Describe this thing

Ok, I have saw many thread about major worldbulding, but what about the little details? the little one just put there to create a feeling about how diferent everything is?

So this is my game: I would name a object and you should write some detail about it: like how it was invented, when, how many people used it, etc if the user cant answer it(maybe the setting is to diferent from another) he should a least propose something and so own, the point is to create some content for that little details we love in our settings.

So let me star: is there ice cream in your setting?

So a variation of this thread?

So...ice cream. Originally discovered by a mage trying to preserve milk she found that under some circumstances you got the pasty, creamy mix we're familiar with instead of the frozen milk you get when your ice cream melts and refreezes. The preservation project never panned out since you'd constantly be casting very difficult reverse fire spells on it and condensation tended to foil other preservation techniques like salting, drying, and smoking. The mold was pretty bad, too.

The trouble was that even though the recipe for ice cream was well known it was always too expensive. A single batch would take the better part of a day and you'd need a mage to freeze it and a team of cooks to mix the ingredients and keep stirring an ever thickening mix to keep it soft and add any flavor.

What's the self defense weapon of choice in your world?

The dagger. It's cheap, less cumbersome than larger weapons, and outside of a warzone potential assailants are unlikely to be better armed.

However, some people routinely carry other weapons. High-ranking elves often carry a sword (of the one-edged variety), which serves as a status symbol, a dueling weapon, and a sidearm in battle. Wargs^* Our Orcs Are Different meets Our Werewolves Are Different prefer war-axes, versatile weapons that double as useful tools.

What about pens (or suitable equivalents) ?

edited 16th Jan '16 5:26:22 PM by Aetol

The ballpoint pen turned out to be one of Earth's most successful exports. A few worlds have managed to come up with clumsy mechanical fountain pens. Most make do with quill pens...if they aren't using magical writing implements.

Mass-produced ballpoint pens from Earth were an instant hit. They're easy to use, they produce a nice clean line without blotting...and they function reliably in the deep Mists, where magic can be somewhat...temperamental, or in the rare deadzones where no magic functions at all.

Now...Earth has all kinds of weird items used to play various games and sports. Bats, rackets, golf clubs...but what do they use for entertainment (or competition) in your world?

edited 16th Jan '16 5:05:30 PM by MattStriker

A gladiatorial death match IS competition and entertainment!

What do they use as money/currency/standard medium of exchange in your world?

Most metals and gemstones are used in the making and researching of Magitek and the creation of Humongous Mechas. While they originally made due with trades, when the personal computer came around, Digital Coins became the universal currency.

Music. How popular is it and is there any place where it's most popular?

The music is fairly popular all around the world, with street musicians being nigh-ubiquitous in big cities all around the world and singers performing in every pub worth its salt. While every region has its own spin on music, jazz and swing have been getting popular as of late. Guitars were never very popular, with banjos replacing them as the "campfire instrument".

The country of Chā Āme is renowned for its "drum orchestras" including dozens of different, well, drums, from tam-tams to taikos. While native to the island, they often travel on tours around the world and usually attract quite a crowd. The most recent novelty in the world of music are the "autopipes", an organs-like set of pipes with steam blowing through them, producing eerie and ethereal effect. By contrast, the oldest still surviving form of music are goddess Kalinque's vapour-singers, who utilize a capella Magic Music in their spells.

Novels. Do they exist? Are they popular? What genres are there? Any bestsellers?

They exist, but the printing press has only been around for about a hundred years or so. Literacy rates are low, but slowly climbing with each generation but reading for entertainment is still an activity restricted to the nobility and members of the wealthier merchant houses. As far as genres go, historical novels and travel narratives are the dominant forms. Though romances are on the rise as well.

So what's the food like in your world? Are their regional specialities, varying staples in different regions? Is cooking developed enough to be a distinct profession?

With many kind of sentient and non-sentient, integrated (read: pets and animal product sources) beings, with all kind of biochemistry, food is always an important topic in the galaxy. Naturally, most sentients stick with their kind for food. There are few who willing to touch, let alone taste other's food, for very good reason. The few who are willing are either brave, suicidal, stupid or (and) insane.

This, for some humans, helped their reputation.

