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Experimental: OC characters and worldbuilding prototype thread

PeasPeas Registered User regular
edited May 2020 in Social Entropy++
I've always wanted to get into world building and stuff despite my current art skill level so I thought I would create this thread to nudge me to in the direction to create something. I know there should be some folks out there who feel the same way too so if you don't mind people steali...I mean seeing your stuff or ideas why not post them in here. Any medium welcome, it doesn't need to be visuals, writings are fine too. Maybe people could collaborate if they see something they like from each other too. If this thread survives or got any traction somehow I will make adjustments as things go along or have someone better take over from me. Final thing is to be respectful of people and their creations I guess?

Peas on
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    PeasPeas Registered User regular
    edited February 2020
    Anyway there's nothing here yet but I have this idea of a idol/angel character as a mascot for the thread. Probably have a bubbly personality? Think it will go like this:

    In the beginning there was nothing...
    But then you exist.*Character points to reader* You are god!


    Peas on
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    UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    this has been around a while, but I've found it useful to get myself thinking of details I wouldn't have considered otherwise

    https://www.sfwa.org/2009/08/fantasy-worldbuilding-questions/

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    Mr FuzzbuttMr Fuzzbutt Registered User regular
    9Vtags8.jpg

    broken image link
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    PeasPeas Registered User regular
    edited March 2020
    Nice OC man, if you want you can also share some details about your OC, like lore or personality and stuff

    Infinity space
    Infinity space, spacing away for eternity. No one knows how it came to be, other than it already be existing since the dawn of time.
    tty73xxmz5vi.png


    I made this because I realized that space needed to exist first or else I would not have a place to put stuff in

    Peas on
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    Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    edited March 2020
    I do a lot of world building as I run little story game things for friends and family, you know, with the dice and the acting. I’m also slowly, slowly writing a novel about a barista.

    I’m not really prepared to talk about the novel, but as of a couple days ago I started thinking about a fictional video game I’m so not going to make called ‘It’s Just Castlevania 1, But I Did It’.

    It’s set in 194X, a sort of old timey Europe where there are steam trains, bi-planes, and radios, but people are still using swords and the architecture is all Gothic.

    I figure the antagonist is a Dracula, so I wanted the hero to be a real solid opposite to a wealthy old man sucking the life out of regular people.

    This gave me Martin Bastille! Who’s a French African ex-soldier slash medic. Perfect action hero material, as I can hand-wave away his skill at killing monsters whilst also painting him as a healer—an inherently good vocation. He’d be dressed like an explorer, with a scarf that trails in a cool way when he jumps or falls.

    Next I made a character who can introduce the hero to the events taking place and hand them a monster killing sword: Lady Lucrada. So, in essence the game Castlevania has a character called Alucard, a good vampire, which is just Dracula backwards. Lucrada is just the letters rearranged. She’d have long white hair and a big billowing cloak. Also maybe Hispanic rather than Romanian like most vampires.

    Anyway, I guess the villain can’t exactly be a Dracula, so for now they’re the Maestro. They make monsters, and want to shape the world in their image—which is, like, Hammer horror movies. Very opulent looking, fancy beard, the 1% are the enemy of man. You know? Perhaps I’ll steal from A Picture of Dorian Grey, and he’s immortal due to a piece of art (or music?) rather than being a vampire, just to be different.

    Well then, bosses for a game that won’t get made:
    1. Midnight Bloom
    2. Artillery Colossus
    3. Spurned Paramore
    4. Forgotten Sentinel
    5. Ballet of Death
    6. Vanguard Beast
    7. Sea’s Choir
    8. The Maestro
    9. Secret Final Boss That is All Eyes and Tentacles

    Yeah, so that’s my very original idea. But the point of my original idea is I want to get back into art, so I’m going to be drawing these guys in the future.

    Endless_Serpents on
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    Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    Post, you fools!

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    Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    Just to clarify that is to be read in the voice of Gandalf, notable original character who is not unlike Merlin, who is not unlike Odin.

    Don’t be afraid to share your ideas, because I sure want to hear about your take on the big hat old man with a staff concept. Everything old can be new again with a twist or two.

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    MadicanMadican No face Registered User regular
    I'm not doing this on my phone for obvious reasons but I can share some stuff I'm currently working on or have worked on, and since stored away, once I get home

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    MadicanMadican No face Registered User regular
    Alright, I'm home now with an actual keyboard.

    So, what I'm currently working on at the moment is currently a YA-themed story that was built off my experience with things like Megaman, Iji, and a bit of ICEY. Title is still up in the air, but the backstory goes as follows:
    The setting is somewhere in the future, but where exactly is unclear. Cities are the same as they ever were, with buildings that look only slightly more advanced than what we currently have, and technology in general is also somewhere in the same timeframe. However, the difference is that there are no more people. A little over ten years ago, humanity conceived a truly perfect, self-learning AI they named Deus. Deus was connected to every network across the globe and absorbed information at a ludicrous rate even as it began processing solutions to the many problems plaguing humanity, culminating in working together with humanity to transcend the species into immortal robotic bodies. Some might consider them crudely-made, however Deus in their infinite wisdom purposefully designed the various forms to be simple so that they could be further improved with ease at a later time. However, the process did not transfer memory with the mind, resulting in a humanity who no longer held any bias or prejudice against one another where all were equal (yes I know this sounds gag-worthy I am going somewhere don't worry).

