Sun and Storm: worldbuilding

Update July 3: There's a new question about Races/Species. Please scroll down to latest post. : 3


Hi guys!

I'll be using this thread whenever I need to pick your brains for my worldbuilding project.

It's still a work in progress but here's a little info about it.

It's a science fantasy setting that takes place on a handful of planets (haven't decided how many yet). The setting keeps the charms and aesthetic of fantasy worlds but has some sciency stuff thrown in. It has steampunk style spaceships, households use solar energy created by replacing their windows with Sunglass. Storm-chasers harvest lightning for industrial sized batteries that powers factories and vehicles and ships. AI and small helper bots are created by forcing a ghost to possess the metallic body, which causes all sorts of moral dilemma's. etc...

I haven't decided on races either...because I want them all and I can't have them all...

For now I'm trying to figure something out with the setting's major history events. This one is about ye ol' apocalyptic event that gives my races the excuses to become aware of each other and unite under one massive government.

The races have a supernatural sub-race called Hexen. Hexen are the magic users of my setting thanks to their special blood. Hexen are created when a deity and a mortal have a baby; so Hexen are essentially demi-gods but due to some divine laws their powers are limited to some witchery styled powers. Hexen parents can give birth to a Hexen child causing the divine bloodline to continue. But 1 hexen parent and 1 non-hexen parent only get a 50-50 chance on a Hexen child. And if the child isn't one then that divine bloodline ends. And there are no dormant genes, you either got it or you don't.

Their history has always been a troubled one, some worshiped Hexen as gods while others despised them. But the worst ones were the Hexen from 1 planet (call it planet x for now). Planet x decided that Hexen should be the ruling classes of their world while everyone else would be the worker class (or slaves, mostly slaves). And the Hexen of course favored to use their powers to advance their society to the point where they reached the space age.

And so they decided to take over the other planets. So a huge war happened where the Hexen enslaved all non-magical folk while rewarding all the other Hexen. Long story short the Hexen empire got defeated thanks to some help from aliens and by the races banding together. The quick fix was to bombard planet x with radio-active crystals to destroy them.( don't ask me how, I haven't figured it out yet, lol) And the rest of the Hexen on the other planets were hunted down and in present day continue to be persecuted by the government. However exceptions are made, some Hexen proved themselves to be useful and good citizens so the tension is starting to ease up a tiny bit.

Anyway...my question is how much time should've passed between the end of the war (planet x got destroyed was considered the end) and present day where all planets have recovered and reached the space age? And how long is enough for a planet to recover from 'fantasy radiation'?

Because planet x is not destroyed. Turns out Hexen are immune to the radioactive effects that this crystal (we'll call it crystal x for now) but nature still isn't though. So plants and animals died and those that didn't mutated. The Hexen that survived and rebuild their world are trying to reach out to the government again to try and open a trade route cause their world still isn't ideal.

The beauty of using fantastic elements is that you can shape them to what you need for the purposes of the plot. The radiation took as long to recover from as you need. I think that a few generations would be sufficient, say six to ten for good measure. A generation is roughly 30 years, so anywhere from 180 to 300 years.

It is not unreasonable to assume that a civilization could go from early industrial to space age in 100 years. After all, we went from imagining that the moon was inhabited to proving that it wasn't in 80 years' time. So if you went with, say 240 years for recovery from the radiation (8 generations), that would be plenty of time for the other worlds to develop space travel, even with recovery from a devastating war.

Cool! Thank you ^^
I just wanted to make sure things still made sense, even in a fantastical world. : 3

And that's a good amount of time for most Hexen to have gotten over their planet's fall, but possibly not all. It gives you enough time that the previous Planet X may have reached a sort of mythical status in the minds of the current population, but still close enough that you can likely see the imprint of the previous society on the world.

Awesome! That's exactly what I wanted. ^^

Hi guys!

I'd like to pick your brains again; this time for technology. : 3

So a little info about my setting first. It's a science-fantasy but leans heavily towards fantasy. It has some steampunk vibes as well.
They have 3 types of energy sources that the setting could use to make machinery and such work.

