Don’t overthink
Don’t lean on tropes
Don’t intentionally avoid tropes
Start with a good personal struggle that could be applied to anyone in any time or place
Show don’t tell.
That’s the best I can figure from the “good” fantasy I’ve read. Also
Rewrite an old story but reconsider a few aspects that define it (the prevailing morality, the character’s motivations, the setting (obviously) or the power dynamics)
Why the fuck is this on /tg/ though? Isn’t that more Ganker? If you’re playing a game let your players tell the story and just throw prompts at them to give them an opportunity to do it.
This is a meme but it's basically correct. Stop trying to be original OP: Rip off the shit you like and hide it in your setting. Do not be shy about stealing good ideas and putting them together.
I really dont think an original setting is the best choice for a game. Seriously.
A historically familiar but fantastical one is the best thing for ttrpgs If you want It to be seen as original.
Otherwise you have to come up with so much shit that is practically meaningless to the rpg experience that most of what you do Will be a waste
>I really dont think an original setting is the best choice for a game. Seriously. >A historically familiar but fantastical one is the best thing for ttrpgs If you want It to be seen as original.
This. Every time I think of a "wholly original fantasy setting", I think about that RPG from the late 80s where none of the PC races are humans, all the animals are original to the setting, and everyone uses terminology that's completely alien to Earth. It's very "unique" but seems like it would create a lot of frustration when the players are expected to roleplay without any basis for understanding what's going on around them.
I've ran games in settings where humans don't exist, but the setting itself had a lot of familiar elements so the players didn't feel confused about the setting their PCs are supposed to be familiar with.
1. Look at what D&D did.
2. Do the exact opposite.
It won't ACTUALLY be original, but it will be relatively novel compared to what your players are used to
Think about something you would like to explore, don't explain it but make it have somehow sense, fit that in a world that makes the most sense with that, start from small then gradually expand the universe around it.
>look at settings you like >figure out why you like them >use those ideas in combinations that work >incorporate player ideas into the world as you go >have collections of images you think fit well to dig into for inspiration >write down ideas, doesn't have to be fully formed, they don't go bad keep them for later
Shit's not complicated.
A bit different if its for a book or something instead of a game, but if you're doing that you're on the wrong board.
This. All of this, but especially >write down ideas, doesn't have to be fully formed, they don't go bad keep them for later
Write down all of your ideas for encounters, NPCs, plots, whatever. Some ideas will fit your current setting/table, others won't. If written down you can always do them later/with another group. If you don't write them down you will just forget or flanderize them.
Also: Passes. Go back over your ideas. Tweak them, research, flesh them out, integrate with other ideas, etc.
Any combination of >extrapolate from other similar combinations >ask people about their experiences with similar combinations >ask people if they would like such a combination >try it and see
Again, shit is not complicated.
If its an rpg setting there can be some wiggle room and discrepancy, its not a novel. If its a novel, you're on the wrong board.
Start small. Write up a little town, then you can expand when you feel the need for it. A lot of people think you have to "get it right" the first time around and that keeps them from ever starting.
This. Good and original are by your own standards, not ours.
Don't try to please everyone, keep one person with good taste in mind and write for them. That's advice a dead author I read wrote. He served in WWII, was a prisoner of war, and eventually taught English. I don't think he was a good writer and he acknowledged that. His ideas could be interesting, and he tried to make the most of it.
You're not going to be good the way your favorite book series is beloved by millions, but you can do the best with what you have and if it comes out of your experiences it's you. Nobody can be you but you. Good luck Anon.
Read more, try harder, go out and live in the wilderness, meet new people, write everyday, try again with a new sheet of paper, study history, get off youtube, fall in love for fucks sake and care about life and the human experience. Write.
It's funny that you can immediately tell if a creator actually has a life outside of their entertainment or not. It's why I can't stand pop literature, it's all glorified YA or self help books written by people who only read fanfic/glorified YA and self help books.
Chuck Jones said the best way to get better at animating is to go outside and to read a lot, because those put new ideas in your head that have NOTHING TO DO with animation, until you have ideas that you can't help but bring to life on the cel that nobody has brought to film before.