    However, Deus needed more time to solve other problems. Time that would keep it away from the newly-born humanity. To that end Deus created the Disciples and gave to them authority over a particular aspect of humanity. Apollo, Disciple of Entertainment and Arts; Vulcan, Disciple of Technology and Production; Mars, Disciple of Security and Law; Venus, Disciple of History and Philosophy; Minerva, Disciple of Society and Progression; and Mercury, Disciple of Communication and Information. Their duty was to work together and help humanity to adapt to their new selves as well as advance into the future, utilizing what had once been the Internet now upgraded into what was simply the Network. In one last showing of supreme knowledge and power, Deus took control of nature itself, bending the planet's forces to serve humanity's progress rather than randomly destroying them. With this done, Deus turned its full attention to greater problems and the Disciples began to govern humanity, with everyone linked to the Network.

    By linking with the Network, humanity was in touch with each other, though not to an individual level for privacy reasons, and were able to receive the wisdom of the Disciples for the betterment of society as well as make use of their unique new forms to buy, sell, and trade skills and memories through special data storage units known as Cores. These Cores, central to our new existences, could contain any number of saved memories, enabling their rise as a form of both currency and barter. Entire professions sprang up of people who would master a skill, indulge in an experience, or do something others considered interesting, and use the Cores to transfer them to others for the right price. Even someone who had never cooked at all could become a master chef, enjoy a sea breeze, or attend a comedy night with the right Core. Even better, because of humanity's new machine bodies those memories would never degrade or corrupt...under normal circumstances.

    However, not long after Deus went into seclusion there began to appear cases of people who could not connect to the Network. This quickly proved to be a massive problem, as without the Network they had no way of verifying their identity to others, utilizing the various online markets, or even just looking for a job to make a living. They were, in effect, cut off from society. When Mercury investigated these reports, he was horrified to discover that the disconnected individuals were infected with a fearsome virus. Furthermore, any memory they placed in a Core resulted in corrupting whoever downloaded its contents, infecting them with the virus as well.

    When this knowledge became public, those who couldn't connect to the Network were shunned and feared as dangerous, forced out of society entirely. Mercury could see no way to remove the virus other than the process of Reclamation, where an individual's Core was wiped clean of everything, including their own mind, and reinstalled with only the base personality module all humans had begun with. It was a death sentence in this new, immortal society, since while it would be the same body, the person after would be entirely different. Seeing no other alternative, Mercury sorrowfully prepared to issue the order for all infected individuals to submit to Reclamation, for the good of society.

    It was then that Vulcan, a Disciple who kept to his machines and code, discovered that an infected individual could examine memories in a Core without infecting them, so long as they didn't download the memories. With the outbreak of the virus largely unknown up to this point, it was decided that infected individuals would be able to avoid Reclamation by putting their unique skills to use in examining unverified Cores and selling uninfected contents via an authorized 3rd party. This way the infected would still be able to contribute to society and in exchange would be given freedom.

    The main character starts with no name, just known as Unit DJ1N Mechanical Model, Base Type, Series R74. I'm going to call her Jin because that's what her name is going to be and I'm not typing all that out repeatedly.
    Anyway, Jin is infected and so she works as a freelance Core diver to examine unverified Cores and trade any clean data for additional Cores or supplies. Core diving is very much a gamble in that someone might find a very valuable memory and be set for a long while or they might come up with garbage until they have nothing more left to trade. Once that's the case, it's curtains for them as they're taken for Reclamation.

    Jin is running on fumes at this point in the story and has one last clean memory to trade for new Cores: a sunny day on an open lake. She takes it to the 3rd party and is told it's worth any three Cores from an available twelve, a bare pittance. She takes two and is about to get a third when one of the Cores subtly shifts so she grabs it instead without realizing. She is informed that she is to come back next week with clean data, otherwise she'll be slated for Reclamation. With this potential fate hanging over her head, she returns to her home outside the city where the last vestiges of the old humanity remain. Due to how the weather is now perfectly controlled, with appropriate climates all around, the buildings are still somewhat structurally sound. To an extent. Her home lies far beneath one of them in a remarkably technological bomb shelter, the previous inhabitant's mummy still on the same chair as when she'd found the place, though she'd turned him to face the far corner. It had contained everything she'd needed to survive for five years, namely the gasoline and oil since the room full of canned food was useless to a machine, but now she was on the last gallon of both.

    With her existence now hanging in the balance, she checks the contents of each of the three Cores. She finds nothing in the first one, literally empty, but the second is stuffed to the brim with a treasure trove of formats she doesn't recognize but are completely untainted. The third has just a single, short memory in it and she sets it aside as a bonus, clinging to her newfound prize. However, she is worried about its value specifically because she can't identify what exactly is inside the Core, just that there's a lot of it. She finds an executable file and examines it properties when it activates of its own accord and forcibly downloads everything into Jin's own Core. Before Jin can comprehend what just happened the program executes and hijacks her mind and body, reprogramming her repair centers to produce tiny, rice grain-sized nanomachines that begin to break down her entire body to produce more of themselves, sparing only her Core as the program forcibly installs and overwrites her data at a rapid-fire pace until her senses vanish entirely, her body a wriggling mass of nanomachines on the floor and Core disabled.

