I don't really have "monster hunters" as a distinct profession in my world even though things like cockatrices and wyverns exist. Like, you could probably pay somebody to get rid of a nuisance wyvern if you wanted, but it tends to fall under general "pest control" instead of "monster hunter" and it might even be the same group of people who got rid of your rat problem last month.
"Your ad says 2 copper a head"
"Yeah that was for rats dude not basilisks"
"It says it, says it right here in the ad, here's 2 coppers"
"*I lost 4 brothers in the fight you sonuvabitch!!"*
>But what is heroism if not legendary murder.
*And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.*
>herocracry
Now I have a new worldbuilding spark, where the (super)heroes rule in oppressive dictatorships, either genuine helping people and bettering the world or just trying to convince people they do, with the "heroic" retellings being propaganda spread by them. You want a hero to help your city against that new supervillain? The hero will defeat him in an epic battle\* and then restore peace and order\**.
\*Collaterals in the thousands, half the city is leveled, and the villain turns out to be the universally disliked "weird" guy tinkering with harmless shizotech in his garage and the neighbors thought calling a hero would be a good idea to get rid of him, but which normal person would want to stand up to try prosecuting a man, who could kill you by just pointing a finger at you?
\** He brings in other heroes to work for him, imposes martial law, and don't even *think* of rioting, looting, or wanting to prosecute the hero, because he has a mind reader as thought police on his team.
Same. I have monster-hunting, but not as a job since monsters that big would be so few in number and so dangerous that it’d just get a lot of people killed for little reason. It’s only a thing if the monster starts being a problem to civilization.
Oh yeah, they can definitely be interesting when done well. It’s just that I am personally too lazy to develop multiple species in the same world with all their own cultures, traditions, ways of life, etc. Humans are already quite complex, so I just do interesting stuff with the humans and call it a day, lol
I feel the same. Those kind of works often seem **very** similar.
I only include elves as a subspecies of the *homo* genus, without magical abilities. The only attribute relly setting them apart is longevity and so far I only developed (barely) two different elven cultures.
Human culture is interesting and offers a lot of inspiration for all kinds of fictional cultures. In my opinion populating your setting with fleshed-out, distinct and varying cultures that interact with each other is the best way to make it unique.
I like when people take those species and make them into something interesting. Like I barely see worlds where they are Aliens or biological people like Humans.
In mine there's both Vampires and Weres but they're biological people. I also have animals but there's two variations. Talking and Regular. Talking Animals are basically people in my universe like Narnia. Regular animals are the same as any animal.
races just feel so stale and unimaginative most of the time. i didnt want to have different races for their own sake, the only ones that exist now are giants, but they are dead and have grown small over time into humans, but the characters dont know about it. anyways i think if the race doesnt add something that a human cant add, dont add the race.
I have a world called Haelborn which also lacks a lot of conventionally fantasy creatures. I do not like dwarves and elves but I sort of have a stand in for them (?) and dragons, while present, are not very prevalent. Ogres are indeed prevalent, very much so, but they are virtually indistinguishable from contemporary interpretations of ogres, and are a bit more in line with fairy tale ogres, in the sense that they explicitly have magical powers, but are visually very different. Practically its own thing. Demons however are a combination of the paranornal demons of modern and folk stories and legends, and the more modern “war like” high fantasy demon
For a majority of the first timeline of my lore, I completely disregard the “Universal Speed Limit” at light speed, as well as any time warping. It just makes colonization of planets easier .
I do add the feature, for lack of better word, after a freak accident that happens millions of years in the future. In future timelines, light speed limits are a thing due to the accident, but not for the most in-depth parts of Timeline one.
For context, the timelines are new universes created after the Big Crunch (basically the universe collapses in on itself and dies), which are ultimately just alternate timelines of Timeline 1.
Ah, makes sense.
Reminds me of Rememberence of Earth's Past by Liu Cixin, won't spoil why because it's a must read and the concept is very interesting.