Humans, factional when reaching the stars until today, fighting among themselves as much as fighting other aliens, curiously looking on anything, anything that could be consumed, ensures that if in some corner of galaxy, there's something humans could eat, they would settle there. Barren planets got greenhouse when sponsors feel generous (or lucky) (and they often rewarded, so sponsors can be unusually kind in this regard).

They also looks into others food and food related cultures, took it, modifying it, adapted it, and, powered by capitalism, spreading their version of food cultures into other sentient lives.

Birds MRE? Taste much better after birds govs subcontracting their sauces to humans.

Snekkies whole meal? Little spice and fat making stringy meal taste better.

Rockies.... food-ball? Humans hold patent for it.

Greys? They addicted to human cookies.

Bubbles? Humans introduces them to fermented protein bar, and today, humans always accepted in their territory.

Vermins? Well.... we're not sure, but it seems that humans food shipment are vermins favorite targets.

Horror-buggies? Humans invented way to consume them.

Sing-buggies? Humans food enter their singing.

Adapt-buggies? Humans are this close on making them palatable, but their leader had change of heart and now we're at peace (or very long truce), more or less. There are sightings of some caste-leader attending humans food-establishment in fringe world, but that's they are: rumors.

Bad Lizards? In more civilized areas, one of their favorite dares among their young is to drink "burning juice" as much as you can. Less civilized areas, they're go straight to tear gas canisters, or so the rumors said.

Bluey? They won't admit it, of course, but largest number of xeno-cook in their natural territories are humans.

Protoss? They don't eat anything from humans (they're photosynthesizing their food), but humans "light bar" got quite a customers.

Okay.... military cultures in all your kingdom/ races/ clan/ whatever.

In the flying city of New Sanctuary, fusion cuisine has reached a whole new level with foodstuffs, spices and culinary styles imported from dozens of different worlds, and cooks are busy experimenting with countless wild and weird combinations. There are some occasional problems (for example, many things that the lizardkin consider to be delicacies are at least mildly toxic to other humanoids), but overall this has left the sanctuarian restaurant scene booming.

One foreign dish that has taken Earth by storm is Laethvan, a.k.a. "elven fondue", where meat, fish and vegetables are dip-cooked in a broth of wine and various herbs. It is both similar enough to existing earth dishes (it could be said to be a close relative of chinese-style hot pot) to keep it accessible and exotic enough to make it fresh. As a result, restaurants specializing in Laethvan and other dishes from the elven nation of Arlaeth (a major trading partner of Earth) have been springing up not just in New Sanctuary but all over the planet. Many of them adjust the recipe a bit to make it more palatable to the locals, leading to a situation similar to what we get on modern-day Earth with "chinese" restaurants that have very little in common with authentic chinese cuisine.

That would be better for the "Fantasy World Culture Questions" thread. These threads are pretty similar, let's not start to mix them up.

I've got no especially interesting answer to the current question and forgot to ask a new one, so here goes :

What is used for gambling ? Dice, cards, something else entirely ?

edited 19th Jan '16 8:17:09 AM by Aetol

Dice do exist and are used. There are no cards, but there are bacca - a chopstick-like thingies with various pattern inscribed on them, with the pattern being the bacci's "suit". Most games played in casinos and the such use bacca, and it's been even adapted into an elegant lady's weapon and assasination tool.

On the streets, there're also the chai - round and thin metal tokens with a flower motif on one side and a face on the other. They're used both for games of chance and by street fortune-tellers. All chai falling face-down are considered to fortell bad luck, while all flower-down are supposed to indicate a great change coming.

As a side note: as chai tokens are sold in packs of twenty, they became, oddly enough, a snack - the Graysmiths need to eat metal to enhance their powers, and while they're a niche market, they consume a lot of it - so going to a games shop, an unsuspecting visitor can find things like cheese-covered chai, hot pepper chai, salted chai and many others. There are even talks of making similar snacks for non-Graysmiths, using sliced potatoes rather than metal, but market observers are certain this would never sell.

Children's toys. What's the most popular thing out there as of late?