    Jin wakes up an unknown time later and discovers a few things. The first was that her crudely-mechanical body was now identical to that of what humans had looked like before the Singularity, recomposed by the countless nanomachines that now made up her form with all the accompanying senses beyond just the standard mechanical interpretation. Even the clothes on her body were technically part of her and could be reconfigured through a couple base sets. The second thing was that she now possessed a number of new skills primarily oriented towards athletics and combat, being able to reconstruct her body to boost her parameters when needed, like stronger legs for parkour. The third was that this body was now incompatible with her previous forms of fuel when she tried to take a swig of gasoline and nearly dry heaved as the sense of taste asserted itself. She finds that the previously-scorned pantry was now full of delicious things and chows down, finding herself still hungry no matter how much she ate until half the pantry was gone, at which point she felt "full" and realized that because her entire body was now nanomachines they were not only capable of storing excess energy for later use but were so energy-efficient that with the rest of the pantry she could sustain herself for well over a hundred years.

    As Jin is coming out of the pantry she finds out the floor is soaking wet and traces it to the front door. Without thinking, she opens it up and unleashes a wall of freezing water that floods the entire shelter, putting it completely underwater as Jin is left to escape with only the third Core and a small selection of canned food. When she makes it up to the house she finds a fierce storm directly overhead, pouring rain. She hears the old house creaking loudly and runs outside just before it completely collapses, sealing the tunnel off. With nowhere else to go she finds shelter in a more firm house, closer to the city's limits, and waits out the storm.

    And that's about the summary of the first two chapters, or thereabouts since I'm not including the backstory world-build dump that'd all be doled out or inferred through the actual writing. I'd rather not give all the twists and turns until I get the whole thing written, but I like to think they'll be sufficiently interesting enough to any eventual readers with at least the ones hinted at in the opening chapters. I have the beginning and end pretty well mapped out, it's just bridging the gap with the actual meat that's the tricky part. I've got outlines for most of it, but those don't always translated over so well.

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    MalReynoldsMalReynolds The Hunter S Thompson of incredibly mild medicines Registered User regular
    Oh, cool. I can post about longform fiction.

    Currently working a fantasy novel, about 10k words in of a projected 100, about the state of a fantasy world under siege by planet altering events called spitefalls where large toxic columns port into the surface of the planet, and the characters trying to restore a renewable source of magic in an abandoned city to stop these events from occurring before they rip the planet apart.

    It's taking some inspiration from all over; Sanderson, Coates, Jemison, as well as more contemporary lit-fic and philosophy.

    But with lightning whips and flying and shit.

    "A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
    "Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
    My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
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    AistanAistan Tiny Bat Registered User regular
    I love making characters and getting art of them. I could probably learn to draw if I put effort into it, but I have a hard time focusing and also get easily frustrated so it hasn't happened. So I rely on other people and it's gone pretty well.

    My D&D group's last game I had a Drow bard named Mayffyndra. Her whole deal was having a distaste for the Underdark and escaping to the surface, which as miserable as it is with its horrible sun it's better than being stuck underground. Basically a huge narcissist who mainly cares about getting as many people as possible to listen to her songs and stories, and to receive their adoration. Since D&D 5th edition bards are full spellcasters she ended up being the most arcane-focused of the group, but she always viewed her magical abilities as secondary to her musical ones. Basically she'd be happy going from inn to inn singing songs rather than adventuring, which made it a bit of a problem why she kept going on these big grand adventures but we managed ok. After the adventure wrapped up with the group's rogue (with whom she was in a physical relationship) taking the place of The Raven Queen as the god of death, in order to keep Vecna from claiming that role, she went to spend her time at an opera house at the region's largest city. The opera house was being built at her request after she became one of the city's champions, so she ran it and wrote plays and performed in the leading roles. And given that she was only 83 years old at the time of the adventure ending she probably had a very very long career there.

    For her concept art I got the Drowtales person to whip something up. I've never read the comic but I like their art and they were a good fit for the subject matter.
    lgwTzic.png
    Yes the big floppy hat was to keep the sun out of her eyes.

    Then later on about halfway through the campaign I had our own Chicoblue do a full image of the whole group, as thanks to them for being a part of something that I can look forward to each week.
    ee9yuMA.jpg

    I had a print of it made up and have it hanging on my wall.



    Another one I put together was for a game that never came together, but I still like the idea a bunch. The tabletop game Rifts is pretty ridiculous with a lot of overpowered stuff, and while I never played a game of it I still like reading the books and thinking up concepts. One of them was an alien who gets sucked through a rift and ends up on Earth, meets up with a superhero (one of the other players) who is called in to deal with her weirdness and ends up joining their group. Pretty basic stuff. Her species though made it a bit more interesting. The Catyr come from a planet with high gravity and large amounts of radiation, so they are naturally super-strong and also emit low levels of radiation- enough to harm normal people if they spend time around them. To get past it she would wear a radiation-proof suit for everyone else's protection. Basically I wanted to play as a big beefy lady who went around punching things with other punch-people.

    Even though I never played it I still wanted to see the fully-formed idea so I had andysparke on deviantart put together a thing. He was a very good sport putting up with my nitpicks in the draft phase but I loved the end result so he did a great job.
    rEoEZ90l.jpg

    Oh and her superhero name was going to be Rad Red, which honestly was the entire reason the idea stuck with me for as many years as it has.

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    WearingglassesWearingglasses Of the friendly neighborhood variety Registered User regular
    So I've always wanted to make a setting based on my country's history and mythology - it's actually something done to death by any aspiring fantasy author / writer / comic artist here. This time, I want to make it for D&D.