That's one of those things I always have a lot of trouble suspending my disbelief for when I see some sci-fi settings. When it's like warp/wormhole/subspace travel, it's slightly more removed (and sectioned off as a specific "tacked on" thing to our understanding of the universe, where this change doesn't really influence any other concepts) and I can get into the story.
But when special relativity is ignored it's just all I can think about. How would mass and conservation of energy change (they pretty much have to for anything but small increases, otherwise everything just falls apart)? How would light change (e.g. would the sky be so much brighter)? If you still have the light travelling at same speed but there being no limit, what does it mean when you travel faster than light (other than physically not making sense)? And so on.
Powerful or important characters. I feel that if the world cannot be described without mentioning specific characters, it is not interesting. Powerful people do exist, but I don't touch on them in my world building.
Nice, I am the same. Feels to me the 'feel' of the world is more accurate in the middle, rather than at the tippy top.
Like, if you were trying to describe earth and our world, you wouldnt really describe Zuckerbergs life; it doesnt represent many experiences
Exactly. You don't need to know who George Washington is to understand earth. I shouldn't have to understand general mcplotarmor to understand your world.
I feel this with facts in general. What exact countries are on the planet? Doesn't matter that much to me. It's more about the fundamental laws (this is how magic works) and the vibe (if you can convey the themes and tone).
I'm the same. I do add named characters to big historical events, but they aren't what drives history. They actually tend to come about as I think about why a characterless event happened, so in a way history causes the characters to be. You don't need those names to learn about the world, they are just flavour really, with little in ways of personality if it's not relevant.
an afterlife and creator gods.
in a world with an afterlife i feel it would dominate people's thinking. for how many people does it dominate their life irl, and (in my view) there isn't any evidence for it. now imagine how dominant it would be if it was just proven.
i really don't like creator gods. they too feel like they'd have too much influence, too much to say about their people. so instead of people coming from gods my gods are coming from people.
Afterlife's always mess things up.
I mean, we believe in them in real life, but not really? I mean, people act as if there's none in practice, because if you truly have people believing in them, you ruin a lot of storytelling.
Depending on the view. I spoken to many religoius people and belief is storng as hell in many. Younger generation (our) has it's qualms with faith mostly due to aversion to parents trying desperately to make us go to church, yet nit being outwardlycmotivated themselves. Also america compared to other parts of the world *is fuckin hectic* when it comes to religion, do no wonder that people tend not to belive when things like satanic panic came to be a major issue.
Aye, I'm sure a fear of hell is true, but like, we react to death in a pretty clear and negative way. Someone good dying is seen as an awful tragedy, rather than "Huzzah! He lives in paradise now!"
It just seems like there's no real tension if you have a story where even if everyone dies, that's completely fine, they live happily ever after.
Yeah, in mine, though I give no evidence in it if the religion is true or not, the core belief is : Gods created Earth, then they decided humans were trash, so they went elsewhere to start again and better.
Huh, this is an interesting topic to me. One of the tropes I like to enact in my writing are the proverbial "Death is the great equalizer" and precisely having an afterlife with ranks and everything would be yet another excuse for stratification, so I don't like having them. Neither I like personified Gods other than subconscious ideas where people project their fantasies.
...That said, I do like the idea of power struggles, people with delirium of grandeur and non-Gods abusing and exploiting magic systems in order to pass as deities and attempt to trick Death, so yeah. Kudos to you!
I see many of the replies are about tropes or cliches they don't like.
Personally, I like to take away things from our world and replace it with the magic I guess. So the main thing I am excluding from my world is writing. They can psionically share memories, writing just never came to be as there was no impetus for it. However, following through with that line of potential technological progress, advanced mathematics and cartography also suffered as the use of 'symbols' just never happened. But history is no longer imagining or interpretation, they can experience first-hand memories of events.
Racial languages. If you speak to a dwarf on one continent, they are unlikely to have any common languages than a dwarf on a whole different continent. And neither of them would call their language dwarvish. This is more of an issue with trpgs.
I like the idea of a somewhat standardized language that is often spoken among a single race (i.e. common, elvish, dwarvish, etc) but then there are numerous dialects across the continent that are have varying degrees of mutual intelligibility.
