Ever since I was a kid, I thought planetary rings were cool, and whenever I scribbled a non-specific alien planet I would give it rings. Lately I have been worldbuilding for a story, and naturally I gave the world rings. But since I made that decision, I've paid more attention to rings in other sci-fi I watch.

There's a lot of sci-fi planets out there with their own Saturn-esque rings. Very often it's just there for the vibes. In the opening to Rogue One, for instance, Galen Erso's farm is on a planet with rings, but this doesn't really come up or affect the plot in any way. I forgot this until I recently rewatched the movie. Similarly in the Foundation series on Apple TV+, even though the protagonist is from an ocean planet with rings (that are beautifully rendered), the rings never really come up. The endless ocean ends up driving both plot points in the show and the superstitious culture of the people who live there, but the ring does not. Maybe this is discussed more in the Foundation books but I'm not familiar with those.

Sometimes rings end up being plot relevant, like in Alien Romulus, where instead of being set dressing, the rings are an obstacle that can cause the space station to crash. Still, the rings don't directly impact the planet or the people who live there. The thing that more directly affects the colonists' lives is the atmosphere blocking the sunlight instead.

What really got me thinking was when I saw this Sci-Show video a few months ago about research that Earth possibly had rings about 450 million years ago. The rings lowered the overall global temperature and caused more extreme summers and winters due to light reflecting off of them. This made me realize rings can add quite a lot to the actual worldbuilding, since besides from the obvious cultural impact on any humanoid life, it can cause big environmental changes as well. This is pretty obvious when you consider how The Moon can do many things that affect life on Earth such as the tides.

Of course there's nothing wrong with stories hand waving away these types of questions, but it's interesting when stories like Three Body Problem take these tropes like living in a multi-star system and consider how that would mess with the people living there.

Astronomy nerds and sci-fi fans of Tildes, are there any other interesting ways rings would affect life on a planet?

Let's Talk Worldbuilding!

I really enjoyed doing this on the other site, so I'm bringing it here: Let's discuss the fictional worlds you've created! Share the worlds you've built in your notes, writing, art, or wherever you develop your ideas.

What is Worldbuilding?

For those new to the concept, worldbuilding is the art of constructing a fictional world. This involves creating people, places, concepts, magic systems, technologies, creatures, histories – anything you can imagine. You then assemble these elements into a cohesive whole that can serve as a setting for stories, art, games, or any other creative project.

If you already have a world, please introduce it in the comments! Ask questions about other users' worlds in the replies. This allows everyone to share their creations and potentially even get new ideas through discussion. You might even get a question you haven't considered before, which can actively help you develop your world further!

If you're interested in worldbuilding but haven't started, feel free to participate in the discussion! Maybe you'll be inspired to create your own world. You can create anything you like, incorporating elements you find compelling, interesting, cool, or even funny – it's entirely up to you!

If you have artwork related to your world, please share it! We'd love to see it.

I set myself up a bit of a challenge to get myself back in the spirit of writing. The past couple of days yielded 3.5K words and I know I can keep it going. Point is, a long time ago, I made up this huge pantheon of forty god-like figures, collectively named as "the Archonians", but in my haste to create, I don't really know what they do. That's where you come in. Chose an Archonian from the forty and I'll come up with something and write about it here in the comments. The Archonians have their own subdivisions (as seen at the top) to firmly state a semblance of some organization. The table list thing is down below.

Note: Bolded names beneath the Archonian nomenclature are already done/commented on.

Sorry if this is not the right place to post this.

I'm interested in a book about game development for the creation of world's, topics I'd like to see covered are:

• L-System
• Scene generator
• Fractal landscape

Is anyone aware of any material that may help me learn about the implementation of said topics. They don't need to be fully automated like a scene generator. Understanding immersion would also be important.

And perhaps while I'm at it if you have any favourite game development books I'd love to know them.

What tools do you use to make maps for your table?