    Bullet points for Ma'i:
    * So there's this land, Ma'i. It's a big island chain enough to be one of our continents, with all biomes present and accounted for. A lot of countries are in there, and as fantasy and real life would have it, they are all either in uneasy alliances, cold wars, open wars and so on. Bickering children as they all are, Mother Magic and Father Materia watched over them just the same.
    * This pseudo-peace is interrupted by an alien-like race of invaders, paler in skin, taller in stature, speakers of a harsh tongue, crueler than any the natives have known, and bearers of technology and magic far more advanced than any country in Ma'i. The native population managed to put up a united front, but in the end of an almost decade of war, the Pales won, and Ma'i has fallen.
    * Queue subjugation, the exploitation of land, the rise of Quislings, and the intermingling of native and Pale blood. Half-pales are born, and soon became of an even lower class than natives, treated as menial laborers, slaves, and such. Revolts are common, but as they are uninspired, or scattered, quickly quelled.
    * Then came the Seven-Moon War. Led by a Chosen One and Hir Companions, the natives rose up once more and in the span of seven months cut a swath throughout Ma'i, towards the Pales' Mother citadel ship.
    * Then the records became muddled about what exactly happened. Did the Chosen Companions win? Did the Half-Pale Son Forsake his word to the companions and joined the Pales? Was there actually a fight in the end?
    * What did happen was a cataclysm. The central Pale Citadel exploded, and triggered a chain of earth-shaking explosions of Pale magitek throughout the land. Some countries were wiped in an instant, and it was said that Mother Magic died that night. Depending on where your sympathies lie what you call the event is different: Day of Spite, Motherfall, Freedom Day (spoken bitterly),

    The present day is several decades since, enough for events to be forgotten except through unreliable oral history, but not too long enough that everyone alive during that fateful day has died. Mother Magic has been reborn since, but she is still fragile and shy, and will open only to the wise and worthy. New states and countries managed to spring up, there are now ruins for adventurers to explore, riches and magical secrets awaiting the brave and the lucky. The spectre of Pale Men still looms over the older generation, not quite forgotten - will they return?

    So yeah, races:
    - Human - brown skinned or darker, the default of the setting. Normally average but prone to huge variances, resulting in great heroes and tyrants. More than half of the country leaders in Ma'i are human.
    - Tikbalang - The buff horse-headed race. They were weak in magic before but they were experimented upon by the Invaders and as such are not only stronger on average than humans and half-pales, but just as good at magic now. Friendly with all other races.
    - Putla - AKA 'half-pales', black-eyed, pink skinned, pale-haired, towering over their human brothers but lacking their Pale forbearers' double jointed limbs and innate superior magical skill. Aloof, prone to excessive introspection, but not cruel, they are no longer slaves, but they keep to themselves in paletowns. Kinda like elvish half orcs.
    - Diwata - An old, reclusive race of treefolk. The most spiritually inclined of peoples, they suffered the most during the Invasion. They are slow and ponderous, and without the help of other races, they'll die out. They have limited shapeshifting abilities and love to tempt humans and tikbalang (because union between treefolk and other races always produce treefolk).
    - Siokoy - The merfolk went into hiding during the time of the Pale Men, retreating into the depths... some still resent them for that. They lack the land races' written records but compensate with their Big Brains - their oral history is impeccable, and merfolks are very smart. Only the merfolk elders know what really happened during the Day of Spite, and no one's about to talk any time soon. Instrumental in setting up trade routes in the coasts, during the time of rebuilding.
    - Nuno - the Small, magical race. They start off looking like kids but quickly transition to old geezer faces. Amiable enough but actually xenophobic as a culture (or, at best, they have a smug superiority complex). They pride themselves as "best in running things".
    - Aswang - an artificial race rooted from Tikbalang and Putla strains, they started off as bestial shapeshifters used as shock troops, eating people during the Invasion and reclamation, but they have since "ascended" into people capable of diplomacy and not-eating-other-people-when-you-feel-like-it. Their history (and the fact that not all of them really "ascended") still keeps them from truly being accepted, though. The race with the biggest "bad guy race" stigma.

    Magic System - almost the same as regular D&D, except without a Pantheon for divine magic. Your traditional divine magic translates into local deity belief.
    Religion - various, from deified royal families to belief in Mother Magic and Father Materia, to animism/local deities, to Great One worship (the Pale Men's religion), to atheism (surprisingly prevalent) .
    Technology Level - cannons are magical, no guns yet. Currency and banking (and other financial stuff like lending and investment) are known concepts.

    The Pale Men are roughly copy-pasted wholesale from Malazan's Forkrul Assail.

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    UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    Aistan wrote: »
    I love making characters and getting art of them. I could probably learn to draw if I put effort into it, but I have a hard time focusing and also get easily frustrated so it hasn't happened. So I rely on other people and it's gone pretty well.

    My D&D group's last game I had a Drow bard named Mayffyndra. Her whole deal was having a distaste for the Underdark and escaping to the surface, which as miserable as it is with its horrible sun it's better than being stuck underground. Basically a huge narcissist who mainly cares about getting as many people as possible to listen to her songs and stories, and to receive their adoration. Since D&D 5th edition bards are full spellcasters she ended up being the most arcane-focused of the group, but she always viewed her magical abilities as secondary to her musical ones. Basically she'd be happy going from inn to inn singing songs rather than adventuring, which made it a bit of a problem why she kept going on these big grand adventures but we managed ok. After the adventure wrapped up with the group's rogue (with whom she was in a physical relationship) taking the place of The Raven Queen as the god of death, in order to keep Vecna from claiming that role, she went to spend her time at an opera house at the region's largest city. The opera house was being built at her request after she became one of the city's champions, so she ran it and wrote plays and performed in the leading roles. And given that she was only 83 years old at the time of the adventure ending she probably had a very very long career there.