- Sunglass; which looks like regular glass but has a more yellowish color to it. It is used like a solar panel; it absorbs sunlight but the skies need to be clear. Cloudy days do not produce energy. Some copper wires will direct the energy that the glass absorbs to a generator, and from there gets redirected to devices. Sunglass can also be dyed so people who are rich enough can have stained glasses decorating their home while providing energy. Sunglass is used for households or small buildings.

- Lightning batteries; Stormchasers seek out storms with their airships and then use lightning rods to absorb the lightning and guide it into special containers that act like batteries. People can buy the containers and then return the empty ones. There are different sizes of batteries. Small ones that can fit a gun to create flintlock lightning guns or big batteries to power factories or spaceships and such. Lightning is used for industrial stuff then.

- Maanite Crystals; radioactive purple-blue crystals. Small crystals (about the size of a finger) are harmless but anything bigger will start to make people feel sick and long exposure will eventually lead to death. The crystals emits an energy and various effects depending on its size. Small crystals for example glow, other sizes create a purplish-blue mist, others corrode the ground and area around them, etc... The bigger the rock the bigger the effect.

AI and programmed machines have a Soul/Ghost that makes the machine' think'. So you have mechanical golems that can act as guards and such. The risk is that these things can become self-aware. The process to stuff a ghost inside a machine is traumatizing to them. Which makes it ideal for their manufacturers to brainwash them and 'program' them.

My question is; What kind of technology can my world have without it turning into Victorian England? Because I want my setting to maintain its charm of a fantasy world.

My setting does have space ships to travel from planet to planet but a trip to the nearest planet takes weeks or months depending on how smooth their trip is. There is an experimental device called The Veil Piercer which uses the veil between the dimension of Mortals and the dimension of Spirits to teleport. But it's unstable because people don't have coordinates. When they activate the device it transitions the ship into the veil and then they have to guess when and where to transition back into their dimension. And hope that nothing gets in the way of their teleportation because they can't see their destination.

The veil is a misty empty plane. Occasional you see wrecked ships or ruins from different places where people tried to experiment with teleportation and failed. It's a spooky ghost place.

Well this is like fantasy settings that have Magic where folks never take into consideration the effect the presence of magic would have upon the economy and basic world infrastructure. People with enough money, and they always exist could have created all sorts of world altering devices that after time eventually make their way into the more mainstream of society. Sure somethings are going to remain expensive but other things will be sprinkled throughout and this kind of effect would be even greater in a more high-magic setting versus a very low magic setting but I have rarely seen anyone ask the question well what effect did and does it have.

What you have listed could cause major changes within the world infrastructure and then the question becomes what aspect of the Victorian England are you not wishing to have -- then you just have to add the various limiters that make it such that those things did not come into being.

Let us take the age old question in many editions of DnD Arcane Casters cannot cast healing spells and yet they used to be able to cast spells that had healing elements to them. While Divine Casters had no trouble casting healing spells. I have yet to come across anyone who ever sat down to say, why this was the case within their world that went beyond -- because the guidelines have it that way -- so the god's deny it from being -- or you just cant with no other reason for it than that -- all of which have the same outcome a just because it is that way and there is no in-game explanation for it that is not purely whimsical

Here you have the same principle -- no because I do not want it that way -- which while okay on the premise it still ought to be backed up by some in-game reason. I eventually answered the above one for my DnD style campaigns one that is fully expressed with a solid in-game reason that every player so far says, yeah that makes sense why its that way.

So with that said again what is it that you are not wanting to see that you feel corrupts your vision of how you want the world to look and feel. Then we address those, and let the players be as creative as they want to within those boundaries. But this is more where you should start from -- aka clearly defining what you do not want to see so that you can get solid feedback on perhaps why you have A but not B kind of thing.