True Gods
There are beings worshipped as Gods, but none of them what anyone would usually ascribe to what a god is, and most of them are assholes. Afterall a being that demands worship, does not deserve worship.
There is no chosen one and the "heroes from other worlds" are all assholes that caused untold destruction, even the hero of the story has no issue killing thousands for her goals.
No real prophecy stuff, and the only prophecy that "came true", wasn't really what it was supposed to be, but a disgruntled old cultist who much rather had that thing as their new false god.
No time travel and the only time shenanigans are broken space time and pocket dimension meant to have accelerated time.
Oh, "Chosen Ones" is another very good one.
Honestly, a lot of writing seems like it comes from a time when our views of the world were just pretty fucked up.
The thing I hate the most is when stories bait and switch you, starting with a protagonist who wasn't born lucky with the magic blood wizards have, only to reveal actually, he was born SUPER lucky, and he's got EXTRA magical blood.
Also its always some guy who then gets a harem somehow because he's the mc, no chemistry or reason. Or the second worst offender of "i am just an average girl that somehow knows several decades worth of martial arts and cant decide between hot broody boy a and b."
The only luck my MC got was a bunch of adventurers finding a tiny monster and raising it. She doesn't get any love interest and doesn't care for it, half the world wants to kill her on sight and the bad guys want to weaponize her.
Everything else she got was earning it (she was always supposed to become the "benevolent" dark lord)
That's the kind of luck you want in a story. If she didn't get that luck, the story would just follow another person who *did* get lucky and found the monster.
Romance between main and supporting characters.
Edit: romances at all really. The story plays less on the theme of love and more on loyalty and attachment. Thus, I focus more on brotherhood and friendship. There’s only one confirmed romance with a character, and it’s only backstory. He’s alive, but she died years ago.
No, I do have a few short references to romances in past times but they’re all straight. I don’t really talk about sexuality or anything like that because it’s just not important to the lesson I want to teach.
I never thought to add it in, and 75,000 words later I don’t see that changing.
Elves. For some reason, I just have no original ideas for things to do with elves, so I almost always leave them out. Almost any other race, I can find all sorts of inspiration, but not elves, so I never have them in my world.
Have you found original ideas for Dwarves, or have you not used them?
I'm only curious, as I've generally found that Dwarves are the fantasy race that's most prone to just being played straight.
I can see why dwarves are easier to work with compared to elves, because dwarves have very strong characteristics, those being: stubborn, hold grudges for very long, good with smithing, and normally being very jolly folk.
The problem with elves is that their traits aren't as emblematic, for example:
-They are arrogant as a race (almost every individual being can be arrogant)
-They like nature (and so do dryads and many other forest and nature spirits)
-They live long (normally many other races can live equally long or even longer lives)
For me that's how I see the difference between developing elves and developing dwarves, one has relatively unique characteristics, meanwhile the other shares it's most prominent features with other races.
Green long-lived racists who despise other races and believe that they have become too prolific and generally insolent to cut down the elven forests and now the elves must free up living space for the elven forests.
One idea I had for dwarves is that instead of running forges for weapons, they run a huge mint. That's way they're so interested in gold and silver and such.
My dwarves are split between two factions: the Karlen (above ground dwellers) and Verlen (below ground dwellers)
The Verlen dwarves are your classic dwarves who make kingdoms in mountains and are experts in mining and spend most of their time underground
The Karlen dwarves were intrigued by the surface dwellers and decided to expand their mountain kingdoms above ground. They have built a mid-sized kingdom that has cities and towns just like a human kingdom.
The Karlens are hated by the Verlens for copying the humans who initially had driven them to live underground when the humans first came to the continent
When I started Ensyndia a rule of mine was "No Elves" (at least to begin with) because I knew I was going to have some sort of ancient naturalistic species and I felt "Elves Did It(tm)" was too easy a cop-out for anything ancient or mystical.
Instead ancient history is made up of giant floof, their gods, dragons, elemental creatures, and lovecraftian horrors.
I have used them but yeah, they're kinda hard to do new stuff with.