Dont use medieval europe template
I've literally only seen two games use early medieval Europe as a template, and that's Wolves of God by Kevin Crawford, which is dope and highly unique, and Wolves Upon the Coast by Luke Gearing which is equally as cool. I think if anything we need more inspiration from the weirdness and cultural ideas of that period instead of the ubiquitous pop renaissance aesthetic plastered on familiar modern morality.
Also I'm gonna make this thread about /tg/ instead of writing books. Come up with ideas that are outside your normal wheelhouse. Use different dice. Use no dice. Attend a LARP. Play board games. Try to emulate an idea in as intuitive and direct a way as possible. Make that idea part of the game world as much as it is part of the real world.
Wolves Upon the Coast is an OSR game but doesn't have experience based leveling. Instead, you replicate heroic and tragic Icelandic sagas by boasting of a great deed you can do, impressing the other player characters, and then actually doing it. But you get the level from the boast, not be success--the success just lets you keep it and love on to boast again. Everything in the game encourages might, glory, and near suicidal boys-will-be-boys rambunctiousness, at the table and in the game.
This goes against the D&D player's rules-vs-fluff maxim. Your setting should have no fluff. Either it's useful information, or it shouldn't be included. If you have 4 pages on gods but no temples or ways of worshipping those gods, you're retarded.
Draw inspiration from non-fantasy settings and works. Look to the folklore itself, or to works made by non-fantasy authors, or to nature or even to your own life.
It's comforting for a lot of people when a setting features fantasy cliches since they immediately feel like they can grasp the setting a bit more, so you don't have to shy away from featuring elves and such. However, you start treading into the realm of derivativeness once you feel like you *have* to feature elves and orcs.
>How to make a good and original fantasy setting?
If you're intending to do it for a game...and this is /tg/ so if you're not, bye.
Anyway, the 4e DM's guide explains the setup of Points of Light. That's what you want to do. A bunch of people pulling their disparate visions of fantasy together will create something good, and with enough differing source material, it'll feel original.
What if Medieval Africa with African myths as facts of this world.
Normal weapons and armour are made of skins wood bones and chipped stone.
Far to the north in ice continent lies advanced civilization that trades magical weapons and armour made using magic process of forging but they are cannibals that are only interested in people. They swim in magic boats that run on wind and trade their weapons only for people.
>1.) Look at history, religion, astronomy, paleontology, and mythology for inspiration. Get away from DND. I recommend Wait's Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman, Ian Mortimer's the Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, Francis Gie's The Knight in History, and if you can afford it: Oxford's 'A Brief History of Ancient Greece (an abridged version of their textbook). >2.) Start reading novels. Since everyone likes adventure fiction, read Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan, Robert E. Howard's Conan novellas, Homer, maybe even Clive Custler. And I really hate admitting it, but I have a soft spot for some YA like Animorphs and Garth Nix's Shade's Children. Try to get away from Tolkein, Stephen King, GRRM, and Rowling. >3.) Diversify your fiction. Move away from adventure fiction and start dabbling in horror and period pieces. For horror, try Warren Fahy's Fragment (a flawed, but nice hidden gem), Peter Watt's Blindsight, Ray Bradbury's Halloween Tree and Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Richard Matheson's I am Legend. For period pieces, read Ken Folliet's Pillars of the Earth. Save the hardcore literature for later but if you're feeling bold, read Blood Meridian by Cormac Mcarthy. >4.) Know what not to do. Unfortunately, this part will make you read some pretty bad books. Chuck Wendig is, without a doubt, one of the worst writers out there even with publishing trying to make him the next Stephen King. Jim Butcher novels are so formulaic and lame, I use them as examples over why you need to avoid falling into a routine. Tom Kratman and his equally cringy tranny rivals show why you need to constrain your political autism in your writing... Yeah. >5.) Just write. This is the hardest part by far. Writing takes discipline and you need to show your creations. And let me tell you, it sucks getting negative criticism but we all get it.
I personally find crafting stories far more difficult and challenging than creating entire worlds.