This has given me some insight, thanks ^^

I've recently been brainstorming about what kind of races I want in my setting. I plan on having several planets and some moons populated, I haven't figured out how many yet or what these worlds will look like. But from your experience...When does it become 'too many races'?

I have a tendency to make lists upon lists of races for my roleplays. I don't want to overwhelm my worlds by cramming too many races on a single planet or moon. However in the current timeline of the setting most races have populated each other's planets and moons. So it makes me wonder if too many different cultures influencing each other will become too chaotic.

I've tried to solve that problem a bit by combining races together like for example a blue-skinned, living on an icy moon jotun race which is a mix of dwarven and giant. Another example is a race that's a combination of japanese and hindu type oni's with vampires.

How many races do you guys tend to prefer? A handful of well-developed races, a whole bunch of them?

And what about types? Do you guys prefer races that lean more towards humanoid? Or anthropomorphic/furry? or alien?
I'm asking about the types to get some inspiration though.

I prefer fewer choices, that are streamlined to fit together well... I'm not personally a fan of those D&D teams that tend to form that consist of a dragonborn, a hobgoblin, a gnome and a leshy or something like this. Unless that's the focus of the game (like one I'm running on here where almost everyone is an unusual race).

With aliens, you can go a bit crazier as they should be notably different from humans, with fantasy races, I prefer sticking to dwarf or elf type races that are still mostly human.

That's good to know. My setting is a science-fantasy but leaning heavily towards fantasy. It's got some advanced technology that you might find during the victorian era but with a fantastical twist. So I'm guessing most of my races will probably be more fantasy like instead of alien.

I also tend to prefer more focused arrays of species in my settings. Having a wild cross section of species all interacting with one another all the time has a lot of story implications. Especially if there is cross-breeding (half-orcs, half-elves, etc.). I feel that D&D especially does a poor job of trying to create the fantasy catch-all. They solve the problem by leaning in to aligned species (until recently, of course), which is both lazy and problematic, IMHO.

However, space opera/science fantasy settings tend to be easier to believe on this front. Star Wars is a good example; there are at least dozens of species all intermingling all the time, and nobody thinks twice about it. SW solves this by being human focused and by basically not caring about the world building implications of the number of species and how they interact.

Edit: Realized this feedback was not particularly helpful. I think what species you have available for players should reflect the types of stories you want to tell in the setting. What is the theme of your setting? What sort of stories do you envision being told in this setting?

And I will say, if your answer is "Any and all types of stories," then I think you are going too big. Catch-all settings tend to become almost irrelevant. Forgotten Realms is a good example. Its too catch-all; it has no theme. It sort of acts as a basket for content.

I feel the same way about DnD races. If you look at them each individually then they look really cool but all together feels overwhelming. So I think I'll go for a nice handful of races that are well fleshed out.

As for the theme of my world it is indeed a 'all types of stories' setting. I like the idea of exploring your setting through telling varied stories but not necessarily as an adventuring party who hacks and slashes their way across the Zuna-system. But as individual stories like for example an old dwarven detective and his lovely elven assistant who try to solve a murder in a bustling city on planet x. Next time there could be another story about 2 noble families joining forces by way of an arranged marriage; creating a romance story on another planet. Maybe even between 2 different cultures. That way the writers don't only get to explore the way the upper classes function here but also what different cultures are like and how they try to overcome their differences. The next story could be about space pirates who discovered there's an abandoned cargo ship floating in space filled with treasures. But upon arrival they discover something they shouldn't have.

varied stories that makes writers want to explore the setting and discover its lore and cultures.

If you are looking at a space game then do not look at DnD as a model look to Star Wars or Space Opera or any other of the various space oriented RPGs that have already been made

The key about diversity - is it diverse - aka is there a difference between that humanoid race and this other one -- so yes in Star Wars I find the wide selection is nice -- most folks will play a race that caters to the kind of character they want to play -- to me on a single planet it makes sense to make a smaller selection of playable races but in a galaxy oriented game well you either have only the races from a particular planet as playable (aka DnD in space) or you have many races from many planets.