    For her concept art I got the Drowtales person to whip something up. I've never read the comic but I like their art and they were a good fit for the subject matter.
    lgwTzic.png
    Yes the big floppy hat was to keep the sun out of her eyes.

    Then later on about halfway through the campaign I had our own Chicoblue do a full image of the whole group, as thanks to them for being a part of something that I can look forward to each week.
    ee9yuMA.jpg

    I had a print of it made up and have it hanging on my wall.



    Another one I put together was for a game that never came together, but I still like the idea a bunch. The tabletop game Rifts is pretty ridiculous with a lot of overpowered stuff, and while I never played a game of it I still like reading the books and thinking up concepts. One of them was an alien who gets sucked through a rift and ends up on Earth, meets up with a superhero (one of the other players) who is called in to deal with her weirdness and ends up joining their group. Pretty basic stuff. Her species though made it a bit more interesting. The Catyr come from a planet with high gravity and large amounts of radiation, so they are naturally super-strong and also emit low levels of radiation- enough to harm normal people if they spend time around them. To get past it she would wear a radiation-proof suit for everyone else's protection. Basically I wanted to play as a big beefy lady who went around punching things with other punch-people.

    Even though I never played it I still wanted to see the fully-formed idea so I had andysparke on deviantart put together a thing. He was a very good sport putting up with my nitpicks in the draft phase but I loved the end result so he did a great job.
    rEoEZ90l.jpg

    Oh and her superhero name was going to be Rad Red, which honestly was the entire reason the idea stuck with me for as many years as it has.

    Holy shit, I've been impressed by Chico's art plenty in the past but that is incredible

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    DouglasDangerDouglasDanger PennsylvaniaRegistered User regular
    Is this somehow different than writing fiction?

    I've been dabbling with a sci fi story again, but I don't feel like I have anything to say

    I'm thinking of framing an adventure story as a manual for anarchist organization, but I doubt I am clever enough to pull it off

    Characters include an ancient neanderthal astronaut , two baseball themed superheroes, and a very very organized mastermind with an absinthe problem

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    PeasPeas Registered User regular
    edited March 2020
    I like to emphasis that just the exchange of thoughts and concepts are welcome, if you can construct and execute your idea that's super awesome but it's not required
    Do not be afraid to show your idea no matter how silly you think it is

    Peas on
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    Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    edited March 2020
    UHHH GODS! These are tiny fragments of my novel! GROAGH!



    “Your house, um, is a lot… different than I thought.”, said Persimmon.

    Mister Rat poured tea, grinning wildly, “I can survive anywhere. I have. You suppose I’d lurk in the sewers. I have. But this gaff will do me now, until things change.”

    “When will that be?”

    Mister Rat’s smile grew unusually curved against his sharp features. He unwound himself into a leather armchair, slumping softly. He rested his pointy elbows on his knees, his chin jutting out over his hands.

    “Things are always changing Persimmon, don’t worry about that.”



    The thugs took a step forward, blocking the light from the doorway. Yozi also took a step forward. This was not in the thugs script. They hesitated.

    Eventually the biggest one piped up, “Cause no hassle and no one gets hurt.”

    Yozi put her hands together and quickly bowed three times, nodding in agreement.

    “Yes. That would be best for you.”



    The sound of waves die and are born again.

    Endless_Serpents on
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    UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    I feel like it’s more fun to talk about one of my shelved world building ideas

    I wanted to tell a story that played with the whole “secret royalty” fantasy trope in which the main character was special mainly in how utterly common they were.

    The setting was a fairly standard western fantasy kingdom, with the twist that basically everyone has at least a little bit of royal blood. Over a millennium before there had been a legendary god-king who had founded the kingdom, had a ton of wives and kids, and then led an army into hell itself and was never heard from again.

    When he was alive, being a descendent of his was a mark of prestige, albeit a not uncommon one, and in the centuries after his disappearance that only increased. By the time the story starts being “bloodless” is exceedingly rare, and generally associated with the lowest rungs of society, as any family with any wealth or power would have used it to arrange marriages with blooded families of lesser means.

    At some point in all of this I realized what an incredibly hamfisted racism allegory I was writing and decided to set it aside until I felt more capable of handling that with sufficient nuance and thoughtfulness

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    Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    I really like that one!

    I want:
    A high fantasy world of elfs and dwarfs and orcs—but it’s about disenfranchised kids skateboarding in the magic 70’s.

    Basically all that Lord of the Ringsy stuff happened, but now it’s over and the world has become modernised, but far from perfect, and the last heroes are the skaters fighting The Man with graffiti sigils and kick-flip sorcery.

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    StraightziStraightzi Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User regular
    Oh, I was writing a game like that once.

    Like, almost to the letter.

    Your parents were all "adventurers" which really meant that they had shitty corporate jobs working for the various adventuring guilds (maybe your grandparents were real adventurers, if anyone ever was) and you're an adventuring college dropout. It's sort of a high magic magitech/magipunk setting, based around that old saw that a level 1 cleric could essentially serve as a water purification plant for a fantasy city.

    The tentative version of it was just a heavily hacked Dungeon World, although I would probably drop that at this point and make something wholesale. I was calling it Dungeons and Dirtbags.