I really like this Anon's words. I recommend playing QUALITY single player games like what I described with rich and creative settings and evocative imagery. QUALITY manga that also fits those themes is also a good start if you don't read often. Book of the New Sun is also a really good read too if you want a "deep time / future dark ages / forgotten history / end of time" time setting. Remember, the only rules are the ones you set yourself (and what you're willing to change about whatever system you're playing)
Pick one very specific THING and build on top of it as much as shamefully possible. To the point where you should stop, but instead, DON'T.
Example: a world there NOSES are super important.
Mages sniff up powders to conjure great magics.
Noses are cut up and delivered as bounty collection or as punishment, so that those who are marked can no longer inhale goodly their breath of life.
Some weird people can "read your nose", or "see the air that will permeate your nose during your life" and provide divination.
Everyone uses expressions related to noses, breathing, inhaling, etc. >But this isn't good waaahhh
From Software literally did this, more than once and got away with it. Cope and seethe.
>Watch a cool movie, listen to a cool album, read a cool book (DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RECREATE VIDYA IT DOES NOT END WELL [DF can be an exception]) >Wait a week >Go "I could do that" >Attempt to do that >Observe results, either continue with your newfound game or scrap it and go back to step 1
Try watching Jabberwocky it works.
Make like three crappy, derivative fantasy settings and run games in them. Take what worked, separate it from what didn't, and use that as your starting point for a fourth setting. Now get really autistic about what is and isn't in your world, in terms of stuff like races, archetypes, and forms of magic.
Now divide up the setting into regions, and each of those regions into nations. For each nation, decide on the style of governance, style of clothing, and various other surface-level details. For every race, determine whether or not they're present in each nation, and in what kind of percentage. For each archetype and form of magic, determine how it manifests in a given nation. Now start digging into the nations' histories with each other and how they've interacted over the years. Work on basic linguistics such as what vowels appear in a region's language(s) and what clusters are and aren't common in each part of the world. Use those to name nations, regions, and details thereof--ideally, also generate a few hundred standard personal names per region.
That's your first draft. Now play a game in it, revise it afterwards, and so on.
This is awful advice because there are about 50 bajillion people doing this exact thing, using the same language to discuss it, connected by a common subculture (see r/worldbuilding). They have computer programs to help and material to easily steal. But you can't make something unique by painting by numbers. It cannot be done.
The very assumption that there are races and nations with magic and secular histories is hugely derivative.
If you want a truly unique setting you have to approach it, from the beginning, at a unique angle--or at least one that literally everyone else isn't already doing.
It's not that it can't be done well (see: Pratchett), just that having that starting point is setting you on a path of watching worldbuilding youtube videos about The Last Airbender and shit. If that's where you're getting your advice from, it's over. Your setting might be good, but it won't be truly unique.
I should specify that in a /tg/ context, truly unique settings are a bad idea because they're a collaborative medium with no inherent visual or literary component. I'd highly recommend NOT using a unique setting for most tabletop games unless you make your own game with a limited and easily grokkable scope and mechanical suite. Telling people to do even more homework as a first draft is an ultra bad idea, even if you have infinite time on your hands. Nobody who writes a whole continent worth of conlangs uses them in a tabletop game. I know because I've tried it, and I was being a dumbass.
I’m not sure where you got Avatar the Last Airbender from my post, when I’d be far more likely to recommend the translation work of Craig Williamson. But you do need to build crappy settings before you build a good one so that you can have a feel for what is actually going to be relevant to your uses. The way to get better at anything is to simply do it multiple times, but you’ll never get started at all if you aren’t willing to allow your first several outings to be shit.
I will agree that communities are always cancer for any creative endeavor. Never ever get involved in /wbg/ or anything like that—they attempt to codify what matters and how you should approach things, which is utter shit.
I was just being inflammatory for the sake of discussion. I don't think conlangs are a bad idea for writing (Tolkien) but for games it's not useful outside of games heavily featuring language puzzles. The Last Airbender was just a scapegoat for the "worldbuilding community" because I know they love it.
I agree with you on what people wear though. I think that thinking about sensory stuff like what people eat and how they train their animals if they have any can be really good material for making something feel real.
I also dislike the idea of a setting for a setting's sake. I think a setting is a reflection of a story or game and cannot be "real" in and of itself. I.e. Tolkien didn't write languages because he needed them for a setting, he wrote a setting around his languages and poems.
