I posted a while ago?

Here's a planet I posted a while ago.

Here's a link to a spreadsheet I made a while ago that will help with some of the math.

> I feel so unoriginal now...

Ideas are a dime a dozen and every story has been told. Execution matters, and you've got it in spades here.

Here ya go. The Vector isn't perfect, but if you photoshop access you can tweak the points around. It's as close to 2300 as I could get.

Here's the Vector PSD 19mb

Here's the PNG if you don't shop 2mb

Magic: The Gathering does fairly extensive worldbuilding for all their sets, and I'm consistently impressed by it. There was a set called Lorwyn that did exactly this: a high-fantasy, whimsical fairy tale setting that featured no humans at all. Fairies, giants, boggarts, merfolk, elementals - but no humans. The sequel set, Shadowmoor, did the same thing but turned the world dark - Brothers Grimm kind of fairy tales with the same cast and setting.

I'd recommend checking that out! Start here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/story/planes/lorwynshadowmoor

Land of the Rising Sun actually seems to be more of a reference to Asia as a whole, but it seems rather shaky. Online Etymology Dictionary has this to say.

Here you go! Though that's only about 20% of it. I still have the rest written on notebook paper and have never bothered to transcribe it. In total I think it's around 15,000 lines. Basically I worked on it in high school and college then sort of abandoned it.

There was a lot of word-building involved though. There's an alphabet, systems of weights and measures, loads upon loads of geneology, tons of mythology, maps, architectural renderings, drawings of uniforms.

Needless to say I didn't study in study hall.

When you say "mythology" compared to "folklore" are you describing Classical/Norse mythology, the animistic aspect (as opposed to a pantheon of gods), or the lack of continuity in stories? Because really, folklore and mythology is a blurry line.

That aside, I suggest looking for the myths/folklore from a specific people. For example, google "Celtic folklore" instead of "European folklore." Also, check out Project Gutenberg's Folklore Bookshelf for some early (free) transcriptions of folklore and myths from around the world. Depending on the quality of your nearest library, look up anthropology texts of myths and folklore as well, they can be close to what you want as well.

They are nomads, constantly on the move, but there is some communication between the herds. When a chief decides to assemble a horde he sends out hunters and scouts as messengers to other herds, and then those herds to the same, and then the next and so on.

agario is a great analogy actually.

I made a language called KaDaGOCha [sic]... or most of one, anyway. I have the phonetic inventory (a reduced English set), a rule for the placement of consonants and vowels (CV[C] for all syllables, last consonant optional and from a different set than the first), a glyph system, a rhythm-based modifier system, and...

Yeah, I have like no words for the language.

Get thee to GIMP. It's free, open-source, and cross-platform.

Failing that, there's always Inkscape, a similarly free, open-source, and cross-platform program for vector graphics. :)

WikiPad is a good one. Link It's a little old but it also will serve as a good introduction to Wikispeak which is good to know if you ever want to put your wiki online.

Another and much more complex option is to use the Mediawiki software, the same one they use for wikipedia. You can do that either offline or online. The downside is that it will take awhile to learn to use. The upside is that you can do pretty much anything you can imagine. I was able to get a wiki up and running and I have limited html/programming knowledge. Luckily there are lots of resources online to help out.

Check out Obsidian! It’s an absolutely incredible (and free) app that lets you create rich, linked wiki-style notebooks. It stores everything locally on your computer (or phone, its on mobile too) as plaintext so you always own your stuff. You can also get add-on sync and publish-to-web support (for a price, base app is free).

There’s a toooooon of plugins from the community to have stuff like maps support too. It requires a little bit of markdown know-how, but it can help you with formatting stuff as well (and they have a more traditional WYSIWYG editor in progress)

Let me know if you try it out! I use it all the time for all sorts of stuff. Also check out r/obsidianmd

> So basically, make your own rules, but stick to them?

In On Writing, Stephen King referenced another author's take on this. I can't find the quote, but what it boils down to is that readers (or however people interface with your world) will accept just about anything, no matter how fantastic, if you give it to them in the beginning. But once the rules of your universe are established, if you break them in even the tiniest way, it's going to destroy the whole suspension of disbelief.