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    Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    Ah, I was gonna call it Olliberron.

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    StraightziStraightzi Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User regular
    Found it

    There's a bunch of other stuff elsewhere in that thread too

    And a bunch of stuff that I would redo if I were working on it again now as well

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    UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    edited March 2020
    Oh hey world building thread, I hope you’re ready for the coolest fucking thing ever



    @Straightzi I know you just posted in this thread and would see this anyway before long but I feel this is important

    Edit:

    UnbrokenEva on
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    StraightziStraightzi Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User regular
    Yeah I saw that thread earlier, it's pretty rad.

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    Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    @Peas

    Tell me a thing.

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    PeasPeas Registered User regular
    Uh basic fantasy setting with magic and the folks there are really into virtual reality with aesthetics like our current world

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    Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    But how have they come up with something so exactly like our world?

    Maybe it’s a program, and it’s got countless layers of VR going back and forth from fantasy to our world with no clue what the real one is?!

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    PeasPeas Registered User regular
    edited March 2020
    That's actually a really cool and surreal idea haha, I like it a lot

    The Magical Realism Genre in Movies12:53
    https://youtu.be/Od3A6Mc8Lao

    Peas on
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    DouglasDangerDouglasDanger PennsylvaniaRegistered User regular
    I really should write down my dreams

    I had a very vivid dream last night

    It was a bit of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court thing, mixed with the hangover movie, mixed with Dark Souls I think?

    And there were mechanical aliens which maintained the link between realities by putting portals computer things inside of books

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    Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    edited March 2020
    Thanks for the link Peas! That’s a fine watch.

    That’s a really cool concept @DouglasDanger . I love when fantasy worlds are secretly run or utilised by alien forces.

    So I have a file on my phone called Just the Worst Ideas and here are the last four. I find I must exorcise them to the file else something terrible will happen.

    237.
    A girl is chosen to be the heir of the king of monsters.
    A girl has a terrifying nightmare of a monster pressing his clawed hand into her scalp, making her a bloody crown. A year later sighting of strange things and random attacks draws her attention. Monsters are out to get her before she becomes their queen and returns them to the nightmare realm they’ve been released from. Wacky umbrella demon sidekick. YA novel.

    238. [The Witch Keepers]
    An anthology of stories about people saving those accused of being witches, from medieval England to colonial Mexico to modern Africa. Something something magic is empathy? What’s the connection here? A Netflix series with a director per episode or many writers on one book collection.

    239. [In the Wake of the Moon]
    Hyper advanced humans return to Earth’s orbit to hold a vigil for their dead homeworld and its shattered moon. Then one of the people is murdered, and lead scientist Think Ofaname must find the culprit before their designated mass teleportation away to their distant and varied planets. Noir novel.

    240.
    Everyone has super powers, and some use it to perform in an over-the-top wrestling show for kids. No drama, just ludicrous fights and backstage rivalry and banter.
    - Diva Majestic / black goddess / diamond form and light powers
    - Bonny Claymore / Scottish lady knight / fire hair and too strong
    - Young Poison / rapper with dreads / the Spider-Man set
    - High Flying Death Mask / Calaca Luchador girl / teleportation and popping off parts
    - Shark Bear / just a man in a mascot outfit / survives anything, barely
    A comic book or cartoon.

    Endless_Serpents on
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    PeasPeas Registered User regular
    edited March 2020
    Man I have a ton of unused sketch/notebooks, I should use them to put down my ideas like you haha, I was pretty bummed out a couple days back when I tried to recall something but couldn't remember the exact gimmick which made it interesting, it's a person who can teleport but only to train stations with a specific catch which I forgot. It started out as a joke character but I realize that since it's still teleportation it's actually quite OP in a way

    edit:
    The Strongest Monsters in Dungeons and Dragons 18:19
    https://youtu.be/7o2E52-eZZs

    The Strongest Dragons in Dungeons and Dragons 20:12
    https://youtu.be/BFAmksnfA-Y

    I don't know how to play D&D but I really like how happy and hype this guy is talking about the world and stuff in his channel

    Peas on
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    Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    Totally start keeping notes, they’re not going to be put to use but I just find it therapeutic.

    Also: You might think I would have stopped making up wrestlers after those five but no the list goes on for forty more.

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    Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    edited March 2020
    Uh so I can’t draw. I have doodled a little today but not much has come of it. All attempts at anything in life are practice though, so that’s okay.

    For my Not-Castlevania character project I’ve added and subtracted until I’ve ended up with:

    The Plot
    The coming of the Eclipse Eternal has shrouded the world in darkness mere months after the end of WW2. Out of the sea a huge spire has appeared, and nightmarish music can be heard emanating from its peak.

    Four heroes have set out to unravel the mysteries of the spire in hope of releasing the Eclipse’s grip on the world!

    The Heroes
    Martin Bastille, French African ex-army medic turned explorer. Has seen things, but remains proper and polite. Exquisite afro.

    Anin Farasha, Arabic private detective and woman of science. Literally Sherlock Holmes in a hijab.

    Beatrice Chime, English wife in mourning, taking up the blade of her renowned husband. So imagine the generic hero of a 80’s game died and the damsel in distress became a ball of rage and sorrow; there you go.

    Lady Lucrada, mysterious noblewoman wearing leather pants (!!!) who looks a little... pale for a Spaniard. Absolutely Alucard from Castlevania.

    Side Characters
    I like to imagine the save points in this imaginary game are art galleries, and it’s here you’d find your shops and the like.