Some kind of block-building... lego-ish... things, virtual. Basically, you get random x-hedron-block once a day, that you build into something. Certain block had certain properties, and with right variation of blocks, you can build any VI you like, theoretically. You can trade unused blocks with other blocks with the company or with your friends. Available for grade-school kid and up. Parental advisory is not mandatory, as for today.

Insubstantial rumors that certain constructs has achieved sentience and self-awareness are not true. Please do not worry. The program is safe.

My next question: Public Transport! Did they exist? Who regulates them? Hows Safety? How this affect life in general?

Most public transport networks are still similar to what we know today (although a few have started to benefit from some Magitek upgrades...cheap alchemically-produced room-temperature superconductors make Maglev trains a safe and cost-effective alternative to traditional rail, for example). In New Sanctuary itself, public transport is dominated by a short-range Portal Network. At various points throughout the city one can find magic circles inscribed into the ground. An attendant (these days usually a daemon-possessed computer) will, for a small fee (city residents usually buy year passes), connect the portal to a counterpart somewhere else in the city and teleport up to 5 passengers at a time. Travel through the network is near-instantaneous and comes with a sensation that has been described as "weird, but not unpleasant". A few unfortunate people, however, react poorly to teleportation and develop symptoms very similar to extreme motion sickness. There have also been a few accidents (including a well-publicized fatal one where a spell cast at the moment of teleportation resulted in the caster suffering from massive magical feedback...Your Head Asplode, basically), but in general public trust in the system remains high.

The Portal Network is a service provided to the city by the Academy of Sanctuary, and its use is governed and regulated by a body formed from both city officials and Academy mages.

Okay, we've had food. How about booze? What do people in your world do to get drunk? What is it brewed or distilled from?

In the Dakhory empire(dark elves) wine is consider the drink of the elite so almost all houses have some....granted they are elves and for them there is wine and there IS Wine, stuff mix with narcothis,maybe spells and the like, the weider the better.

For the rest of Dakhory people there is harsh penalty for drinking or making beer....or a least in theory,since it dosent cover forgein drinks allow some slaves to gain their freedom or a least improve their position over it, only the convent enforce this penalt harshly.

So another wasy thing...chocolate, how it was discover, how it become popular and what is the newest thing around it?

In this Ocean Punk Setting I'm working on, chocolate was one of those things that was rediscovered by the Beastfolk after the flood that destroyed humanity. After discovering a few islands with remaining Cocoa Farms, they were able to remake chocolate.

Due to the shortage of cocoa trees to grow the chocolate, however, it's a very expensive luxury. A chocolate coin to them would practically be a REAL gold coin. It's as rare as it is popular.

Let's continue the food trend! What's the equivalent to a burger in your world? Is it still made with beef or is it something else?

If by "burger equivalent" you mean "piece of meat between two pieces of bread, all hot", then the closest is probably sisinka, a Native Magõan dish. It's a hollowed-out pita-like bread ("sisi") filled with a fish fillet ("ka") and spicy sauce. The Natives aren't really emigrating out of Magõa all that often, though, so the dish is pretty much unheard of out of the continent.

Paintings. What art styles and topics are popular of a recent?

Every races has their own style and preferences for paintings, although classic-realist style are arguably the most popular style among galactic communities.

One experimental styles that pop up is much more about color rather than painting style, in which painter trying his/her best to basically makes his/her painting can be appreciated by everyone. And by everyone we means everyone with working eyes, including the ones who see in UV, Gamma and IR spectrum.

Though, most people using datapad to paint nowadays, and the result get shown in screen, so painting on "hard" medium is only pursued by people with too much time and resources (or so the stereotypes told).

Next question: Farming! Industrial? Rural? Greenhouse? Eco-friendly? Sustainability? Fertilizers? Anything else?

Technologically speaking, my setting has a lot of schizo tech. The setting was, in-universe, trapped in medieval stasis until humans colonized and brought advanced tech with them. However, nearly every race and nation has some idea of how to use fertilizers and irrigation.

The elf-like Shinrin, who worship the nature goddess, combine magical techniques with their farming. This allows them to grow tropical fruit very easily. This, combined with refrigeration technology (given to them by Zion) has allowed them to make a killing selling fruit to people.