As far as the tides of three moons, our tidal variation depending on one moon is more-or-less a sine wave. I would assume that three moons would give you a superposition of three sine waves of different amplitudes and phases, so sometimes you’d get destructive interference (meaning negligible tidal effect), and sometimes you’d get positive interference (meaning incredibly high tides or low tides).

Depending on the periods of these moons, the tides would vary in their periodicity as well.

For visual effect, you'd be going from something like this to this, depending on the sizes and positions of the moons.

The tribes in the North have wolf companions. A person's wolf is their life. While the age at which they get their wolf varies wildly (some luck into their parents' wolves having puppies and them getting one as a baby so they grow up with it, others don't luck into bonding with one until they're a teenager. Some don't at all, which leads us to their shaman and an entire other thing.) They live, hunt and celebrate alongside their wolves. To outsiders, they are frequently considered savage and "no better than their beasts." In reality while they wear furs and it isn't uncommon for families to sleep in dogpiles they have a pretty in depth culture and are a very gentle people.

The empire is Cobara. Their Empress is seen as a reincarnation of their Goddess and she rules over a series of castes with her Seers aiding her. It's a lifelong position and it's considered a terrible sin to see her. They live in basically a giant desert with the occasional oasis. Their capital is based in what was an old mining quarry and is now known simply as The Pit. An oasis sprung up around it way back when and ti was considered a blessing by their Goddess so the majority of their population stayed put.

Closer to the northern mountains is the Aerie. A patriarchal monarchy that is protected by the Skyguard - Gryphonriders. The skyguard are separate from the rest of society mostly because, in their opinion, the rest of society cannot understand the life of one of the guard. They have the most frequent dealings with the tribes, though its generally few and far between and only during extremely harsh winters when the tribes starve and venture south in search of food and get into spats with farmers.

Here's a shitty map!

Food is always my go to when trying to plan out an economy.

Society breaks down very quickly when people get hungry, or can't find water to drink.

I always see a tendency for people to have farm lands really far away from cities and other population centers. Well how does the food get to where the people are? Does it need to be refrigerated?

How many people are there?

I stumbled across this article a while ago and have used it as a measuring stick when trying to plan a world out

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2011/12/31/144478009/the-average-american-ate-literally-a-ton-this-year

It's a service for project management. I used it to organize my thoughts on my Viromancer class fantasy for Pathfinder. I still need to complete it. Here's a link to view my little board (nothing complete or final, just an example): https://trello.com/b/4ZTkWjMU And do keep me updated if you can edit the board? I'm not sure if sharing this link allows you to do so. I just want you to see it. Thanks. XD

I wanted to do a wiki for quite a while, but they always were too complicated for me. The web app Notion seems to be exactly what I need! I got all my worldbuilding and writing in there, and it's served me quite well~

Sorry, I should have linked it: https://obsidian.md/

It's a note-taking app with a lot of features and community behind its ability to work as a "second brain" which fosters the kind of connection-making creative process I was describing.

Personally, as I grow older, I find that I'm more inclined towards focused work (at least once I motivate myself to start lol) at the cost of creativity so Obsidian and the process has been really useful to grow those few moments of spontaneity (going down those rabbit holes and having epiphanies) into something more concrete.

It's mainly the ability to link and search across basically everything in Obsidian. I have it set up as a wiki, both for my worldbuilding and other notes, so it really is a reflection of my mind, and of my rabbit-hole diving into Wikipedia and other websites.

I know that Native American languages were incredibly different from each other, and so they developed a universal sign language for trade and politics and other important communication. From what you've said, Sri Boksetra is exploding with languages, so it might be useful to think about what simple kinds of communication would develop for the most important activities (economics, treaties, evangelism, that sort of thing).

This is the city of London, England, in 2124. Increasingly fast-rising sea levels, along with sudden change in climate world-wide, has caused a crisis in the United Kingdom, and many other coastal nations. Some countries adapted, building structures under or over the water. The UK was one of them, and allocated a large percent of it's resources towards corporations and foundations promising to stem the rising sea level. Many failed, costing the government billions. The one to find a solution was the Terra Reclamation Foundation. Within 10 years, structures were built above the swelling river Thames, each platform named after the borough it sits over. Featuring sythentic land reaching 12 feet deep, the platforms are designed to be as natural to Londoners as possible. Famous London attractions have been replicated and rebuilt on the platforms also.

