Heaper's Hangout Collaborative Worldbuilding Thread

Epitome

Welcome to the HHCWT, otherwise known as the least catchy acronym seen in recent memory. In this thread, we will be working as a group to create a fully fleshed out setting and it's culture, economy, government, etc. As of right now, this OP is simply for compiling everyone's ideas.

 So, first thing's first, I'd say a good starting point would be trying to figure out the bare bones of our setting. Is this gonna be an analogue for a real world place + time period? Are we making a fantasy kitchen sink? All of this and more will be answered once everyone in the thread reaches a general consensus. 

Suggestions:

• Nautical Themes (sentient octopi, pirates)
• WIZARDRY, and other such magic (perhaps with a special emphasis on 'folk magic')
• Surreal Planes of Existence (certain places where time stands still or is otherwise distorted, places with randomly shifting architecture, etc.)
• Magical Tattoos or tattoos that have strong cultural significance 
• Deities, deities everywhere, but not a drop to drink
• Clockwork + magic technology (computers made of brass that run on magical punch cards being a major component of this society)
• Asian setting (or at least Asian dominated setting)  
• Cat-people
• Spider Engineers (a race of eight-legged creatures that excel at architecture) 
• Magic granted by an Ephemeral Order (which is then bound onto a Totem with a personal sigil) 

I'd say, y'know, to keep things light, we should have a setting that allows for diversity in race + gender + sexuality. If you wanna create a totalitarian government, cool. Let's just try to keep real-world prejudices out of it. 

Salix Babylonika

I would like the setting to have some nautical themes

because I've been playing a lot of Sunless Sea lately and it's reawakened my love of nauticalia.

Tachyon

i will probably sit this thread out until you have the basics down, but i approve of nautical themes, for the record

Crystal

I... want(ed?) to join, but might actually be sitting this one out, even though I'd really like to. I'll see, I guess.

Epitome

@Jane: i knew as soon as you posted pirates in the other thread, sunless sea was the reason why

not like i can talk, because part of the reason why i wanted to do this activity was because i love everything about fallen london's setting and the worldbuilding that goes into it 

Salix Babylonika

yea

I mean we could just bite the setting wholesale but that wouldn't be super fun :P

how many ideas is one person allowed to suggest?

Epitome

i feel like having a limit would take all the fun out of it, so feel free to make all the suggestions you want!

this goes for everyone 

Alduin

Can we have WIZARDS in it? I love wizards. 

Salix Babylonika

ok, I would like to suggest a rule

no stock fantasy races (stock fantasy creatures would be fine), but if we want to come up with races we have to make them original.

China Mieville style.

Salix Babylonika

Acererak said:

Can we have WIZARDS in it? I love wizards. 

I also like wizards

Alduin

And witches, too. Of course.

Crystal

I'm for that rule. And if we're just throwing stuff out there... hm. I think distorted spaces of reality, somewhere and somehow, fitted in would be neat. You know, oh this architecture is unnervingly different from before and I just walked around the block, time feels like it's standing still, etc.

Salix Babylonika

I think "wizard" implies spellcasters in general

Salix Babylonika

how do we want magic to work? I've always been fond of really esoteric ritual magic

Epitome

wizards and other general magic users are always appreciated 

@Jane: so you mean like, no elves or dwarves but yes dragons and other such creatures? 

Salix Babylonika

Epitome said:

wizards and other general magic users are always appreciated 

@Jane: so you mean like, no elves or dwarves but yes dragons and other such creatures? 

yeah basically

Epitome

Jane said:

how do we want magic to work? I've always been fond of really esoteric ritual magic

i mean, i'm fond of magic that can be practiced multiple ways. like, there can be magic only taught in schools, and magic that's only used in rituals, and magic that's only practiced in china or russia, etc.

Crystal: got it!

Salix Babylonika

I guess that is fair.

I've always liked

how do I put it

folky magic? 

the "eye of newt" type stuff

One-Winged Eagle

I like a diversity of cultures living together.

One-Winged Eagle

Also: lots and lots of deities.

Epitome

I always imagined that our end result would always be very diverse, so that goes without saying. Religion is fun to think up, though.

 What sort of time period would be ideal? Are we aiming for futuristic or are we aiming for sort of steam punk thing where it has a sort of old aesthetic with new ideals?  

Salix Babylonika

steampunk is pretty rad

Tachyon

old aesthetic is good, but can we have lots of clockwork stuff?

like, maybe they made big advances in clockwork before discovering steam tech, let's say?

just an idea

Salix Babylonika

clockwork is good

Epitome

I didn't mean specifically steampunk, it was just an example of something with like, a vintage aesthetic but with modern ways of thinking. Though steampunk-ish stuff is cool,

@Tachyon: There's something called clockpunk which seems to be steampunk but with clockwork everywhere instead. Is it ok if I put your idea down as 'clockpunk', or did you have something different in mind?