The protagonists of the setting, Zion, are the setting's resident science heroes. As such, Zion has a vast array of agricultural technologies. A great deal of their farming is done indoors in urban areas. They have hydroponics labs/greenhouses that double as supermarkets. However, they have relatively little animal husbandry, and often rely on importing meat from other nations.

The antagonists, the Enigma State (the other human nation), has wide swaths of farmland-the nation often attempts to invoke Acardia, while portraying Zion as Industrialized Evil. While not strictly anti-technology (in fact, they're the second most advanced faction in the setting), they do tightly regulate its use and are highly skeptical of automation and industrialization. This causes them to have a high amount of Schizo Tech, perhaps even for the setting. They have a lot of plants and animals taken from Earth, which are valuable exports for their nation. Another major crop is their massive drug trade.

Describe transportation in your world.

edited 24th Jan '16 8:50:02 AM by Protagonist506

Since my setting is an Ocean Punk a la Water World, the most common mode of transportation is by boat. Just about anybody can just purchase a sail or motor boat to go from isle to isle. Merchants, Nobles, and just about anyone with the money to burn can afford bigger, fancier, and more luxurious ships.

Planes and Airships are also a form of transportation, but it isn't very common. Planes themselves are still very much a new thing and used primarily as weapons, same for airships.

Submarines are also a thing...but are just incredibly expensive to build. And dangerous, since there are a lot of monsters that live under the ocean.

Any common or favorable mounts in your setting?

People of Terra Illuminata have domesticated deer, which is bigger and tougher than its wild cousin. Back in ye olde days of cavalry, people would coat antlers in metal. Great for glorious charges. The icelanders in the north have instead domesticated ren, which are actually even bigger and tougher than deer, but don't do well below the ice line.

The island-continent of Somarkanta has its karaitai, or "rock-walkers", which have a bent back, long neck, triangular head, pale yellow rock-like skin and four legs that look like stilts. Like many creatures from Somarkanta, they're extremely resistant to heat and can walk for days, if not weeks, without water. Also like most Somarkantian fauna, being as they were created by local Mother Earth, they're "biology" has more to do with geology. Karaitai are so historically connected with traders that "karaitas" is a Somarkantian word for a very determined merchant.

Magõa has two cousin species called hutu and manonian, with hutu being native to plains north of the jungles and manonian being native to mountains south of the jungles. Both look like fully-feathered griffins without wings, but hutu is much bigger and slower, with feathers in shades of brown, beige and black, while manonian is smaller and nimbler, as well as more multi-coloured. Both are used as mounts by northern and southern natives, although while hutu were casually used for farming and warcraft, manonians were - and still are - largely ceremonial.

Tell us about non-alcoholic drinks that exist in your world, but not in ours. A juice made of some strange fruit? A Coca-cola equivalent? A caffeine source that's not coffee or tea? Drinkable substance with psychedelic effects?

edited 24th Jan '16 10:43:17 AM by Kakai

There is a not-quite-alcohol-free drink that's been growing in popularity on Earth. Produced by fermenting certain vines found in the Lizardkin homelands, it usually has an alcohol content of about 0.4 percent (just low enough to qualify as technically alcohol-free in many jurisdictions) and a flavor somewhat reminiscent of ginger and cinnamon. It is naturally carbonated thanks to the fermentation process and is popular as a fairly exotic alternative to ginger ale.

In return, the Lizardkin lands have become a lucrative market for Earth's carbonated beverages (the 'kin tend to love both the fizzy feeling and the way flavor is carried to their highly sensitive sense of smell).

There is also Kadrak Tea, a herbal concoction associated with the dwarf nation of Kadrak. While its taste is generally considered to be an acquired taste, it contains a potent mix of stimulants from the caffeine family. The stimulant effect is roughly (depending on exact composition and preparation) three to four times as powerful as strong coffee. Naturally, iced and sweetened Kadrak Tea has become a popular energy drink on Earth. Visiting Kadrakians tend to consider that to be fairly disgusting: The only true way to drink the stuff is hot, unsweetened and with maybe a dash of apple brandy to help it along.

