Trivia Goddess

Hello there, call me Vivi. I'm sometimes a beta, sometimes a writer, and always a mess. 30 year old white cisbi gray ace female, she/her. Icon by flatlinesunrelenting.

[shinobicyrus]

More DnD Worldbuilding

A continuation of this

Rebel wizards leaking open-source spellbooks for free to spellcasters that can’t afford to join the elite magic schools

I don’t know if there’s free press in Faerûn but there are bards that will spread catchy songs about asshole nobles trampling on half-orc rights

A gnome-run toy shop that sells kits for kids to learn to build their own cool, animate clockword toys

Wood Elves that grew up in a city and have never seen a tree in their lives, but are really good and blending into urban environments

Genasi tattoo artists: because not being born with kickass skin markings shouldn’t preclude you from getting some

Races with natural darkvision having the same eyeshine as nocturnal animals

Dragonborn and Kobolds speaking in gender-neutral Common because they have trouble spotting gender cues of the non-reptillian races

A network of druids, clerics, and diviners acting as an early warning system for storms, earthquakes, and floods days or weeks in advance

With humans able to intermingle with elves, orcs, dwarves, fiends, djinn, and the occasional kinky dragon, family trees and census paperwork must be a nightmare to sort through.

(’Please check any non-human ancestry within 1-5 generations:’ “YES”)

A wizard-tailor using mage hand to take measurements, mend to fix tears, and transmutation to change fabric colors and materials

Familiars serving as support and guide animals

Mage-heavy cities utilzing conjuration and transmutation to make post-scarcity societies

A troupe of Kenku performers using their natural sound mimcry to put on high-production plays, musicals, and puppet shows

Druid-run animal shelters

First day of class, a teacher terrifies some freshman by drawing a sword -but wait he’s…putting it on a pedestal up front? Oh, that’s Professor Eversharp Darkrender, a 1,200 year old sentient blade who has personally impaled three of the historical figures that will be covered in this course.

[shinobicyrus]

Random DnD Worldbuilding

Male tieflings wearing skirts because having custom pants tailored to accommodate their tails is too much of a hassle

Firefighter clerics, wizards, and druids

(and the apologetic sorcerer that probably started the fire by mistake)

Young, forty-something dwarves joining druid circles and protesting the damage their clan mining does on the environment

Everyone gives up trying to categorize sexuality when a half-elf can bring their cute dragonborn boyfriend home to meet their family

Human kids having an awesome bearded dwarf vodka-aunt that adventured with a great-grandparent decades ago and gives the best presents

Ok but there are several disciplines of magic that let you bring people back from the dead wtf

Young punk elves barely in their 80s but yelling at humans “Check yourself knave I made out with your grandma before she even had your Da.”

Wizards for Familiar Rights

Spellcasters using ‘alter self’ and switch genders at will

A giant half-Orc mom adopting street kids and giving them shoulder rides

A normal human whose sibling was born a tiefling beating up village kids who mistreat them

Integrated cities made to accommodate smaller folk like halflings and gnomes

Would alchemists be the ones to concoct magic medications for psych disorders? Are divination clerics and wizards psychologists?

Convoluted age laws because a half-orc is an adult at 15 but an elf isn’t considered of-age until their first century.

Maybe democracies aren’t a thing in Faerûn because all you’d need is a few necromancers to literally have dead people voting

Bard rock bands

[wondrousworldbuilding]

I will continue to build upon this list as time goes on. For now, I hope you find something useful!

Worldbuilding Prompt of the Day Tag

Brainstorming Series Posts

Magic Systems, Part One

Magic Systems, Part Two 

New Species

New Worlds 

New Cultures 

New Civilizations

Politics and Government 

Map Making 

Belief Systems & Religion

Guilds, Factions, Groups

War & Conflict

Species/Races

Creating long-lived species

Evolution of sexual reproduction in fictional species

Writing in a world without humans

Developing Fantastic Races (Link)

Creating Realistic Aliens and Their Worlds (Link)

Language

Languaging

Handling “Foreign” Language Within the Narrative

Developing Ancient Languages

Astronomy/Planetary Physics

Multiple Moons Effect on Planet

Controlling the Biomes on your World (with Science!)