This is what separates the true writers from the Chuck Wendigs and Jim Butchers. If you want to write, live. Just live. Write something new every day, even if it's just a single sentence, and live. Go see a new place, go get a new job, go make dinner, clean your room, meet a woman, fuck... Just go get shitfaced in a bar. The last thing you want to do is just shit around on Reddit, watch Youtube videos on why 'Ed Edd n Eddy' was a Shakespearean tragedy, before logging in Twitter and arguing with Trump's PR team. The greatest writers for every genre lived lives while they took the pen.
And that's something we've lost.
It's funny that you can immediately tell if a creator actually has a life outside of their entertainment or not. It's why I can't stand pop literature, it's all glorified YA or self help books written by people who only read fanfic/glorified YA and self help books.
Chuck Jones said the best way to get better at animating is to go outside and to read a lot, because those put new ideas in your head that have NOTHING TO DO with animation, until you have ideas that you can't help but bring to life on the cel that nobody has brought to film before.
[...]
I've literally only seen two games use early medieval Europe as a template, and that's Wolves of God by Kevin Crawford, which is dope and highly unique, and Wolves Upon the Coast by Luke Gearing which is equally as cool. I think if anything we need more inspiration from the weirdness and cultural ideas of that period instead of the ubiquitous pop renaissance aesthetic plastered on familiar modern morality.
I recently did a 'modern' Ace Combat game. My players were blown away by how 'unique' and 'different' it was from what they were used to... Not!Christianity, Not!Islam, Not!Buddhism, Not!Animorphs, Not!Spiderman, all in Not!America. And I was using Stahlenhag pictures as aids.
If you want a playable setting, it needs to be parseable without handing them a splatbook, or even a page of lore to read. It should have an easily digestible theme, and some literary antecedents before the post-D&D Great Circlejerk of self-referential and irony poisoned fantasy literature.
The D&D Dark Sun setting works really well because you can boil it down to three bullet points >You're in a super desert >Evil sorceror kings rule >You're Spartacus
Steal from good fantasy works, more so the settings that aren't copy and pasted Tolkien fantasy and actually do something novel.When you see a cool idea, steal it. Eventually when you steal a bunch of ideas from good works of fiction and piece them together, you'll get an actually good setting or focus on one thing that was once looked over in another setting, you'll be golden. Honestly just making the setting floating islands or various paintings that are entire worlds themselves (Ala Dark Souls or Super Mario 64), or even just putting it in a different culture or time period and committing to it. (Apocalypse, Africa, Ancient Greece, Asia, Prehistoric times, Aztec, Modern Times, urban fantasy, sci fi, etc, or even a mixture)
Here's some things you can steal to get started from stuff I actually like:
>Dark Souls / From Software
Using souls to level up, entering painted worlds, all undead players, time anomalies, and the goal being to bring down the old order of corrupted and/or forgotten gods, all centered on Gywn.
>Demon's Souls
A demon is deleting reality itself with it's fog. It's corrupting those in power. Arcane magic and Divine magic stem from the same source, the demon, and the secret is that it defies god.
>Doroheodoro
Sorcerers as a race. Urban Fantasy setting. Magic is extremely weird. Devil worship is normalized. Grungy aesthetics. Sorcerers can turn into powerful devils through a trial. Devils are as goofy lil shits as they are menacing gods of the world.
>Witch Hat Atelier
Magic was so dangerous it had to be banned. You can still see the scars of the old high magic world, from hybrid animals, wondrous landscapes, to areas of the world fucked by magic, a reminder of the consequences. There is an entire organization dedicated to stamping out the misuse of magic and spells they deem forbidden, and magic-users who seek to destroy these regulators.
>Metro 2023
Entire setting is underground. Mutant stalk the irradiated surface. Ghosts.
Take a look at JRPGs and realize you can basically do whatever you want as long as you can make it make sense and explain it to a reader/player. Then start imagining.
Use chatgpt
>good
>original
Pick one.
Don’t overthink
Don’t lean on tropes
Don’t intentionally avoid tropes
Start with a good personal struggle that could be applied to anyone in any time or place
Show don’t tell.