Finally, there is Ruugva, a brew common to the goblinoid cultures of the Greenwalls mist pocket system. Ruugva is another fermented drink, although it is carefully boiled to remove as much of the alcohol content as possible (the fungus used to ferment the stuff primarily produces a large amount of toxic methanol). That's not to say that it's a harmless soft drink...Ruugva consumption is strictly limited to adults who know what they're getting into, as the stuff contains a substance chemically very similar to THC.

The ancient greeks wrote epic poems in hexameter, the norse had their alliterative sagas, the japanese produced haiku. What unique modes and forms of poetry have your cultures come up with?

In the case of Elves, is strange from of poetry separate by stage, each one in non-linear time which other elves can understand by beinging of each sentence, making a linear story is consider a very simpler affair.

Now let see....what about temples, describe the styles old and new in your setting

Most people have a small shrine in their home to whichever god or goddess they consider to be their patron. Such shrines typically consist of a small statue of the deity in question, maybe eight inches tall and cast in bronze. Each member of the Royal Family has several such shrines in their personal quarters.

The most important temple in the setting is the Pearl Temple, which is located on a cliff overlooking the Northern Sea. It's two stories tall, and the entire exterior is done in mother of pearl, including the pseudo-Corinthian style columns surrounding the exterior. It contains a shrine to every god in the Nesserian pantheon. These shrines are around twice the size of the personal shrines and made of ornately painted marble. The four most important gods in the pantheon (Specifically Skolos, god of the sea; Phieda, goddess of the earth; Thoron, god of the air; and Kaevi, goddess of fire) have ten foot tall marble statues just inside the front door. It is said that this temple is where the gods gather whenever they need to make decisions that affect the mortal world. The front balcony on the second floor has a recessed alcove, which contains the High Altar, and which is designed in such a way that anything said in that alcove with any sort of volume behind it can be heard hundreds of yards away. This alcove is used for anything that involves a large public gathering that would be too large for the interior of the temple to accommodate. Its most frequent use is for coronations, when the incoming sovereign swears before the High Altar to uphold and abide by the laws of Nesseria.

Since we're on the subject of buildings, let's talk housing. What do people in your world build their homes out of, and what do they look like?

Mostly houses look like, well, houses. There's really a limited amount of variation possible in basic concept. Walls, a peaked roof where rain is an issue, windows for airflow and lighting, a doorway or two. There are countless architectonic styles, but they are mostly well within the limits of what we today would consider familiar in some way.

There are a few exceptions. Goblinoids tend to prefer rounded designs (sharply-defined angles of any kind make things look "broken" to their eyes) and the goblins of Duulorum have developed a building style that looks like a pile of irregularly-sized spheres piled haphazardly on top of each other and then slathered with concrete. That, combined with the lack of regularity in the way their streets are set up, makes their cities appear somewhat unsettling to visitors of other races...and rather easy to get hopelessly lost in.

Rat- and Rabbitkin (descended from magically uplifted animals) prefer to live in underground warrens. In both cases what you usually get is a cluster of hills with occasional doorways, windows and chimneys poking out. Inside, individual hill-houses are connected by tunnels and often (especially in ratkin settlements) sophisticated systems for ventilation, water supply and waste disposal, along with communal spaces. Both races tend to build well-insulated and quite comfortable dwellings, and their building style has gained some popularity on Earth recently.

The Lizardkin, who live in a continent-sized forest of giant (up to five hundred meters tall in extreme cases) mangrove trees, have technically never even achieved stone-age technology (stone is pretty rare where they live) but manage a rather comfortable standard of living thanks to their mastery of the magically-infused wood that surrounds them. Lizardkin induce their home trees to grow into literal treehouses, shaping branches into roadways connecting one tree to another and even creating gardens, fields and orchards on platforms made of living wood.

Finally, for cultures on the upper end of the scale where magical development is concerned, the sky is literally the limit for those with the wealth to afford it. Arlaeth boasts glittering, impossibly tall spires and floating walkways of magically hardened glass. The capital of Xitaka clings to a kilometer-high cliff like a cluster of gold-plated swallow's nests. The royal district of Maruma Tal holds mansions constructed of water held in place by magical forcefields, with swarms of colorful fish swimming through the walls...

Okay, next one: Valentine's Day is coming up. What's a traditional romantic gift in your setting?

edited 13th Feb '16 2:35:36 AM by MattStriker