Controlling the Gravity on your World (also with Science!)

Giving Your World Fantastic Skies (Link)

Why Tatooine is Plausible: Orbitary Mechanics of Binary Star Systems (Link)

What if Earth Had Two Moons?

Geology/Land

Map Making Photoshop Brush Set

How to develop a country when you don’t know where to start

Useful Geography Descriptors 

Creating a World with Realistic Terrain

Forest types (aesthetic)

Laying out Villages and Towns

General Worldbuilding

Tips and Ideas for Writing Post-Apocalypse

Words for sections within a city

Using Characters as Worldbuilding Tools

Creating Unique Cultures

Prioritizing Worldbuilding Details In the Narrative

Filling in the Details

Worldbuilding when there’s no “world” present

Weaving in the Details (Link)

Creating Realistic Cultures (Link)

Being a God of Your Own World (Link)

How to Create a Fantasy World (Link)

Worldbuilding/Writing Quotes Tag

Random

My personal writing playlist

Writing Pregnancy, Labor, and Birth (Link)

Using Indexes and Guides in your Novel

Writing in Multiple Points of View

How to Edit Your Own Writing (Link)

The Ultimate Guide to Worldbuilding (Link)

Avoiding Deus Ex Machina

Helpful Generators 

Vulgar - Conlang generator

City Generator

Seventh Sanctum - expansive SpecFic generator

Deity Generator

Guild/Clan name generator

Planet name generator

Random map generator

More personalized map generator

[elumish]

Either explain it or don’t.

When authors include things that don’t fit within the real world–magic, time travel, anachronisms–there is an impulse to explain how it works. Which can be fantastic for worldbuilding, but if you don’t know what you’re talking about, it can make more problems than it solves.

Stephenie Meyer tried to explain some bizarre thing about chromosomes, and it made the biology of vampires and werewolves make no sense. Suspending disbelief worked better in that case before she tried to ground it in the real world.

Lemony Snicket, on the other hand, just has random anachronisms that are never explained, but because there’s nothing even close to resembling an attempt at an explanation, we can just shrug and go, okay, that’s how it works. The magic in Harry Potter seems to basically not be grounded in anything, but we can believe it within the context of the story because she doesn’t try to ground it in anything.

In Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera, on the other hand, he goes into a lot of magic theory, and it gives us a strong feeling of worldbuilding. There’s enough logically coherent explanation for it to feel grounded within itself.

It is possible to go too far (see: Orson Scott Card’s Xenocide and Children of the Mind) where the plot ends up so tied in the reader understanding intricately detailed scientific and pseudo-scientific minutiae that the story is incomprehensible without it.

Generally, though, if you’re going to make something up, either say it exists and leave it at that, or entirely figure out how it works. Halfway is always less believable than nothing at all.

[firebirdeternal]

Jim Butcher’s other series, the Dresden Files is another good example of internally consistent explanations. 

[firebirdeternal]

You know what’s more fun than worldbuilding that makes some fantasy races EEEEVIIIIIIILLLLL!!!!? Worldbuilding that gives the different races cultural differences that help explain why there’s a lot of conflict between them:

Goblin culture doesn’t have a concept of “Property”. A stick on the ground and a tool in a locked shed are equally up for grabs if a thing needs doing. They casually take and leave things all over their communities, eat from communal pots, and genuinely Do Not Understand why the Core Races are so Angry and prone to Violence all the time.

Consequently Goblins who live near Core communities develop a reputation as “Thieves” despite not even having a *word* for that. (The closest word they have is more like “Greedy” and it means a person that hides things so nobody else can use them, and it’s a surefire fight-starter to call a Goblin that)

Common Orc Spiritual beliefs hold that a Soul can only grow stronger by overcoming Challenges in life, and see intruding on another person’s Challenge unasked for as not just Rude, but Deeply Harmful. You’re Stealing their chance to Grow. Asking for help is deeply personal and doing so can be both a way to grow closer with them or a too-personal intrusion, depending on your existing relationship with them. An exception is Children, as far as most Orcs are concerned, all Children are fundamentally the responsibility of the Whole Community, regardless of whose child they are, or even if said child is an Orc at *all*.