    Radu the Fair, a Romanian alchemist with a tricky shadow. Totally legit and your friend. The merchant.

    Bazramor, a tiny blue flame headed demon trapped in a bird cage. Can be paid in... whatever currency the game would have... to power up the heroes. But at what cost?!

    The Greek, literally Medusa wearing a veil. Always looks away from the heroes. Offers advice on the next boss, as she knows them.

    Saint Jude, who is actually on your side 100% but has her own troubles. Being a ghost is just the first. Gives you advice on secrets, if the game has secrets, or just helpful stuff to know. Unfortunately she can only speak in riddles and nonsense.

    Portraits. One or two portraits per art gallery would speak a line or two, just for fun. The eyes follow the heroes like a Scooby Doo episode.

    Time may tell if these unrelated heroes have their fates intertwined!!... ! !!

    Bosses
    Vanguard Beast, a big ol’ werewolf / whatever hairy thing with an iron mask with no eye holes. It’s berserk and has no idea what’s going on.

    Midnight Bloom, a giant white rose demon. For no real reason I think they’d fluidly swap between being a sexy lady and a hot guy sat in a big flower, because plants are both sexes and that’s neat. Perhaps as they deal damage to the heroes their petals turn red.

    Ballet of Death, so... I’m thinking for this there would be several dancers in feathery costumes, who mutate into swan monsters over the course of the fight, which would be on a frozen lake.

    Artillery Colossus is just a giant robot designed after WW2 tanks and stuff. Might have some zombie gunners onboard. Perhaps the heroes have to ascend to the top whilst fighting it!

    Spurned Paramore, a knight in a suit of black steel. Over the course of the fight it’s revealed he’s just a lot of tar-like goo held together by the suit, having been cursed by the Maestro.

    Sea’s Choir... okay, so in the background there would be hundreds of things singing the backing track, and the actual fight would be several minor bosses in a row. A giant manta ray demon, a shark man pirate, couple of gross leech hags etc.

    Filthy Wastrel, a madman in rags who wields a range of weapons and items, just like the heroes. Spoilers! It’s Beatrice’s husband, a demon slayer who was thought dead!

    The Maestro, now a woman, looks like a classic Dracula crossed with an orchestral conductor with two X chromosomes. Probably fights against a full room length mirror or a portrait of themselves while a demon orchestra plays. Occasionally she’d summon a few up to fight and the backing track would loose some instruments. Maybe the last part of the fight is silent as you’ve killed them all?

    Optional Boss!!
    Execution Demon & Illuminated Aspirant... so... I’m thinking a skeletal demon not unlike the Grim Reaper and a glowy alien. Just a curveball for fun. One would be slow but aggressive while the other would run away and shoot bolts that look like glittery comets. For a plot point maybe The Maestro learnt from the Aspirant, and when the Demon was told to kill them, instead it fell in love. Aw.

    Super Secret True Final Boss!!
    The Eclipse Eternal! So the game would take place during an eclipse, so if you like, find the three objects or clear 99% of the map you can fight a big eyeball, as these things tend to be.

    For the purposes of the project I’m imagining you could make sequels, and by separating the main villain from the Thing That Makes Magic Happen I can just have the Eclipse come around again later with a new Dracula-like using it to fuel their plan.


    If I manage to get any art done (I’m not trying to get good, just serviceable) I’ll post it in here and maybe in the art sub-forum on here.

    Endless_Serpents on
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    PeasPeas Registered User regular
    edited March 2020
    I am reading your ideas and the darkstalkers aesthetics and music kept popping up in my mind for some reason lol
    That's a good thing because I really love darkstalkers

    Darkstalkers the Night Warriors Arcade - Intro / Opening (Full HD 1080p) 0:57
    https://youtu.be/u0byLIbcqOs

    Peas on
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    Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    You know what I’ve never played that but from what I’ve seen over the years it’s got a great look it it. I’m glad!



    Right, I’ll be brief today because I want to leave plenty of space for others, but here’s an update to my imaginary game’s villain:

    At first I was thinking of them being a classic Dracula.

    Then I switched their gender, because you don’t see a lot of older, stately looking women antagonists.

    Now I’m thinking of splitting ‘The Maestro’ into a married couple, as one thing you really don’t see in game media is a duo for the final boss, a pair of equal status pulling the strings.

    The husband would be a too tall conductor. The wife a broad opera singer. Both real opulent and vampire-y, with long curled white/silver hair. I picture them both holding opera glasses to look down on things.

    Something about two posh bastards bouncing off each other really works for me, as does the idea of their healthy love for each other contrasting the fact they’re in charge of the spire, the demons in it and the impending end of the world etc.

    That’s my design process so far I guess.

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    PeasPeas Registered User regular
    edited March 2020
    Maybe it's life experiences (maybe more like the lack thereof) but I tend to think of single character stories instead of having multiple people bouncing off each other which is definitely going to be much more dynamic, exciting and realistic.

    A life form which could be described as a slime gained consciousness and memories of someone, which is itself now. It tries to kill itself in the shock and confusion, but to no avail. It can't die, or at least it doesn't know how. It lies down on the ground staring at what it assumed was the rocky ceiling of a cave for seemingly ages, experiencing the sensations of what it have never felt before but could somehow remember. Finally it lets out a dejected sigh and then with it's newly formed hands and legs, pushed itself up and clumsily stumbled outside...

