I suppose the first and most important thing is to make sure the stories run on a rigid internal logic, where every single thing has an explanation that doesn't infringe on another's.
Or you can make all the most "powerful" elements extremely rare and go for a Mad Max style of mundane rarity, reducing the total population to a fraction of the real world's while paying close attention to how (relatively) expensive the more interesting Things and adventures are.
In short, since the problem with Fantasy Kitchen Sink is largely in unusually rigid cultures that implausibly survive interaction with other cultures - put some space between the cultures to cut down on the interaction. There are four Mad Max movies; even though the only thing they have in common is the present-day Australian Bush and the title character, you don't question that they are all in the same universe.
Thanks for answering, I honestly thought no one would come to my aid. Most of the time, when making places like these, I often do Magic A Is Magic A , treating magic as a form of energy that can be transferred into other forms of energy and matter, and most of the societies that those fictional races and species are often based off of ones that we find in Real Life (like basing The Federation country off of America or something, including its racial and economic problems to make it more plausible and to make good social commentary as a result as well). That part I already got taken care of... I believe.
While it can make for a very interesting plot and world, that is not exactly what I am going for. The world I am going for does have a smaller population than our world today, and the nations are smaller and govern a small amount of landmass, this is because I want to achieve the "unknown factor" of the much larger surrounding areas, and allow for more room to discovery in both stories and games when it takes place beyond the walls of The Federation, The Empire or Hufflepuff House.
Yeah I'm starting to get the jist of what you're saying now. Most of the interracial communities that exist in this world have somewhat similar but somewhat different cultures, but those that segregate themselves (like the racial factions I mentioned above) often are the types that don't often interact with the others. For example, in The Federation, you might find some orc businessmen or elves working in an assembly line applying their magic to build a car or something, but in those racial factions, they adhere to their "stereotypical" cultures and don't often interact with these countries/people, and when they do, they react accordingly.
Thank you very much for responding! It really helped me develop my world more and fix some bugs if you will. :D
I'd appreciate some criticism/questions too for those who are lurking/already responded.
I guess it would be useful to know that aspects of Fantasy Kitchen Sink you're aiming to avoid? I assume you don't want your Constructed World to end up like a "patchwork" that feels more of a mixture of fantastic cultures than a world of its own?
Well, one thing you can certainly do is make sure that your cultures are not homogeneous. Don't just make all Orcs/Elves/whatever be the same but rather give them a bunch of factions that might not even be in friendly terms with each other. Also, give them subcultures that have their own ideologies, their own way of living, their own history, architecture, and taste in food.
One of the defining traits of Fantasy Kitchen Sink is that it feels like you can find any possible mythical creature in them. You can battle this by creating your very own flora/fauna/monsters... or simply by Calling a Rabbit a "Smeerp". If you want dragons don't call them "dragons" but give them some other name instead. Or you can make people call them dragons not because they are dragons but because they resemble the mythical creature "dragon" so it would be logical to call them that.
Like Deus Denuo said, it's important that your world stays consistent in its logic since if it doesn't that's one of those things that's going to make it feel like an artificial construction. If you want to use this world for all kinds of stories (instead of just one really big one) you're probably going to give your readers only glimpses of it at a time. In this case it's very important to establish the relationships between all the different countries/cultures/races that are present in different stories.
If for example one story is set in Atlantis and another in a Magitek empire with Humongous Mechas and Power Armors it would be nice to get a logical reason why these two countries are on such completely different technological levels... especially if they ever interact with each other in any way. Like Reality, Unless Noted is in full effect meaning that the reader expects there to be a logical reason why things are done in certain ways. If magic is a common occurrence then it's completely logical to make your vehicles run on it and never invent gasoline. But if this is not the case people are going to end up asking "why don't they just do X like we do?"
edited 18th May '16 7:07:30 AM by Paradisesnake
The first question you need to ask is: who's on top, and who's on bottom? Politically speaking, of course. Chances are you're either going to have a world where sci-fi shit is clearly superior to everything else, or where sci-fi shit is matched or outgunned by the native magic, so the techies are more outsiders here.
Basically, you need a reason why magic and sci-fi can coexist, and why one hasn't overtaken the other yet. As someone else has already said, you could basically nerf magic into the ground, nerf the average person's sci-fi into the ground, and make it so that actually powerful things are rare, and thus balance shit across the board, but you seem to be more going for a general world of adventure.
So instead, maybe you could try limiting the sci-fi power sources to one central hub. Maybe there's one core battery that all infrastructure is built around, and thus it limits how far technology, and thus civilization, because magic itself is so powerful here that anyone without some good tech is going to have a bad time. This also preserves the mystery, in that there are beings so powerful in the realm of magic that without the generators powering the great technological cities of the new world, all of humanity would be driven into darkness.