Please note that much of the lore is subject to change, which is why it may not all match up with the map.

This is my first try at world building, although it's not for anything specific like a novel. The two fonts used in the map are Prototype, and Ailerons, both of which I find fantastic.

It was partly Jaberwocky, Beowulf, Gilgamesh and a little Monty Python.

Essentially the story is that this evil warlord Felchbaric tries to invade the land of Faravaria in order to reestablish the Empire of Xeblebot (there's a lot of back story about how Xeblebot's empire was established and how important it was).

In order to stop this, this guy Iso sets out on a quest. His goal is to follow the path of the legendary explorer Kog who supposedly traveled so far north he found the pillars that hold up the sky. By sailing between them you can become a god. Iso hopes to do this to save his people. Along the way he meets some people, has some mini-adventures, picks up some sidekicks, they tell some stories, and hope to save the day.

Here is an essay I wrote about the major religions of the world.

Mostly the poem is nonsense, but there's some sense buried underneath. Some dedicated scholars might be able to pick it out if they had the patience. For instance, there is a working number system. It's hexadecimal and the word for six is swak. Plus all the genealogies work as does the geography and the mythology within the story is all consistent. It's also got some tricks like how if a character is telling a story the stanzas are all six lines, but if it's just simple plot there are no stanza breaks. This is somewhat based on the book of Job. The idea being that the six stanza poetry was all added by later authors.

Yeah it was fun writing, it might be fun to complete one day, but mostly it was fun just building the world.

Sounds good. (FYI the Attribution clause is a necessary part of the Creative Commons licence, there aren't any licence texts/options that exclude it.)

If other people are to use the work, then the licensing agreement needs to be clear for anyone legally aware to be totally comfortable making use of the work. =] Between versions of a similar licence like CC, it is somewhat arbitrary (and latest version probably makes sense) unless you're very keen on specific differences being a deal-breaker to how you want to share your work or how it affords legal protection to both parties.

FYI if there is material you want to put out into the world for anyone to use without restrictions (i.e. you don't want to hold on to any rights, such as attribution/reproduction/distribution, or set restrictions on how others can exercise those rights such as the non-commercial clause), then you can declare your work to be Public Domain—in some jursidictions this isn't allowed, so you can instead waive all rights reserved by copyright law, which is functionally equivalent. Creative Commons provides CC0 as a tool/legal text to let you do this worldwide and navigate potential legal complexities in some jurisdictions.

I'm going to guess you probably don't live in the US. A significant percent of americans, mostly Evangelical, take the bible as the LITERAL word of God. The Ark Encounter museum has dinosaurs in cages next to the clean and unclean animals. The roman catholic church believes that the Eucharist (wafer and wine) LITERALLY becomes the flesh and blood of Christ through the act of transubstantiation, but no not really, but yes it really does.

'More mother figures!': My favorite recent example of a sort of 'battle mother-figure' is Overwatch's Ana. So interesting to see essentially a 'grandma' who can still hold her own, and help her fellow heroes out.

'More feminine leaders!': -sigh-, I'm reminded of how incredibly one-dimensional two of my female villains are (they fall squarely into 'cold and calculating'). Considering one of them is highly politically motivated, it could be really interesting for them to be presented as highly charismatic personalities!

For things like this I'd refer you to thesaurus... although this one seems to be one of the few exceptions where what you're looking for isn't right at the top of the page. In this case it's confusing ministry(=administration department) with ministry(=functions of the clergy).
If this happens you can usually just scroll down and find the correct meaning there with its synonyms.

An important thing to remember here is that religion serves not only to be a moral code, but also a means of explaining the world and universe around us. Religious texts often have a historical aspect because, to those that follow the faith, that was the history of the world they knew. There'd be nothing wrong with writing a religious text that simply serves to tell people how they should live, but in the context of stories and history, the point gets across a bit better that "Do this, don't do this".

If you want to look more into the religious texts of the world here are some lists to get you started.

Yes ! It's "Timeline"... http://thetimelineproj.sourceforge.net/index.html here is a link to the site where you can get it, its free, very easy to use and under general public licence, and its the only one that fatisfy me but its a bit limited and if someone have a good alternative it can be great !