That’s the best I can figure from the “good” fantasy I’ve read. Also
Rewrite an old story but reconsider a few aspects that define it (the prevailing morality, the character’s motivations, the setting (obviously) or the power dynamics)
Why the fuck is this on /tg/ though? Isn’t that more Ganker? If you’re playing a game let your players tell the story and just throw prompts at them to give them an opportunity to do it.
Both.
This is a meme but it's basically correct. Stop trying to be original OP: Rip off the shit you like and hide it in your setting. Do not be shy about stealing good ideas and putting them together.
I really dont think an original setting is the best choice for a game. Seriously.
A historically familiar but fantastical one is the best thing for ttrpgs If you want It to be seen as original.
Otherwise you have to come up with so much shit that is practically meaningless to the rpg experience that most of what you do Will be a waste
>I really dont think an original setting is the best choice for a game. Seriously.
>A historically familiar but fantastical one is the best thing for ttrpgs If you want It to be seen as original.
This. Every time I think of a "wholly original fantasy setting", I think about that RPG from the late 80s where none of the PC races are humans, all the animals are original to the setting, and everyone uses terminology that's completely alien to Earth. It's very "unique" but seems like it would create a lot of frustration when the players are expected to roleplay without any basis for understanding what's going on around them.
I've ran games in settings where humans don't exist, but the setting itself had a lot of familiar elements so the players didn't feel confused about the setting their PCs are supposed to be familiar with.
1. Look at what D&D did.
2. Do the exact opposite.
It won't ACTUALLY be original, but it will be relatively novel compared to what your players are used to
What's the opposite of D&D?
&d&
NaN
Think about something you would like to explore, don't explain it but make it have somehow sense, fit that in a world that makes the most sense with that, start from small then gradually expand the universe around it.
>t. mudcore fetishist
By asking good, original questions!
>look at settings you like
>figure out why you like them
>use those ideas in combinations that work
>incorporate player ideas into the world as you go
>have collections of images you think fit well to dig into for inspiration
>write down ideas, doesn't have to be fully formed, they don't go bad keep them for later
Shit's not complicated.
A bit different if its for a book or something instead of a game, but if you're doing that you're on the wrong board.
This. All of this, but especially
>write down ideas, doesn't have to be fully formed, they don't go bad keep them for later
Write down all of your ideas for encounters, NPCs, plots, whatever. Some ideas will fit your current setting/table, others won't. If written down you can always do them later/with another group. If you don't write them down you will just forget or flanderize them.
Also: Passes. Go back over your ideas. Tweak them, research, flesh them out, integrate with other ideas, etc.
How do you determine if a combination works?
Any combination of
>extrapolate from other similar combinations
>ask people about their experiences with similar combinations
>ask people if they would like such a combination
>try it and see
Again, shit is not complicated.
If its an rpg setting there can be some wiggle room and discrepancy, its not a novel. If its a novel, you're on the wrong board.
Start small. Write up a little town, then you can expand when you feel the need for it. A lot of people think you have to "get it right" the first time around and that keeps them from ever starting.
don't listen to /tg
>don't listen to /tg
This. Good and original are by your own standards, not ours.
Don't try to please everyone, keep one person with good taste in mind and write for them. That's advice a dead author I read wrote. He served in WWII, was a prisoner of war, and eventually taught English. I don't think he was a good writer and he acknowledged that. His ideas could be interesting, and he tried to make the most of it.
You're not going to be good the way your favorite book series is beloved by millions, but you can do the best with what you have and if it comes out of your experiences it's you. Nobody can be you but you. Good luck Anon.
Read more, try harder, go out and live in the wilderness, meet new people, write everyday, try again with a new sheet of paper, study history, get off youtube, fall in love for fucks sake and care about life and the human experience. Write.
It's funny that you can immediately tell if a creator actually has a life outside of their entertainment or not. It's why I can't stand pop literature, it's all glorified YA or self help books written by people who only read fanfic/glorified YA and self help books.
Chuck Jones said the best way to get better at animating is to go outside and to read a lot, because those put new ideas in your head that have NOTHING TO DO with animation, until you have ideas that you can't help but bring to life on the cel that nobody has brought to film before.