But then you'd have to explain other civilizations on those same rules. If the world itself is so dangerous, it basically means that most other large powers are going to be fairly isolationist. It's hard to communicate when there are vast, maddening forests separating everyone from each other.
Grr... <3
My favourite solution for why people don't end up mixing science and magic into one super technology is: They are incompatible. In specific, using magic leave a sort of residue or radiation that makes stuff like electricity and explosions unreliable. And heavy technology reduces the ambient magic making it harder to cast spells.
Remember to account for migration. If there are two countries with dramatically different cultures, they are not going to trust each other just on general principles. Those who migrate will mostly end up in ghettos of people of their culture inside the other culture.
Also, in fantasy, it is useful to emphasize the decision making impact of culture and downplay the influence of practical concerns. Each group is going to have their way of doing things and think it repulsive to do it any other way
. This will explain why each group has distinct tech.
One thing you can do is make the natural fauna really dangerous. Like magic dinosaurs but worse. Even with high technology, this will lead civilization to building mostly walled cities. This can help you achieve large amounts of difference between one country and another and nearby mysterious lands without requiring the world population to be tiny.
edited 18th May '16 3:13:35 PM by war877
I think I came up with a solution to this. I don't know but I listened to all of your suggestions and started to come up with solutions that could help make this world a bit more logical in a sense and not be stupid. XD
The Federation is essentially a city-state with near-future tech, a city-state on a large island that is home to a few million sentient individuals. This island is home to a central city (with mentioned walls), surrounding suburbs, agricultural and industrial areas and naval ports that double as airbases on a few ends of the massive island. The walls of the central city are from when the city was first established as a colony, and are currently being used as a backup defense line in an event of an emergency (as said walls have towers, guns and AA defense systems too). And while all running on near future tech, all of this tech is powered by one source - magical energy.
This magical energy is what is used to power cars, homes, phones, boats, industries and all sorts of stuff. The founders of the colony came from a highly industrialized world (Spoiler Alert, It's our world!), and when arriving at this place, they brought databases filled with schematics and blueprints to help build their colony from. However, the founders discovered the magical energy on this dimension, instead of using it to change their civilization entirely (which is very risky for colony with a very small population), they instead use it to improve their current civilization, by using magic as a means to power their devices, increase the yield of their crops and make their crops bigger and better, cure diseases and increase lifespans, make the building of structures and devices cheap, easy and fast, and many other ways to improve their civilization. And while people used this magical energy (and the ancient knowledge discovered with it) to improve their lives, mages sprouted with their research of magic itself, used to improve the country in a variety of manners. The magical energy acts as a different form of energy (like its own form of energy that can be transformed into mechanical energy, chemical energy, thermal energy, potential energy, kinetic energy, and energy that could help the transfer of becoming matter - Magic Ais Magic A indeed). It has worked like this for the last century or two, and technology hasn't changed much since then, as there was not enough resources to innovate, only enough resources to improve, as the country was focused on securing its borders and protecting is population from the various threats that the world poses on the nation. And I forgot to mention how the magical energy is all harvested and stored - a whole lot of the magical energy that floats around in the atmosphere comes from the Sun, while some of it is harvested from the ground or the wind at night, all of it being put into small gems that hold a whole lot of the energy, and depending on how big the gems are, how much energy they yield and what uses the gems, they tend to last longer than either AA batteries or rocket fuel. Alternative energy taken Up To Eleven.
This country, The Federation (I still am trying to come up with a good name for it, I was thinking of Unita but I don't want search results to go back to my Old Shame of SFM-rendered Eden V2) - is a relatively leftist socialist (compared to the political climate of the Modern US, it may seem different compared to other countries) nation that runs on the Isolationist method of foreign policy. Despite its isolationist policy, the country maintains a massive military that consists of an Air Guard and Coast Guard, with battleships, carrier groups and fighter squadrons regularly patrolling the oceans and coasts of the island, surveying for any threats. It doesn't maintain a standing army, though, but rather has a national guard in case of emergencies and a special forces group trained to deal with all kinds of threats known to man.
As for the other factions, I got a vague idea about them. There are islands and continents that lie beyond the oceans that surround The Federation's island, and most of the known factions barely scratch the surface of what's beyond The Federation. Right now, The Federation cannot launch any satellites into the planet's orbit because the atmosphere of the planet, as well as its saturation of magical energy near the top of the atmosphere, render a whole lot of unmanned scramjets and small rockets launched into scrap. While The Federation has a good idea of what's surrounding them, and who's where, they are still in the process of discovering what's beyond the coasts of the islands and continents beyond the oceans surrounding them, and this is one of the most important points that the stories/RPs revolve around... discovery.