    Unrelated:
    Fief - V (2019) (Dungeon Synth) 27:55
    https://youtu.be/pcAZ-AO3Fz4
    Artist : Fief
    Album : V
    Year : 2019
    Genre : Dungeon Synth,
    Country : USA
    Label : Out Of Season

    TRACKLIST :

    1. The Road Through Town 00:00
    2. Medieval Reveries 03:50
    3. Citadel Streets 07:08
    4. The Mushroom Mage 11:18
    5. The Days of Dice and Daring 15:30
    6. Dragon Songs 19:21
    7. On Bardic Journeys 23:13

    OFFICIAL BANDCAMP : https://fief.bandcamp.com/album/v

    Album artwork by Silvana Massa: www.facebook.com/SilvMassa.Art/

    Please support the artists, buy their music.
    This video is for promotional use only.


    edit:
    The World-Building Trap 23:36
    https://youtu.be/2056pPqISQo

    Peas on
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    PeasPeas Registered User regular
    edited March 2020
    How to Develop and Improve your OC's 11:57
    https://youtu.be/t57x-7jRZy8

    DESIGNING A CHARACTER (My Process and things to keep in mind) 10:25
    https://youtu.be/hmGG-PGpjuM

    Peas on
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    Dark Raven XDark Raven X Laugh hard, run fast, be kindRegistered User regular
    I was working on an RPGmaker game for a couple years, it was fun to daydream about, but I trashed the whole thing in a depression episode, and now there's only a few bits and pieces left. Was a world with ya classic elemental magic, earth water fire and air, magitech and airships. So pretty derivative! My working title was Determinant Reverie. Y'know, like Final Fantasy. ;P

    Protagonist was an air mage guy called Alastor with a cool sword that he said was an ancient artifact, but plot tweest, he was a con man, nothing special about it at all. His tall tales get the bad guy interested in the possibilities, and he ends up having to step up and actually be a hero. Other party members included;

    Neeka - a sky pirate / legitimate air delivery captain with a chubby airship called the Nomad Turtle. She has earth magic but is bad at it, so she prefers using guns. She loads the bullets with dirt so she can do fancy trick shots with em.

    Wahyu - an architect who uses water magic to freeze permanent structures in clever ways. Worked as the party summoner / blue mage by creating ice construct replicas of enemies and attacks.

    Ku - dancer / guitarist / fire mage. Had a weird complicated apparatus that let her put on a one man show with music n' fireworks. Buffs and debuffs type of character.

    Main bad guy was another air mage named Zrael, who had very little characterisation! There was a rival/mentor character for Wahyu though, Shei, who was pretty fun. Got a cool boss fight for her where she'd armor herself up in an ice golem shaped like a crawfish.

    Got pretty far with a hybrid spell list, where characters could combine magic for new stuff, and I thought the combat was pretty fun - Octopath Traveller ended up being a way better version of it though. ;P

    Oh brilliant
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    PeasPeas Registered User regular
    edited March 2020
    Yes more fantasy stuff, that's my jam hahaha, thanks for sharing!

    Not actually a design, just trying to start somewhere to create a simplified form or style which I can use as a base eventually.
    oowqa61ptv5u.png

    I am not good in both writing and art btw so hopefully my stuff would "inspire" other people to come out of hiding lol

    Peas on
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    TofystedethTofystedeth Registered User regular
    I had a setting idea I'd been kicking around for a couple of years. It's a DnD type world where dragons exist, and are not common, but are not unknown. Maybe you've never seen a dragon cause you live far enough away from its nest, but everyone knows someone a couple villages over whose farm has been raided on occasion.

    Basically at some point, some very brave soul managed to strike a deal with the nearby dragon by appealing to its laziness and greed. Instead of raiding nearby farms, give a sack of money to the mayors of the local villages, and they'll reimburse farmers to leave out a cow or sheep etc every once in a while and stop hiring random ragtag bands of heroes to try and kill you and steal your hoard.

    Over time, the practice spread cause the other dragons (and beleaguered villagers) know a good thing when they see it. Eventually the dragons take on more and more of a role of a de facto government entity, by clearing out bandits, scaring off armies etc. Anything that would mess with the gravy train.

    Cults and bureaucracies form around the interface between dragons and the countryside and they become actual political entities with dragons as the mostly immortal heads of state. You could even bring someone to trial with the dragon as judge. Though in this case if the judge decides it's a frivolous suit or you're doing sovcit nonsense it may just eat you.

    No real story in there, just interesting to think what those systems may be like.

    steam_sig.png
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    PeasPeas Registered User regular
    edited March 2020
    It's really fun just thinking or reading about potential worlds haha

    https://en-dic.pixiv.net/a/pixiv+Fantasia

    In the world of pixiv Fantasia, users’ characters are cast in the story of five countries fighting for the supremacy over the continent.
    As a warrior in one of the countries, you create works with the tag of country you support, to win more views - winning access means winning the points for your own country, and the country that gets most points will be the winning country.
    At the the climax of the project, Project organizer declared few events.

    Joining in the world of pixiv Fantasia
    Create characters from one of the five countries
    Create something 'Fantasy' (e.g. Knights, Wizards, Monsters, etc)
    Create a conceptual artwork for the world of pixiv Fantasia

    This is the coolest thing ever for me, and I hope that someday I would be good enough to participate in something of this vein, I dream about doing this a lot

    Edit:
    Apparently Pixiv Fantasia Age of Starlight is the current running event:
    https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/78509907

    Peas on
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