I've literally only seen two games use early medieval Europe as a template, and that's Wolves of God by Kevin Crawford, which is dope and highly unique, and Wolves Upon the Coast by Luke Gearing which is equally as cool. I think if anything we need more inspiration from the weirdness and cultural ideas of that period instead of the ubiquitous pop renaissance aesthetic plastered on familiar modern morality.
Also I'm gonna make this thread about /tg/ instead of writing books. Come up with ideas that are outside your normal wheelhouse. Use different dice. Use no dice. Attend a LARP. Play board games. Try to emulate an idea in as intuitive and direct a way as possible. Make that idea part of the game world as much as it is part of the real world.
Wolves Upon the Coast is an OSR game but doesn't have experience based leveling. Instead, you replicate heroic and tragic Icelandic sagas by boasting of a great deed you can do, impressing the other player characters, and then actually doing it. But you get the level from the boast, not be success--the success just lets you keep it and love on to boast again. Everything in the game encourages might, glory, and near suicidal boys-will-be-boys rambunctiousness, at the table and in the game.
This goes against the D&D player's rules-vs-fluff maxim. Your setting should have no fluff. Either it's useful information, or it shouldn't be included. If you have 4 pages on gods but no temples or ways of worshipping those gods, you're retarded.
You (and i and most people, in that regard) lack the ability to make something both original AND good. You can have one or the other, not both.
>like things that everyone else likes
>make a setting based on those
>never correct anyone who declares it either good or original
Draw inspiration from non-fantasy settings and works. Look to the folklore itself, or to works made by non-fantasy authors, or to nature or even to your own life.
It's comforting for a lot of people when a setting features fantasy cliches since they immediately feel like they can grasp the setting a bit more, so you don't have to shy away from featuring elves and such. However, you start treading into the realm of derivativeness once you feel like you *have* to feature elves and orcs.
>How to make a good and original fantasy setting?
If you're intending to do it for a game...and this is /tg/ so if you're not, bye.
Anyway, the 4e DM's guide explains the setup of Points of Light. That's what you want to do. A bunch of people pulling their disparate visions of fantasy together will create something good, and with enough differing source material, it'll feel original.
Dont use medieval europe template
This. Use medieval Africa as setting.
Now this got me thinking
What if Medieval Africa with African myths as facts of this world.
Normal weapons and armour are made of skins wood bones and chipped stone.
Far to the north in ice continent lies advanced civilization that trades magical weapons and armour made using magic process of forging but they are cannibals that are only interested in people. They swim in magic boats that run on wind and trade their weapons only for people.
Plot out a weekend where you can binge drink and take psychedelics
>1.) Look at history, religion, astronomy, paleontology, and mythology for inspiration. Get away from DND. I recommend Wait's Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman, Ian Mortimer's the Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, Francis Gie's The Knight in History, and if you can afford it: Oxford's 'A Brief History of Ancient Greece (an abridged version of their textbook).
>2.) Start reading novels. Since everyone likes adventure fiction, read Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan, Robert E. Howard's Conan novellas, Homer, maybe even Clive Custler. And I really hate admitting it, but I have a soft spot for some YA like Animorphs and Garth Nix's Shade's Children. Try to get away from Tolkein, Stephen King, GRRM, and Rowling.
>3.) Diversify your fiction. Move away from adventure fiction and start dabbling in horror and period pieces. For horror, try Warren Fahy's Fragment (a flawed, but nice hidden gem), Peter Watt's Blindsight, Ray Bradbury's Halloween Tree and Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Richard Matheson's I am Legend. For period pieces, read Ken Folliet's Pillars of the Earth. Save the hardcore literature for later but if you're feeling bold, read Blood Meridian by Cormac Mcarthy.
>4.) Know what not to do. Unfortunately, this part will make you read some pretty bad books. Chuck Wendig is, without a doubt, one of the worst writers out there even with publishing trying to make him the next Stephen King. Jim Butcher novels are so formulaic and lame, I use them as examples over why you need to avoid falling into a routine. Tom Kratman and his equally cringy tranny rivals show why you need to constrain your political autism in your writing... Yeah.