The racial factions inhabit different areas of the planet, and have different cultures based on a variety of things (climate, geopolitical situations, economics, etc) as sometimes they often go to war with each other. Some of those factions are advanced magic-using societies on-par if not greater than The Federation, and some of those factions are third-world militias stuck with the industrialized shit sold by shady war profiteers that operate in different places (including The Federation), so expect to see Orcs with miniguns and AK47s sometime soon. As for the multiracial (but human-dominated) society that The Federation is, many of the minorities are political dissidents of the past that fled their countries to seek new land, and ended up stumbling into The Federation over time. Some didn't like it and kept going, others assimilated into the country and proudly sing the country's national anthem with their fellow humans. (Expect some Fantastic Racism that is somewhat reminiscent of racism we see today though, after all, Humans Are Bastards sometimes). There are plenty of ideas that I got from this too, but I won't spoil anything for those of you who are interested. But for those of you who are not interested, The Empire exists and is in full swing, and is engineering a whole lot of the conflicts between the racial factions (and thus is the source of the Orcs with Kalashnikovs ordeal)... and used to be another colony like The Federation, but was taken over by an asshole with qualities much like some people we see today.
But yeah, thank you very much for your help guys! I think I got this under control now, unless this solution creates new problems. XD
Grr... <3
I see one thing of note. The federation is essentially an Artifact Title there, as federation refers to several countries deciding to band together.
What you're referring to is The Alliance, which is where multiple countries band together to form, well, an alliance. The Federation is often the 'Good Guy Superpower' country when media normally pits two superpower nations against each other, The Empire being the evil equivalent (The Kingdom is the good country if set in Fantasy or Medieval setting). Typically The Federation is a country that consists of many states and provinces, like that of Canada or America or whatnot, While the country in this world does not have provinces/states, it's original concept did and I named it The Federation as a working title to describe the "Good Guy Country" if you will.
Never 1v1 rust me on geopolitical stuff m8. I'm pro MLG at that shit. XD
edited 19th May '16 4:48:26 PM by TactiusTSI
I feel like the Fed is pretty well developed, a nice starting point for a new age of exploration and adventure, but I still don't quite get how the other factions work.
See, you seem to be implying that the other groups are similarly civilized a la the Feds, albeit with magic rather than technology. But my question then is: At what point does it keep being discovery and at what point do global politics start taking over?
The whole point behind the isolationism is that there's a very large percentage of the world that's unknown, not to any faction, and the only groups that inhabit there are natives there, who are generally more in touch with the areas than these outside groups. Think the Age of Exploration, just without the horrible racism (or maybe with the horrible racism if that's what you're going for). But with magic.
But if there are already many large powers that rival the Federation, then suddenly the dynamic changes. They are suddenly on equal terms, and you can't really explore an allied country, you're just sort of traveling at best, conquering at worst.
I feel like it might be best if there are a few known factions that are all generally to some degree of civilization. So you have your third world militias, your Empire, your Federation, your Magical Super-Elves, etc. etc. And you can have some worldbuilding over there. But then you leave a lot of room for lands that are unknown, lands that no one's ever explored, places where there actually is danger that no one knows how to deal with.
Well, the easiest way to avoid Fantasy Kitchen Sink is to decide on one thing that absolutely, positively, does not exist. And by not exist I don't mean out of range for your view point characters, not only can it not be seen but the highest authorities must assure anyone who ask that it just a myth.
This isn't a case where, say, changes in the environment have rendered fauns extinct but at the very most, a case where the evidence of an extinct species that were in fact nothing like fauns are mistaken as evidence that fauns once existed by those who don't pay enough attention to detail. Once you've worked out a world which fauns are absolutely not involved with in anyway, you can expand to other concepts. There is no such thing as Cold Flames and anyone who says otherwise is ignorant or a liar.
A more difficult way is to go by A Mythology Is True. It'll shackle you greatly, as you'll either have to find a mythology that works with the ideas you've already come up with or you'll have to get really creative with the source material to make them happen, but it will also ensure whatever you do doesn't develop into a kitchen sink of fantasy tropes.