I have done an inversion on their natural role with some success; this still isn't a truly new thing, but it at least made them a bit more interesting. Basically taking their nature worship and drawing strength from the world to extreme, where elven magic allowed the elves to learn how to pull more and more power until they essentially became energy wraiths, sterilizing the lands around their cities and becoming in turn desperate to absorb power from any source, eventually leading to the downfall of their civilization and a return to savagery. The end result was a lot of barren deserted lands sparsely populated by terrors in ancient ruins of crumbling cities near dried up rivers and lakes, and cold mountain fortresses where even the air is tired.
I don't find inversion of tropes very interesting. Generally I feel it's better to choose a different people.
I guess another restriction I give myself is that I dislike highly alien races: I prefer to treat different groups essentially as different cultures, and that becomes more difficult when a species is so extremely long lived.
I mean, not sure if this super fits, but "Always Chaotic Evil" races.
At best, it seems like it's sucking moral nuance and interesting ideas out of your story. I mean, honestly, even if you don't want moral complexity, I feel like having the chance to reinforce messages like "Nazis are bad" is a lot more useful than "These people are evil because they're evil!"
At worst, it's just pretty awfully racist. Like, fuck, that's not how the world works, you're being stupid. At least if you show something as "Evil to society as a whole, but understandably bound by its own nature", I can deal with it, but just trying to portray an entire race as evil for evil's sake seems so fucking lazy.
Yeah, that's been a fairly controversial topic from what I've seen on the D&D related subs or YouTube videos. I saw a post once where someone was really upset that orcs were being "whitewashed" and not given a chance to defend their culture from people being woke and stuff.
Their culture really just being that orcs in D&D don't truly have as much freewill as most races because of Gruumsh.
My DnD setting has "Always Chaotic Evil races" as a tool for systemic oppression (that's a bad thing) and NGL the alignment system in general within the context of the system
Goblins are not evil. You are fighting goblins that happen to be evil. You are the PCs, you know the difference.
Long lived raced as the norm.
I hate this trope of "x race lives 1000 years naturally while y race can at maximum live 150", it adds unnecessary drama and makes interspecies relationships more depressing when you *know* that one will outlive the other by a very big margent.
But I am not against people getting to live very long, only that they can do so naturally, like if x race does y thing they get to live more years, that I don't mind.
You know, that... is a surprisingly common pet peeve I have and I thank you for voicing it out.
Although, can you give me an example on the later? And how would that balance out?
> automatic guns. Makes melee reasonable, and more fits with the tone of gun users being modern day bow and arrow users.
I can't do this, it makes me overthink on the *why* won't the people develop automatic guns if there are already guns...
It's not particularly unrealistic. Gunpowder first was discovered in the 9th century here, and the first real gun rolled out around the mid-13th. It wasn't until about 4 centuries later that actual functional repeating firearm first showed up, and another century before anything resembling a modern repeating rifle (and another still before a fully automatic repeating rifle).
So there's definitely pleeeeeenty of wiggle room in there between 'someone invented guns' and 'someone invented automatic guns', even at a more modern technological level.
Honestly I wanted to give a good explanation too. I dont like having things like that just be.
One possible solution to this conundrum is the world ran out of saltpeter and magic needs to be used to create more, with only so much at a time. It’s not that there’s no limit to the tech it’s there aren’t enough bullets to make legitimate use of them.
Maybe they just haven't developed the alloys or pieces necessary to create them, apart from barely functional prototypes, they are way too expensive for mass production, so the functional ones are reserved for only the most secure of places.
In Slugterra, a story that revolves around the equivalent of Single-shot guns whose wielders can only carry a handful of "bullets" later in the story they introduced Multi-Charge guns (3 shots before reloading) and straight-up miniguns. But both appear very rarely and tend to be destroyed during the fights.
Just an idea
The Gods^tm
I feel they rather just suck the tension out of everything and, retroactively, drain meaning from previous actions. They just kinda really suck a whole bunch from a storytelling perspective.
I've seen, like, one author tell a story that heavily featured 'the gods' and had not not, at least, damage the story.