>5.) Just write. This is the hardest part by far. Writing takes discipline and you need to show your creations. And let me tell you, it sucks getting negative criticism but we all get it.
I personally find crafting stories far more difficult and challenging than creating entire worlds.
I really like this Anon's words. I recommend playing QUALITY single player games like what I described with rich and creative settings and evocative imagery. QUALITY manga that also fits those themes is also a good start if you don't read often. Book of the New Sun is also a really good read too if you want a "deep time / future dark ages / forgotten history / end of time" time setting. Remember, the only rules are the ones you set yourself (and what you're willing to change about whatever system you're playing)
Pick one very specific THING and build on top of it as much as shamefully possible. To the point where you should stop, but instead, DON'T.
Example: a world there NOSES are super important.
Mages sniff up powders to conjure great magics.
Noses are cut up and delivered as bounty collection or as punishment, so that those who are marked can no longer inhale goodly their breath of life.
Some weird people can "read your nose", or "see the air that will permeate your nose during your life" and provide divination.
Everyone uses expressions related to noses, breathing, inhaling, etc.
>But this isn't good waaahhh
From Software literally did this, more than once and got away with it. Cope and seethe.
very VERY antisemitic post
>From Software literally did this
Why are you providing evidence that it's not good, zoom zoom?
nta but you have poor reading comprehension.
>Watch a cool movie, listen to a cool album, read a cool book (DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RECREATE VIDYA IT DOES NOT END WELL [DF can be an exception])
>Wait a week
>Go "I could do that"
>Attempt to do that
>Observe results, either continue with your newfound game or scrap it and go back to step 1
Try watching Jabberwocky it works.
Make like three crappy, derivative fantasy settings and run games in them. Take what worked, separate it from what didn't, and use that as your starting point for a fourth setting. Now get really autistic about what is and isn't in your world, in terms of stuff like races, archetypes, and forms of magic.
Now divide up the setting into regions, and each of those regions into nations. For each nation, decide on the style of governance, style of clothing, and various other surface-level details. For every race, determine whether or not they're present in each nation, and in what kind of percentage. For each archetype and form of magic, determine how it manifests in a given nation. Now start digging into the nations' histories with each other and how they've interacted over the years. Work on basic linguistics such as what vowels appear in a region's language(s) and what clusters are and aren't common in each part of the world. Use those to name nations, regions, and details thereof--ideally, also generate a few hundred standard personal names per region.
That's your first draft. Now play a game in it, revise it afterwards, and so on.
This is awful advice because there are about 50 bajillion people doing this exact thing, using the same language to discuss it, connected by a common subculture (see r/worldbuilding). They have computer programs to help and material to easily steal. But you can't make something unique by painting by numbers. It cannot be done.
The very assumption that there are races and nations with magic and secular histories is hugely derivative.
If you want a truly unique setting you have to approach it, from the beginning, at a unique angle--or at least one that literally everyone else isn't already doing.
It's not that it can't be done well (see: Pratchett), just that having that starting point is setting you on a path of watching worldbuilding youtube videos about The Last Airbender and shit. If that's where you're getting your advice from, it's over. Your setting might be good, but it won't be truly unique.
I should specify that in a /tg/ context, truly unique settings are a bad idea because they're a collaborative medium with no inherent visual or literary component. I'd highly recommend NOT using a unique setting for most tabletop games unless you make your own game with a limited and easily grokkable scope and mechanical suite. Telling people to do even more homework as a first draft is an ultra bad idea, even if you have infinite time on your hands. Nobody who writes a whole continent worth of conlangs uses them in a tabletop game. I know because I've tried it, and I was being a dumbass.
I’m not sure where you got Avatar the Last Airbender from my post, when I’d be far more likely to recommend the translation work of Craig Williamson. But you do need to build crappy settings before you build a good one so that you can have a feel for what is actually going to be relevant to your uses. The way to get better at anything is to simply do it multiple times, but you’ll never get started at all if you aren’t willing to allow your first several outings to be shit.
I will agree that communities are always cancer for any creative endeavor. Never ever get involved in /wbg/ or anything like that—they attempt to codify what matters and how you should approach things, which is utter shit.