I haven't exactly gotten down to the other factions yet. Some of the factions are merely tribes armed with just sticks and stones, while other factions are magocracies that can possibly even surpass that of The Federation (that, and there's also The Empire that we need to worry about, who's actually been supplying weapons and tech to some of the tribal factions in order to engineer war and get resources and shit.). When it becomes global geopolitical shit is when conflicts between The Federation and the other factions start, but the world around The Federation is generally unknown and contractors are often hired to do the exploring for them (so when the shit hits the fan, The Federation is not at fault). One of the main stories that I plan on writing in this universe is that The Federation hires a group of contractors (the protagonists) to track down a criminal who has escaped and fled beyond the operational space of The Federation's Air Guard and Coast Guard. This is where the exploration part kicks off, and this is when The Empire is revealed.
I already had that in mind, but I don't think I explained it too well (or even explained it at all). But yeah, thanks for your response! :D
Well when it comes to many of the races (Elves, Orcs, Nekos, Nagas, etc.) One solution is to Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp" or have Magic by Any Other Name, but realistically I don't think I can achieve any of that, so what I will try to do is come up with new fictional races of my own and hopefully omit some things from the mythos that most of the stock fantasy elements came from, and add my own little twist to them. However, as for the "certainly do not exist" part, that's something that cannot be realistically or logically set in for The Federation - Maybe for the Elves but definitely not The Federation, as they have no clue what the hell the entire planet looks like, they've been living in coastal isolation with some licks of what the other continents look like (they don't have the resources or ideology to implement their own Manifest Destiny). I'll figure that part as I go along though, as this one is a little bit of a toughy for me.
Grr... <3
I have a question. Are all the oceans connected? Has the federation mapped the coastline of every landmass? Have they sent out robotic drones to do any scouting?
war877, all of the oceans are connected, as the planet is mostly a water-based planet very much like our own. The continents are smaller though, and the Federation is like the Phillipines/Hawaii, in between a few larger continents that surround them in a vast connected ocean. Also I would like to add an addendum to my above statements, saying that The Federation is in control of many small islands surrounding it, because realistically they cannot build a Citadel City and its tech with just stuff on one island, let alone have multiple military bases on the said island. Another addendum: The Federation are fully aware of what the planet looks like but isn't totally aware of who controls what or any of the other details. Since AWACS planes, reaper drones and other recon aircraft were able to capture what the entire planet looks like, but their political map is long outdated due to how expensive and risky such operations are (and thus launched very rarely during the time when the federation expanded out towards the islands surrounding it).
However, while they have the Physical map down, they don't have the Political map down, and they do not know jack squat about things on the ground (species, factions, where resources are located, etc.) and thus its up to the player characters of roleplays/characters in my stories to do the recon on the ground for whatever reason it may be (thus keeping the theme of Discovery without making anything frustratingly vague or filled with Plot Holes). The locations of some of the well-known racial factions along the coasts are known, mainly due in part by the immigrants that come from the country and keep the officials updated on the political going-ons of those places.
Thanks for asking that question, it allowed me to think this whole thing through.
Hello TV Tropes! I'm back after my long hiatus of doing absolutely nothing, with a question that's been bothering me for a bit.
How do I do this kind of universe correctly?
I'll explain what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to create an Adventure-Friendly World where there's all kind of fantastic elements, but some sci-fi elements as well (20 Minutes into the Future type stuff, like F-35s, F2000 rifles and arm-bound computers powered by Magitek). This world (that I have no name for yet, lets just call it Planet X for now) is a result of colonization efforts from multiple different species/races from different dimensions over hundreds/thousands of years, creating the multiracial nations and societies we see today. Elves, orcs, nekos, humans, nagas, and all of the like, depending on where they live, all fly under the same banner, though despite being part of somewhat different cultures, they live together in harmony. (There are racial factions, such as Orc Militias or Elven Political Parties, but they aren't exactly the focus as of yet, just trying to get the basic foundation done first).
As with a Magitek universe, there's all kinds of fantastical elements in this world. Dragons, dungeons, ancient civilizations, old castles and a variety of other cool stuff from such settings, allowing for many interesting encounters (such as a Fighter Jet vs. Dragon dogfight or a search-and-rescue operation done inside an old castle).
The aim for creating this world is to build a universe where I am allowed to make multiple story threads in, as well as make a nice and fun RP for people to play in as well. It is what I tried to do with my previous verse called Eden (a realm rendered in Source Filmmaker where everything fictional is real, but was scrapped due to technical limitations), but this time it's all going to be recorded with writings and drawings, no CGI this time.
I'm asking for help because I want to do this correctly and not end up on the Darth Wiki for executing it poorly. XD
Thanks for your time, in advance! :D
EDIT: I think I may have already solved the problem, see Post 7 by me for the solution. If you think my solution is shit, however, feel free to post anyway! :)
edited 19th May '16 4:48:34 AM by TactiusTSI