The Quick Questions About World Building Thread

You don't have to. Steampunk worlds justify themselves through Rule of Cool, and long expository tracts of lore tend to bore the reader if they don't serve the story.

If they do serve the story, though, by all means include them. I really enjoy works that spend a lot of time building up plot elements that become relevant later. If you can bury clues, plot coupons, or narrative twists into your world-building, it's all the more fun when they pay off.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 19th 2020 at 2:19:35 PM

IIRC Dishonored justified it's steampunk by making whale oil a weird, almost magical fuel that fit the peculiarities of steampunk well.

But overall, you pick steampunk for the aesthetic.

Should we have some equivalent threads to, say, Writer's Block Daily, or is this the same sort of thing? I feel like this is more like Writers' Block's Random Questions Thread.

Are there many who frequent this sub-forum, but not "Writer's Block"?

After all, "Writer's Block Daily" is essentially a thread for updates about our journeys as writers—which seems to me to include world-building. Thus a separate "Daily" thread in this sub-forum only makes much sense to me if there are people who frequent "World Building", but not "Writer's Block".

So as it stands I have 21 playable races in the lit RPG I'm attempting to write. I have encountered the non-playable ones but probably 10 at least. Since I have none playable Yo-kai perhaps I should and either Oni or Kappa to the list of playable selectable races. Currently my playable races The real-world animal they have a ball from are as follows well except for the actual names of my five original ones.

Is there a question being asked, never mind a quick one?

The question is do you think I should add some sort of yokai? and If so is there a better choice than Oni? Probably not but... There might be

Sorry my brains out running me more than usual today. I haven't fired up my Dragon in so long I feel like it's been forever since I've been able to even try to get my ideas out properly. Sence St. Patrick's Day at least.

Edited by Shyhero on Oct 31st 2020 at 7:09:47 AM

Ask yourself- does the story call for it? What would the new race bring to the table that your other races don't? Do they have a distinct set of needs and/or wants that drives their political decisions, conflicts, and alliances with respect to the other races? Do they have a unique culture? If they're playable, do they play differently from other playable races, or have some unique uses?

If a person were to have their soul stored in a Soul Jar, how would the soul be put back into the dead body? I was thinking that in order for it to be taken out, another soul would have to be put in. For example, at the Darkest Hour of my screenplay, one of my main characters' souls is stored in a totem so that the villain's soul (or maybe "life force?") can be forced back into his body.

Originally the plan was just that the dead character would be revived due to amplified magic near interplanetary Gateways. However, I was just going over it today and it wouldn't make sense for a soul to be able to be drawn out without another soul going in—at the very least, inconsistent.

I was thinking my secondary antagonist would help to revive the dead character out of spite for the villain leaving her behind. At first, she was to just kinda swing the character's corpse out before she was claimed by the whirlpool, but now I'm thinking she actively sacrifices her soul into the totem, and the newly-revived deuteragonist would then be scared by the corpse, which would be sucked in dead.

@The Whistle Tropes:

That would depend heavily on the mechanics and specifics of souls, and of the spiritual world, in your setting, I think.

It sounds like you have an idea as to how to get the soul out of the totem—I take it then that the question is that of how to get the newly-released soul to re-enter its host body?

If so, then perhaps it might help to answer this question: why does the soul not return to the body without prompting?

@Shyhero

What sort of class would you be looking for? (Whether in terms of game mechanics, playstyle niches, plot matters, or otherwise.) That might suggest a direction in terms of what yokai to choose.

For example, if you want a spymaster class, then perhaps a shapeshifter like the kitsune might be a better choice.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Nov 2nd 2020 at 11:31:18 AM

Have you tried a syringe?

I'm imagining that in the form of a syringe full of Ghostbusters-style goopy ectoplasm. XD

@Ars I think it's a sort of thing where if there's an exchange you have to be biting down on it. If it doesn't apply, however, it can also float to the nearest corpse.

EDIT: When a soul is being driven out of the totem by another soul, the soul taken into the totem has to be driven out with the totem in the person's mouth.

Edited by TheWhistleTropes on Nov 3rd 2020 at 11:32:57 AM

I'm not sure that I follow the first sentence. Could you rephrase, please? ^^;

As to the second sentence, okay, so souls don't have control over where they go, it seems. Thus it would seem that some means of directing or moving a soul is called for.

Such a thing could take various forms: a ritual, a container, a trail or conduit, a medium, simple contact with the "soul jar", or likely other things besides.

> I was thinking that in order for it to be taken out, another soul would have to be put in.

Not necessarily. It depends on how the souljar works. It could be a natural soul-sucking device (e.g. Frostmourne from Warcraft, which absorbs souls including the soul of the wielder) in which case you would probably either have to destroy it totally or replace a soul. You can have containers which need techniques to seal and unseal. It could be control of the soul itself and anything can be a container. It can also be some sort of curse.

But to me it just raises the question: why not destroy the totem?

Destroying the totem would not release the soul it contains. Were it completely decimated, the soul contained within it would be as well. Or, honestly, it could just escape on its own and not even try to find a host body.

Also, I forgot to mention that souls are preferential toward returning to their host bodies.

In that case, why not just release the soul and let it move back to the host body of its own accord?

Or is the problem in the question of how to get it out of the "jar" without putting another soul in there in its place? If so, then it looks like you have a potential answer above: destroy the "jar", and let the soul float freely back to the host body.

What if the jar is only damaged? Would that damage the soul? Or would the soul leak out in a way that doesn't destroy it?

Edited by devak on Nov 4th 2020 at 7:57:54 PM

I was thinking that if the jar were damaged, so would be the soul inside. So it can't really be broken at all— if somebody stores a soul in a jar and it's broken, it will be contained until it is burned, in which it will probably float up or something.

So it's more of a matter of the jar becoming the pseudo-body rather than merely a prison.

Actually, that does make sense.

Couldn't you weaponize this? Just store souls in fake bodies and you have a nigh-invincible doll army.

Also, what happens to a free floating soul? If it needs a container, wouldn't it just dissapate?

Maybe the sort of magic to make these totems incredibly expensive, and it's better off just to have someone else dead for good. To have even one totem of someone else would be a show of massive dedication.

I've been thinking about the Dark Multiverse idea form DC's Metal events, and I've been thinking it seems more like a Fanfic trope if anything.

To elaborate, The Dark Multiverse is a Multiverse where past events went differently...always for the worse, and the scenarios presented are also based around a character's worse fears and results in a alternate universe version of said character that is also usually a Composite Charatcer with someone else.

But all of these qualities mean that it works best for works that already have a history of past events and as such would fail to eb a premise for a standalone work that is unconnected to any porpety. That is to say it works for DC, and it could work for Marvel, Drgaonball, Madoka Magica, Doctor Who, Kingdom Hearts and any other franchise with a continuity spanning more than a year.

But I make this post to ask how much worldbuilding or events would be necessary for something akin to a Dark Multiverse to be feasible. It def can't be the premise of the first few seasons by virtue of being reliant on the work's history.

Not necessarily, you could also start with one basic story and explore alternate versions after. E.g. the heroes do a mission where everything goes just right, and the next 5 stories explore how different things could've gone very wrong.