Tachyon

i was hoping for something a little more mixed, actually, but i'm down with clockpunk

One-Winged Eagle

Clockwork and steampunk is closely related to Victorianism, which I have mixed feelings about, but I'll go along with it if everyone really wants it.

Tachyon

clockwork long predates the Victorians, and need not be tied to that period

in fact i'd rather it wasn't, it's more interesting if we don't model this on an existing fiction genre

Epitome

I'll just put it down as 'clockwork technology'. I was just wondering if you meant clockpunk, haha. 

Don't be afraid to suggest ideas that don't currently mesh with other suggestions made! If you wanna suggest 'fantasy ancient egypt' or 'wild west elements', go ahead. I like diversity of ideas.

One-Winged Eagle

Actually, if we're all given single idea that we can push, then I'd like to remove all my tokens and just push "Asia." Like, South Asia, West Asia, East Asia, North Asia, Central Asia.

Salix Babylonika

That kind of contradicts a lot of what we have down.

Salix Babylonika

Actually thinking it over more I don't really know what you mean I don't think.

Asia how

Epitome

Jane said:

That kind of contradicts a lot of what we have down.

Don't be afraid to suggest ideas that don't currently mesh with other suggestions made! If you wanna suggest 'fantasy ancient egypt' or 'wild west elements', go ahead. I like diversity of ideas.

One-Winged Eagle

Like just kind of...all of it. China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Russia, India, Nepal, Mongolia, Korean. All of it.

Epitome

You mean like an Avatar type setting? (Sorry, this was the only comparison I could come up with.)

One-Winged Eagle

Sure, like that.

Salix Babylonika

I don't really like Avatar that much but I guess I have no real objections either, I'm just a bit confused.

Salix Babylonika

anyway all of the other ideas i have are really specific, so if anyone else has anything they want to add, go ahead

Epitome

Right now I'm just collecting ideas, nothing's been set in stone yet. I'm waiting for more ideas to be suggested before we reach a general consensus. Though I don't really see anything that would contradict an Asian setting?

Salix Babylonika

I'm just not sure what "Asia: all of it" entails.

Salix Babylonika

Like do we have to base nations off of Asian countries? Because I find 1:1 cultural corresponding kinda boring.

Though it would be with something other than medieval Europe and also Rome for once, I guess

One-Winged Eagle

I just want to work with Asia in general. Mixing is fine, or maybe theoretical divergences could be cool. Like, "what if China never stopped being Three Kingdoms" or "what if there was no massacre of Kirishitans during the Edo period". That sort of thing.

Now that I think about it, what's in my mind is more Indivisible than Avatar.

Salix Babylonika

I thought this was an original setting

Sredni Vashtar

Deriving cultural and geographical elements found in Asia but less so elsewhere sounds interesting, although I feel like China and Japan have disproportionate representation in that respect? North and Southeast Asia are more interesting to me in that way.

Also, there are a couple of Nepalese languages that use a base-12 counting system, and maybe having one of the cultures in this world do that could be interesting. Like, instead of "ten, hundred, thousand" being the numbers where the cycle repeats, it's "dozen, gross, great gross."

Obā-san

your setting needs cat-people

Salix Babylonika

what is a gross

One-Winged Eagle

Just throwing some ideas out.

Salix Babylonika

anyway OK

if we're going with the "Asian-inspired" idea, I had sort of an idea that might vaguely tie in here.

Some time ago, I was thinking about writing systems and about magic writing systems, and I got to thinking, would a culture with access to that kind of system be able to create a sort of computer? And this gets me thinking about Chinese, which carries a lot of information in a single letter generally.

And my thought is, these things act kind of like those old card-fed computers you see from the '50s, you write a "program" on them in this magic writing system, and it does something. The computers themselves would probably be great things of brass and gearage. Is that a word? It is now.

One thing I was thinking is that this might lead to the development of much larger ships--we're talking huge ones--since many of the processes involved in ship upkeep could be automated I think.

and this lets us incorporate a "-punk" bit of technology without breaking the clockpunk fantasy aesthetic too.

One-Winged Eagle

I think that's actually really, really cool.

Salix Babylonika

and I also had this idea, which will require me to draw crummy pictures to explain.

Please hold

Salix Babylonika

wait no it won't

anyway I was just thinking that at least some of these cultures develop alternate writing systems for use in these computer things (which need a better name definitely), and that this could spawn subcultures of its own