Places in the US like Michigan and Ohio get a little warmer than that and almost as cold. I'm sure places in Canada just to the north do.

You'll definitely need to have a tilt like u/corgipitbull said and you can have it get huge dumps of snow and blizzards thanks to the Lake Effect from the Great Lakes.
These states are also right in the path of the jet stream which in your world could easily bend to include this area and bring down freezing winds from the polar regions.

Hey, thanks for your interesting questions!

• Yes, you can format your text using markdown formatting (the same concept reddit uses)
• I agree with your point of view on client-side encryption
• Thoughtplan is just a hobby for me at the moment. If the need arises to monetize (or there is serious revenue potential) I would be looking towards freemium models. I don't see any place for ads in Thoughtplan
• I am testing against the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari and I am aiming to be compatible with all modern browsers, so that includes Microsoft Edge as well. There is no mobile support at the moment but it's something I hope to add at some point
• You can nest (as you said) by Section > Document > Item. You can also create teams which can serve as an additional nesting layer (Team > Section > Document > Item). Sections are optional
• You cannot upload documents at the moment. Are you thinking of importing existing documents or just uploading other types of documents for storage?

You can try OpenLayers, which is what OpenStreetMap uses. It doesn't create the image files for you, of course, but it does allow for Google Maps-style web interface. Setting it up for a single image file is fairly easy - if you want to optimise it for multiple zoom levels, it takes a bit of tinkering.

Depending on your skill or desire, you can use TileMill to create a slippery map which you can upload to a website. That's what I did for my RPG games and it was pretty popular. And it let us update the map with markers (well, Google Maps let us do that).

As an artist, I’m just going to say that all of these are red flags as far as commissions go. I wouldn’t take OP as a client. An ideal client is “I want something that creates this specific vibe, but I want your creative interpretation”. That’s a good Client. The client who says “I have the perfect vision of the finished product, I just lack the SKILLS to realize it” is an expensive client, and a big waste of time.

If OP wants to create nice looking character designs and environments, while having zero skills, I recommend artbreeder.com

Don't know if you've seen it, but /u/mountainousbreakfast posted this recently. Great tool for mapping star systems.

As others have said, Space Engine is pretty awesome. It's got a whole bunch of real stars in it from loads of real world star catalogues. You can fiddle around with some settings and have SE only display real/known celestial objects if you like (objects with prefixes like RS, RSC, RN, RG followed by a long number are randomly generated). Real star systems have real planets if they are known, but are otherwise populated procedurally. You can easily determine the distance between any two celestial bodies. You can also edit and make planets/stars should you so wish.

EDIT: I should add that I don't personally think that SE is a great way to actually map stuff out, IFoS is better for that IMO. It is a good way to explore the known (and unknown) universe and find distances to stuff though.

On the world of Psycho-B-Gone, a theme song is more of a diegetic sound than it is on most worlds. Most heroes have one, which generally flares in the background when they're doing something important. The Five-Man Band have a few which have latched onto the heroes like remoras and are refusing to let go.

Nikita Malikov has her own theme song, or rather a short motif. It's meant to be in the style of Russian hard bass, though I certainly haven't made it what it sounds like in my head.

Mina Harker, as a form of parody of the classical vampire (think Lady Margolotta from Discworld, though a little more serious and heroic), enters a room to the sound of Bach's Toccata and Fugue.

Harry Colter, as a gunslinger of y'ore, has a bewildering variety of low, slow acoustic guitar music accompanying him. It's never the same music twice, unless it's a known piece like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly which often pops up during Mexican standoffs (and which he really dislikes because he thinks it's overdone).

Paladin, as a pastor and power-armoured knight, particularly likes Sabaton songs.

HAL-9000, as a rehabilitated artificial intelligence with probably too much power over orbital bombardment systems, has a Spotify playlist of robot songs that they like to listen to while they work. It includes nearly the entire soundtrack of The Imitation Game.

Especially interesting because vertebrates possibly derived from a tunicate-like ancestor that abandoned its sedentary form! The argument is that free-swimming chordates derived from a tunicate-like ancestor that developed paedomorphosis; they simply retained their larval form into adulthood.