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The cover for Abbott's Flatland No matter how trashy H. P. Lovecraft was as a person, his impact on the horror genre can't be understated. He created the concept of "cosmic horror," which Wikipedia helpfully describes as "emphasizing the horror of the unknown and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock." The core... Continue Reading →
Since I'd addressed ecosystems in the previous post, I thought I might as well look at the design for individual creatures. This will be a three-part series, of which this will probably be the longest. They'll look at the universal core, animal variation, and plant variation. Important note: I'm not a professional biologist. I'm just... Continue Reading →
Ecology and biology are areas that I often overlook. This is a shame; they can lead to some very interesting worlds, such as Roshar's crabs-are-everywhere approach in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archives series. The field of speculative evolution/biology is concerned with how things might realistically look in other environments, and every worldbuilder can benefit from studying... Continue Reading →
A common trope in both fantasy and science fiction is the autocrat with unlimited power. It should be obvious that in real life, no one wields that kind of authority. One source of inspiration for these despots is the legacy of European monarchs. The proper term for the philosophy that kings and queens should have... Continue Reading →
Spoilers for Encanto incoming! Encanto was fantastic. If you haven't seen it, the basic plot is that there is a family with magical powers called Gifts that watch over a village. The magic behind their gifts and their sentient house starts to fade, and it's up to the protagonist Mirabel (the only non-Gifted member of... Continue Reading →
Sometimes, it can be helpful to take something assumed and examine it closer, lay it out and look for ways it can be improved. We're going to do that today by looking at how people instinctively worldbuild and go into a way it can be made better. STEEPLE Described Fictional worlds are usually inspired by... Continue Reading →
Many people argue that due to magic, fantasy combat should have more in common with early modern warfare than premodern war. To be honest, I haven't fully considered this idea. To get started, let's look at what war looked like in the gunpowder era before the Industrial Revolution. This will focus on European warfare at... Continue Reading →
This week, I'd like to take a brief look at something different. I recently read through the amazing webcomic, Stand Still, Stay Silent (here's page one), set in a unique post-apocalyptic Scandinavian setting. There are a billion good things about SSSS---fascinating usage of Nordic folklore, detailed worldbuilding, delightful character interactions, and an engaging storyline among... Continue Reading →
Now that the first article discussing the basics of the early modern era, is out of the way, we can get started dissecting the elements that can be used by worldbuilders. One of the features that defined the early modern period was globalization. The world went from being a collection of regional powers that only... Continue Reading →
Happy New Year, worldbuilders! Not all stories have to have detailed and lifelike worldbuilding. It's fine for something to be simple or unrealistic; these things don't have to detract from the story. Sometimes, though, you're expecting something to be shallow-but-enjoyable and find it to be surprisingly deep. That happened to me when I played Ni... Continue Reading →
Merry Christmas, worldbuilders! A few people have asked for info on the early modern period. While the premodern era has many lessons worldbuilders can draw from, the rest of history definitely has its share of inspiration. This is the introduction to a series collecting what I consider to be some of the more interesting features.... Continue Reading →
Well, here we are. As far as I can tell, this is the last topic I can helpfully cover about premodern life. Everything else is too varied or too complex to discuss in an article of reasonable length. But, that leads into two new upcoming series! For Your Enchantment will revisit the topics covered in... Continue Reading →
Assuming your world will feature a variety of fascinating places, your characters will probably spend a lot of time travelling between them. Today we'll look at all the factors affecting transportation in the premodern world. The usual conditions apply. Magic changes a lot, so we'll address that in a different article. You could argue that... Continue Reading →
Another week, another ramble about the intersection between history and worldbuilding! This week, it's the commonalities between the upper classes of premodern cultures. I should note that while I use the word "nobility," I just mean an upper class that is given special rights and/or responsibilities by the government. In general, the concepts used in... Continue Reading →
I'm running low on topics that can effectively be addressed in these "focus on cross-cultural trends" articles. I've got this one, then nobility, then travel, then I'm out. I'm open to moving on to For Your Enchantment, which will revisit these topics with magic and monsters added in, but I'd be fine with returning to... Continue Reading →
This is my first post directly on this fantastic blog. Hello, world! Also, I'd like to announce a new series I'd like to start: For Your Enchantment. At the start of every post, I mention that these are only to address real-world characteristics. Fantastic elements like magic and monsters can change things dramatically, and I... Continue Reading →
After general society, warfare, and economy, people have been asking for religion. So here we go! Right at the start, I'd like to recommend Bret Devereaux's "Practical Polytheism" series on his blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry. That series inspired a lot of this, though I've added some insights and resources as well. Alrighty, the... Continue Reading →
I had a great time writing about premodern society and warfare, and people had some great suggestions on what to do next. One good one I saw was economics, so I'll try to tackle that here. For those who might be nervous: I'm not going to be getting into stuff like interest rates and fiscal... Continue Reading →
I made a post the other day about using premodern society to inspire worldbuilding, and it got way more popular than I expected. I decided to make a sequel on warfare. Let me know if there's anything else you'd like me to write on! Like the last one, I'm going to try to focus on... Continue Reading →
It can be hard to make interesting people and places. Things kind of blur together, forming a mush of fantasy tropes. One source of inspiration is actual history: so many of our fantasy settings are based on misconceptions that a world closer to reality can be novel and fascinating. (And if you're like me, realism... Continue Reading →
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