I've tried looking and I have found a few decent generators, but I'm really looking for a making tool I already have a general layout in my head of what the city/region/continent but I can't draw for shit, and I want to find a tool that makes this easy? Makes it look nice, makes it easy to add points of interest and features, etc.

What do you use?

Edit: for clarification, this is for city/region maps, not battlemaps.

There's a popular trend on Reddit at the moment that they're struggling to engage with. The idea is that someone will post the question

"Ask me anything about my world"

And this does two things. It gives them an opportunity to show off their setting, and more importantly it gives them a prompt. Someone may ask a question you don't have an answer to, so you're supposed to come up with one. Doing this enough will help you flesh out your world in ways you may not have considered on your own.

I think the reason this is failing on Reddit is because there are a dozen people jumping on the bandwagon and filling the RPG subs with spam, which is causing other members to lash out at them out of fatigue.

I think we here on Tildes could probably handle it a little better, and it would be better served as a single thread. Top level comments are for asking questions, and then anyone is welcome to reply to those with their answers. By sharing the same pool of questions this will allow us to compare and contrast our worlds with our friends here and maybe help spur on the creative juices.

Hi there,

I enjoy writing! I find all formats fun to play with from short stories to screenplays. One thing I've never really written for is video games. I love the idea though. All the world building, lore notes, dialogue, weapon descriptions, codecs, bestiaries and on and on. There's all sorts of ways to tell a story through a video game and I want to try my hand at it!

Problem being though, I'm not particularly interested in game design. I'm not NOT interested, but it's not where my passion is. I am willing to learn what I need to, so don't shy away from suggestions that would require me to learn some on the design side.

Really the only ideas I've come up with are using the mod creator in Neverwinter Nights 1/2 or something like RPG Maker? Are these overwhelmingly difficult to get started in? Could I write in all the things I mentioned from dialogue to weapon descriptions?

Or perhaps trying to find someone NOT interested in the storytelling side? Someone who wants to focus on design but would love some storytelling in their project and would welcome the addition?

Or even starting with TTRPG modules maybe. Video Games and TTRPG modules seem to have some similar storytelling elements.

Does anyone in the profession have thoughts? Does anyone not in the profession have thoughts?

anyways, bye love you

I'm starting a new campaign soon and I plan to create a homebrew setting and story like I've done in the past. I've used a combination of Google Docs, Evernote, and other general purpose tools for other settings and campaigns. Does anyone use something like World Anvil or Legend Keeper? Something else?

I'm still in the brainstorming stage of world building, and I'd like a place to collect my thoughts and plans. Ideally I'd be able to easily convert that into something searchable and updateable when it's time to actually play in the setting.

Do you use a single tool for creating maps, NPCs, plot points, history, and adventures? Or do you have a suite of tools you find works well to cover all those aspects?

People often propose the question of if you were trapped in a video game world which would be best, but which one would be the absolute worst possible one. Really think about it too cause like being in like a zombie apocalypse or under a brutal dictatorship would be bad, but it could definitely get worse.

For example, Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett has forever changed how I roleplay dragons.

I'm going on a camping trip soon. I've loaded up my eReader with books from Appendix N and am looking for other grist for the mill. Mainly looking for books at the moment, but feel free to suggest other things.

Stories involving dragons tend to be in medieval periods so maybe we can try to extrapolate forward in time a bit. Dragons could be from any mythologies or fictions of your fancy!

For my take, a dragon is a flying fire-breathing giant lizard with the size and toughness of a big building. I believe a critical factor is how tamable dragons are. If not at all, they'd go from something humans fear and run away from, then being hunted for glory and materials, then being protected in conservation areas to prevent going extinct. If they can be fully domesticated (like dogs), they could expedite for warfare, transportation and industrialized metalwork. The most interesting scenario imo is the in-between where they could only be partially trained. Maybe a skilled trainer can get them to behave 80% of the time but there's a low but significant chance that they get agitated and wreck havoc. How do we make use of them while ensuring safety and intervenability?