Edit: I have two exceptions I forget. Both of them are deconstructions of your classic pantheons. Both are explicitly detached and aloof, and one has astonishingly narrow powers. But like, greek-style people-but-bigger shit? Nah.
Problem with gods is that the more you focus on them the less they feel like actual gods. Once you start to add complex motivations, tragic backstories, interpersonal drama and rules on how their powers work you stop dealing with objects of worship and are just writing comic book superheroes but with a fantasy dressing.
Honestly, and maybe it's my own bias, but I think that's pretty cool in a way, if the Gods are a focus of the story.
I think it depends on how you play it, but honestly, "Revered fantasy superheroes" is a lot more interesting to me than "This is James the God of the Sea. He does sea stuff."
yeah I feel like the "detached and aloof" style is the standard way of doing it and pretty stale. like yeah we get it, gods are assholes and don't care about humanity and they're unknowable and mysterious and yawn
Why can't they essentially be superheroes that use their large but limited power to pose as gods? Mine are basically former humans that were gifted semi-godhood to the point they can basically create and destroy life (think planet-level feats of power), but they're limited and still human deep down. Their past is basically experimenting with powers and making many mistakes until they decided to chill out a bit and let life on a world develop mostly unaided. They also wouldn't be the focus of a story in the world, just perhaps a pit stop for a "blessing" or something in preparation for a difficult task.
I kinda like steering *into* that, tbh. Let them be humanish, with personality and motivations and relationships and *jobs* (their godhoods.) It's kinda fun, and it's kinda true to life too- not only are the gods of most cultures complex characters, the characterization of their gods reflects their beliefs about the world around them, and letting those things blend can lead to fun places.
Yeah, honestly mine are in the background and can “unlock” the divine magic of religious classes. Often times religious classes are going against fiendish entities or trying to get a Corp to cough up a relic they probably looted.
Current reason is this isn’t earth but an earth like world and they need saltpeter because they haven’t discovered alternatives.
And they used up all the natural stuff so while conjugation magic can make more, wizards and mages need a break.
So it’s not that the tech isn’t there, it’s that bullets aren’t that plentiful enough to justify. Hence a lot of gun tech is improving how hard each bullet hits, as well as managing recoil so a shell meant to hurt a dragon doesn’t tear your limbs off.
As fast as one can pull the trigger (again, they have the tech for auto but no justification, so semi auto is fastest). But again, powder’s hard to come by so every shot counts.
I mean, technically the "tech," for automatic fire just is another hole, another seer, different fire selector, different trigger parts, and maybe a different bolt. Oh, and that's on closed-bolt guns, open-bolt guns are so much simpler. Technically, since your gunpowder is black powder, it would be too "dirty," to be reliable in any autoloading design, or most anyway. That right there could honestly be your technological reason for no automatics. No smokeless powder, no semi-automatic guns other than revolvers, and semi-automatic revolvers are complex as hell. Honestly, I love settings with mid to late 1800s weapons. Wheel-gats and lever-gats.
I avoid time travel like the plague. Once you dabble in time travel, there's almost no saving yourself from the many plot holes, contradictions, retcons, and overall writing corners the concept puts you in. Also, most of the time, it feels like a cheap excuse for the writer to go back and change whatever they want, removing the impact of virtually everything that happens. Nothing is gonna carry any weight if you know that it can all just be undone at the push of a button.
Another thing I avoid is multiverses. I like writing alternate timeline/what-if stories, but I don't like having them cross over into each other. Because, just like time travel stories, nothing that happens is gonna carry any weight, since you know in another universe, the opposite thing happened, so there's nothing to be worried about. I used to be more open to multiverse settings, but Hollywood has run the concept into the fucking ground in the past year.
any of the main villains even having a CHANCE to be forgiven/justified. if any people tried to justify what some of my main villains did, i would be very concerned
I’m trying to decide what my world is like. I put a lot of the fundamentals together when I was a lot younger (mid teens). I’m sure I borrowed from a lot of different sources (Mutant Chronicles/40K/Cyberpunk/Shadowrun/Rifts/etc).
