#world building tools

[felstar-emporium]

Where Worlds Lie Update out now!!!

In addition to map generation, we now have mechanics to add character and statistics to your kingdoms and settlements!! I also added a table of contents that reveals my goals for the full project :>

The next chapter I am going to explore is Culture and how to build your own in the fantasy kingdom you’ve developed :3 there will of course be randomization mechanics to make it fun and silly. Stick around to check it out!!

A Fantasy World Building TTRPG

[a-productive-manor]

It’s neither here, nor there, which is to say, it’s Wednesday. 

Don’t let your fictional world be like Wednesday. Here are some prompts to help you think about what is and isn’t here (or there, as the case may be).

Worldbuilding Prompts:

1. In your story, what is the single most important natural resource? How is it obtained? What is it used for? How prominent is it in your narrative?

2. Is there magic? Where does it come from, and what are its range and costs? What impacts does it have on your story and characters?

3. How does your world differ physically from Earth? What is its shape, mass, chemical constitution? What is the calendrical cycle like? What about the seasons? Which of these aspects are important to your story?

4. What is the sociopolitical configuration and forces that are most important for your narrative? Which ones does your story center, and what does it leave in the background?

5. Are there non-human sentient beings? If so, what are their biologies and physical appearances? What makes them distinct? Do these distinctions matter socially?

6. Languages! Is your world monolingual or multilingual?  Is there a lingua franca, and if so, whose is it? Is there language loss? How does language (and communication more broadly) come to play into your story?

7. What are the most important cultural customs your story deals with? Where do these customs come from, and have they changed their meaning over time?

8. What do people eat? What does it tell us about your world? Are there food restrictions or foods that, while edible, are not eaten for symbolic reasons? How does food factor into your narrative? 

9. Love and marriage: is it a thing? What are romantic relations like across the board (if there are any)? What are family units like? How are children raised?

10. Religion & Divinity. What religious beliefs and practices exist in your story? What are their tenets? What role do their play in the narrative?

[minty-creations]

Hi, this is a notebook made to help you build and document worlds. It has a map, a notebook, and a relationship tree.

Guess what everyone? I went missing for a month because its finally reached MVP status! All that work I did on that pretty frontend? Scrapped, it became boggy.

Now it looks ugly. This is because I learned that trying to deal with color too early results in slowing down and bike shedding

I ended up using deployd and react to actually get it done. I'm using superagent to make the restful calls. Everything is styled via style tags. And another project known as notebook.ai does everything it does and better, except for the map. And I learned this just after rushing through it to get it done in time for bookcon.

And you know what? I'm still proud of it. People have told me to be proud of it. People are giving me suggestions on how to improve it and make it different and better for my intended audiences.

When I come back to this project, I'm definitely converting the style tags to CSS in some way. I'm also probably going to swap deployd out for something that uses postgres instead of mongodb. I'm looking at expressa and liking what I'm seeing. I'm also probably going to work it so that more of the components use the mobx store instead of having five million random restful calls.

You can view the frontend code here . The tests are useless and fail due to how much I changed everything after trying to write my initial tests without thinking about how react-router works.

But the MVP has been reached.

[minty-creations]

So, today my designs got accused of being "Cheap rookie work". I took offense to that, and ended up redesigning the entire desktop design. Now everything is one column at every size. I actually like the change. I took inspiration from the mobile twitter site while making my changes.

Now my next big challenge is figuring out how best to add pages for adding new stuff. Namely...

Adding new worlds

Adding new tiles

Adding new people

Adding new items

Where to include "Add new whatevers"

Find a way to differentiate them

I'm considering changing the search button to a notebook, having a search functionality inside that page, and having "Add New Whatever" inside that tab.

I'm also reconsidering redesigning the Search page to be more similar to the Worlds page.

[writingwritersgroup-blog]

World Building Tools – The Fictorians

While not all of these tools are free, there were some really interesting tools on here to organize, randomly generate, and to visualize your world as you build it! Take a look.