I was just being inflammatory for the sake of discussion. I don't think conlangs are a bad idea for writing (Tolkien) but for games it's not useful outside of games heavily featuring language puzzles. The Last Airbender was just a scapegoat for the "worldbuilding community" because I know they love it.
I agree with you on what people wear though. I think that thinking about sensory stuff like what people eat and how they train their animals if they have any can be really good material for making something feel real.
I also dislike the idea of a setting for a setting's sake. I think a setting is a reflection of a story or game and cannot be "real" in and of itself. I.e. Tolkien didn't write languages because he needed them for a setting, he wrote a setting around his languages and poems.
This is what separates the true writers from the Chuck Wendigs and Jim Butchers. If you want to write, live. Just live. Write something new every day, even if it's just a single sentence, and live. Go see a new place, go get a new job, go make dinner, clean your room, meet a woman, fuck... Just go get shitfaced in a bar. The last thing you want to do is just shit around on Reddit, watch Youtube videos on why 'Ed Edd n Eddy' was a Shakespearean tragedy, before logging in Twitter and arguing with Trump's PR team. The greatest writers for every genre lived lives while they took the pen.
And that's something we've lost.
I recently did a 'modern' Ace Combat game. My players were blown away by how 'unique' and 'different' it was from what they were used to... Not!Christianity, Not!Islam, Not!Buddhism, Not!Animorphs, Not!Spiderman, all in Not!America. And I was using Stahlenhag pictures as aids.
Try making one without the color green and black in it.
Don't. The further you stray from the standard into making it special and unique, the more it sucks ass.
Why would you ask /tg/ this question of all places?
All fantasy settings that aren't fanfics are original by definition.
World building of small details that don't matter rather than big details only.
If you want a playable setting, it needs to be parseable without handing them a splatbook, or even a page of lore to read. It should have an easily digestible theme, and some literary antecedents before the post-D&D Great Circlejerk of self-referential and irony poisoned fantasy literature.
The D&D Dark Sun setting works really well because you can boil it down to three bullet points
>You're in a super desert
>Evil sorceror kings rule
>You're Spartacus
>sacrifice to the Dark Gods
Steal from good fantasy works, more so the settings that aren't copy and pasted Tolkien fantasy and actually do something novel.When you see a cool idea, steal it. Eventually when you steal a bunch of ideas from good works of fiction and piece them together, you'll get an actually good setting or focus on one thing that was once looked over in another setting, you'll be golden. Honestly just making the setting floating islands or various paintings that are entire worlds themselves (Ala Dark Souls or Super Mario 64), or even just putting it in a different culture or time period and committing to it. (Apocalypse, Africa, Ancient Greece, Asia, Prehistoric times, Aztec, Modern Times, urban fantasy, sci fi, etc, or even a mixture)
Here's some things you can steal to get started from stuff I actually like:
>Dark Souls / From Software
Using souls to level up, entering painted worlds, all undead players, time anomalies, and the goal being to bring down the old order of corrupted and/or forgotten gods, all centered on Gywn.
>Demon's Souls
A demon is deleting reality itself with it's fog. It's corrupting those in power. Arcane magic and Divine magic stem from the same source, the demon, and the secret is that it defies god.
>Doroheodoro
Sorcerers as a race. Urban Fantasy setting. Magic is extremely weird. Devil worship is normalized. Grungy aesthetics. Sorcerers can turn into powerful devils through a trial. Devils are as goofy lil shits as they are menacing gods of the world.
>Witch Hat Atelier
Magic was so dangerous it had to be banned. You can still see the scars of the old high magic world, from hybrid animals, wondrous landscapes, to areas of the world fucked by magic, a reminder of the consequences. There is an entire organization dedicated to stamping out the misuse of magic and spells they deem forbidden, and magic-users who seek to destroy these regulators.
>Metro 2023
Entire setting is underground. Mutant stalk the irradiated surface. Ghosts.
Honesty and integrity.
Originality is overrated.
Take a look at JRPGs and realize you can basically do whatever you want as long as you can make it make sense and explain it to a reader/player. Then start imagining.