On the cultural side, we might not have as many myths and legends about dragons anymore. We might find the idea of giant flying fire creatures utterly mundane (phoenixes might be less interesting by relation even if they still don't exist in this universe). What would we mythologize about instead?

This is for worldbuilding purposes. I'm not exactly a "science dude", so I'd like to get a better idea of our solar system and beyond, preferably with links to layman-friendly explanations on things like:

• distances and travel time not only having Earth as a starting point, but from any given point to another
  • if at all possible, including hypothetical alien and/or future technologies
• Earth-like planets
• locations that might be able to sustain life, and which kind of life it could sustain
• locations that, while unsuitable to carbon-based life, might receive enough energy to sustain artificial intelligence

I remember there's some kind of simulator or engine, that can run on a computer... anyone remembers the name? And would it run on an aging laptop with an i5 processor and Intel HD4400 integrated graphics?

Thanks!

EDIT: I guess I'll make this question a bit more approachable, so... what are some YouTube channels that can teach me more the basics of our solar system, nearby systems, the Milky Way, and how all of those are linked together?.

(Only took me 2 months /s). Also this map is by no means a complete list.

Santa-pocalypse: What if santa was (a tiny bit more) realistic?

A timeline where Santa delivers his presents via quantum tunneling and due to a failure in this device, he causes a nuclear explosion when he accelerates to relativistic speeds in order to gift Children worldwide. Given nuclear fusion doesn't work like that and the Shockwave travels westward counterclockwise, I disagree with the notion this is realistic, but that's pedantry.

What the fuck: The Timeline

Someone mashed dozens of fictitious worlds and the real world at different times to make a very weird and high-effiry map.

Industrialized, colonial, imperial China

A timeline where the Ming is an expansionist empire and puppets nearly half of the world's population. Given China has been as large and populous as entire continents at times, the fact that China had so much the leadership felt they could be self-sufficient and refuse to try to expand until like, 10 years ago, I find this scenario something that could totally have happened but didn't due to disinterested leadership.

What if the new world didn't exist?

A world where columbus is right about Geography and the Americas don't exist. While I don't think it's particularly realistic, I find this scenario underrated.

A grim, dark rainbow: What if the current rightwards shift of politics doesn't stop?

What it says on the title. Not particularly realistic given the CCP and NATO apparently collapse, but I like to use this map as a stand-in for the worst-case scenario of the near-future.

The dragon in shackles: Qing China and Japan in 1932

A timeline where Qing China re-unifies China, but at large costs to their economy, independence, infrastructure and territory.

Flavo et purpura: A world in which Islam never leaves Arabia Ca 800 AD

A very detailed map with quite a few differences from what happened IRL. Far more romanized.

Spain if the re*conquista continued into North Africa

A timeline where the Spanish conquer the Western half of the Maghreb. The justificarion is that Pre-columbian empires ally themselves to other European nations to not be colonized by Spain, so the Spanish focus their imperialist efforts into neighboring Morocco. Obviously not very realistic, but the maps are cool.

Fictitious maps based on real data:

The world divided into 200 areas of equal population

What it says in the title.

It's a simple question, or is it? How would you measure best? Complexity? Realism? Creativity? Detail?

I think it's fairly obvious that Tolkien has set the gold standard of all worldbuilding, but more recent authors like GRRM, Brandon Sanderson and JKR or the late Terry Pratchett have also created beloved worlds.

Some, like GRRM, are apparently more interested in complex worldbuilding itself rather than finishing their novels while others like JKR use the worlds more as a window dressing without keeping it fairly consistent. Is it alright if the Wizarding World is inconsistent if it serves the plot? How complex can Westeros become before it gets in the way of the story?

I think that GRRM and JKR are both extremes on the spectrum. When reading The Song of Ice and Fire, I felt like GRRM needed a proper editor to reign him in while JKR managed to build a fantastical world in 7 books which, upon closer inspection, makes no sense. On the other hand you have Terry Pratchett, who with the Discworld was clearly more interested in creating a parody of the real world, but still managed to make it very interesting and unique.

Thoughts?