This means that Orcs who live near Core neighbors often seem Rude and Standoffish if not outright hostile, because they neither ask for nor offer aid even in times of trouble, and respond to unasked for aid themselves with Anger. There are even rumors that they Steal Children, because if an Orc finds a child lost in the woods they’re pretty much immediately going to start feeding it, and if they can’t find where to bring it back to, or it doesn’t seem to be well cared for, they’re just gonna keep it. 

[crazy-pages]

This. I like this.

[dimir-charmer]

Sometimes worldbuilding is “this is how the dread armies are affecting agricultural output in this region, and the changing influence of the different gods as farmers see their crops collapse, and the erosion caused by fewer crops is turning the river silty and hard to navigate, causing difficulties in trade that would have alleviated the effects of the famine" 

 And sometimes worldbuilding is “the guards here are mostly lightning wizards because imagine how fucking sick it would be to have a bunch of guards shooting lighting down from the battlements. Badass.”

[disteal]

I love how this website is so surly and disinterested in the neo-internet content experience that every feature imported from twitter/insta/whatever is met with an indignant fury like the French being told they cant smoke on a bus and setting the town hall on fire in protest

[frankenmouse]

The only content I want to see is content I opted into and the only order I want to see it in is chronological.

[alphafemalecarla]

When I write three sentences on my WIP:

[gay-irl]

Gay_irl

[officialgaryoak]

[meangirlnurse]

shlep is one of the best yiddish words and we don’t talk about it enough

[meangirlnurse]

there’s no other word that specifically means 1) i am going somewhere, 2) it is a long and not very pleasant journey and 3) i am complaining about it

[amy-vic]

genuine question, because I have apparently(???) been using this word incorrectly this whole time: does it/can it not also mean, "I will be going there, and also carrying A Bunch Of Stuff?" As in, "I'm spending the night at their house, but I won't have time to come home after work, so now I gotta schlep all my stuff there and leave it in the back room until the end of shift?"

I have never heard this term used without Items Being Involved. You mean to say that one can schlep without having an armload of stuff? Or a giant backpack or something?

[keshetchai]

You can also be hauling stuff as part of the schlep

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

I feel like a schlep is always a haul, it’s just that sometimes the only thing you’re hauling is yourself.

[raccoonwarlock]

Huh. I always thought schlep meant "an unkempt person"

[keshetchai]

That's a schlub! Sounds similar to shelp.

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

Sometimes you feel like a schlub because you got schmutz all over your shirt, and you were already shvitzing to begin with, so now it just looks like you're walking around in an old schmatte, and you can't possibly go to schul like this, so you'll have to schlep yourself home before shabbos and hope the journey doesn't make you too schluffy.

[pointnclick]

does anyone else remember grass. the warmth of the sun

[pointnclick]

winter makes me feel like the guys at the of the lotr. do you remember the taste of strawberries mr. frodo

[livedinthecastle]

some of y’all with printed copies of fanfiction are going to die someday and your books will end up at the secondhand book shop and someone is just going to innocently pick up blorbo/shitto enemies to lovers and when i think of it this way let’s keep printing fanfiction

[turnaboutstevie]

weatherboy (derogatory)

[duskbcys-deactivated20221016]

op what does this mean

[turnaboutstevie]

wouldn't you like to know weatherboy

[wizardpotions]

bisexuals can cast fireball

[official-cisphobe]

people's misconception about neurodivergency is a huge part of why a lot of people are surprised and even defensive when they learn things like epilepsy, Tourette's, schizophrenia, and ocd make you neurodivergent.

neurodivergency ISN'T "autism and things that are similar". autism and ADHD aren't the standard for being neurodivergent.

[hhawkeye]

currently thinking about: this photo of richard sandells kissing the eros statue in piccadilly circus as part of an outrage kiss-in protest against the prosecution of gay people showing affection in public.

[nodudeshutup]

love the phrase 'methinks'. me does think. thinketh me do.

[nodudeshutup]

YOU