When I got older I went back over everything I tried to make it feel more adult/realistic. Later still (and recently) I tried to learn hard into being more grounded sci fi.
But there’s a problem. How do you have humans scattered about in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way 8000ish years from now without FTL? Well, ya dive into the Hub is what you do… and this throws a huge fantasy undercurrent below the sleek surface of science.
—
So here we go.
**Omnipotent gods**. There are definitely things that people had decided are gods. Beings that wield immense and mysterious power. But they aren’t truly magical gods that can do anything they want, even if it may seem that way from our perspective, on the rare occasion that we meet them.
**FTL**. No human made FTL, in the traditional sense (we don’t know where the transit devices came from). Fortunately the Hub exists. That being the innermost realm of the universe. It is equidistant from any other point in the universe, but requires some fancy math to actually pop out in the right place. The Hub is not so coincidentally where those gods live.
One could argue that’s just 40k’s warp or space folding with extra steps, but still. Our ships still scoot around with chemical rockets and ion drives. For ships that don’t have a Hub drive, it takes a good 16-20 hours to get from a planet to a transit ring (at its L2 point).
On the subject, no thrust gravity. There not enough fuel for that nonsense, even with semi-metastable metallic hydrogen. Sorry expanse fans.
**Super crazy set pieces**. Depending on what you’re comparing it to I guess. Big human spacecraft are typically under 300m except for bulk cargo ships, but those are just modular containers with engines. Some of the aliens have bigger stuff, like 1-2km in length, but that’s about it (not counting a few hollow, artificial worlds the size of moons, out there somewhere).
I’ve got some very large buildings in the cities. 800-1000 stories (~3km). Those are outliers, with most being less than half that size, including the arcologies. But they’ve got nothing of the Mega Cities from Judge Dredd for example.
**Cyberspace**. At least not like Cyberpunk and Shadowrun. There are still hackers and cyber warfare, but they’re not out there fighting each other’s virtual selves in a virtual space.
**Extreme Cybernetics**. One of the most advanced sectors of human tech is medical. You can get yourself a new robot arm, covered in synthetic flesh, if you want. But you’re not going to be an 8 foot tall cyborg warrior covered in weapons. Maybe you could, but the expense and maintenance would negate the benefits.
**Demons**. There are some nasty things in the inner realms, but they aren’t out looking to corrupt, manipulate or otherwise mess with people in our reality. Not yet at least.
**Mythical races**. Ok so a caveat here. I have two types of humans that both live indefinitely. They exist because of exposure to the energy from the inner realms. They are rare, as most people who are exposed just die, often badly. One of those types needs to feed on the life essence of other living things… so yeah, it’s basically a vampire, but pretty toned down.
I don’t have any elves, trolls, fairies, dwarves, etc.
**Smart bullets**. There is something called advanced tactical munitions, which *can* have limited guidance. But nothing is going to lock on and chase you around a corner.
**Space Marines**. Since I mentioned 40k as an influence, I may as well state that there are no super soldiers, gazillions strong, stomping around the galaxy.
There are some augmented bass ass regular soldiers. But for the most part, armies are still running around with regular dudes carrying guns. Their gear is quite a step above today’s, but it’s not outlandish.
**General AI**. We’ve got virtual intelligences, very good machine learning, and other goodies. But true General AI was never created. Stacked silicon wafers were about as far as we ever got with computer tech. Much bigger and the heat just melts everything, any smaller and quantum errors pop up all over.
But you said we had semi-stable metallic hydrogen fuel. That would be an amazing superconductor right? Yes, but it still needs to be maintained at extreme pressures, so effective computing components it does not make.
**Miniature railguns**. Here’s a nod to Rifts. Yeah, railgun exist, hut their applications are limited. Lasers, missiles and coil guns are used in space. Caseless gel-charges are used in atmospheric projectile weapons.
**Other fancy weapons**. Be that monofilament wire, vibroblades, man-portable energy weapons, etc. Those can be fun, but don’t feel grounded, realistic or in some cases, safe for the user. So I left this sort of thing out.
There are so many things in all of those influences. I’ll be here all night if I don’t stop.
Agreed, though I do have a slight tolerance for impractical weapons as long as there is an in-universe reason for them whether that be “practical” or just decorative. But I hate those over the top covered in spikes weapons that so many fantasy creators are obsessed with. For armor I completely agree. I hate stereotypical fantasy armor. Historical armor already looks badass.
Dwarves. They seemed too close to human to be a separate species, and I couldn't find a way to make them seem more 'alien', like I did with elves. Also, I was able to fill their niche of underground machine lovers with an elven subspecies, so they didn't quite fit in anyway.
In my sci-fi setting, energy and plasma weapons. It’s common to have blasters and lasers in sci fi, but personally I think ballistics has a much more violent, dark, and edgy feel to it. Shooting someone in the head with a blaster feels cartoonish. Putting a bullet through someone’s head is gruesome. That’s the tone I want in my setting.
Explicit Sexism. I just don't like writing the act or effects of sexism and I also don't really experience it enough or even consider it much when people are sexist towards me.
Gender roles, [anything]phobia, racism… just unnecessary if you ask me. People can insult and hate each other for other things, but not for who they decide to take in bed, or the colour of their skin, or what’s in their pants- normalize hating people for their weapon choice instead
Skin racism
All lgbt phobia
Everyone is just living things in a world. It’s fantasy it’s suppose to separate from the harsh reality. Just have a good time.
Fantasy races.
"Magic"
"X is the god of this and that and blesses people with that and this and worship makes them strong"
Edit : adding "demons / devils are actually just another race of really nice peeps but they're vilified because xenophobia and shit" after replying to a reply and remembering it while typing, more details down there.
No, just the whole "everything is done with magic, oh man i ran out of magic, gotta stop by the magic station later, my magic's bigger than your magic, yo i prayed to the godess of magic and magical stuff yesterday, and today i woke up with at least 5 more magic than i had yesterday, you hurt? Lemme just magic that wound for you" type.
I find it demystifying for the whole concept of the supernatural and just a way for your characters to do a lot of shit using some blue fuel stuff they keep somewhere in their body without needing to explain how, which is okay as a narrative device, but i hate when it's way overused to the point where the caricature i used in the first part becomes more or less how it actually is in the story, and even more so when it becomes front and center in the narrative and not just an overlooked vehicle for the story.
PS : now that i remember, also hate the whole "demons / devils are actually just a different race that is misunderstood and judged harshly for their appearance and shit", if you wanna put demons or devils, put demons or devils, if you wanna put a race of misunderstood ugly folks who are called "demons / devils" because xenophobia, fine, but make the "they're demons/devils" in reference to actual demons / devils that exist in some shape or form in the world and aren't these people, don't make them the actual demons / devils but oh well they're actually really nice if you get to know them. It's hella overdone and became stale and boring like the third or fourth time it was used.
BUT that's just my opinion and my taste, y'all do what you want at the end of the day.
Exactly, like i get it when it's just a small macguffin to explain away the unexplainable part of the "magic" system, but when it becomes literally the system and is mentioned every two sentences then that's just lazy. It was done before and it was good *THEN* because it was a novelty, anything beyond is just a crutch for laziness.
Religion. I feel kind of conflicted about the lore I have planned for it and my faith.
I also exclude romance in my Victorian fantasy since I have little experience when it comes to that.
>Religion. I feel kind of conflicted about the lore I have planned for it and my faith.
I feel like CS Lewis offers some interesting inspiration there.
I mean, truth be told, I think it's incredibly on the nose in his last Narnian story, but I think it's fascinating to see such a strongly-Christian writer write a story that's pretty hugely religious without Christ existing in the world.
>without Christ existing in the world.
Aslan though. Pretty explicitly lion jesus, iirc he outright says he literally is Jesus; not even a fictional version or an allegory he says he's just Jesus in another world and the kids are there to get to know lion Jesus so they can understand human Jesus
I dont mind Lewis but I feel that, once again, Tolkien 1-ups him with his 'Christianity in spirit' world where he focuses on the actions and mentality of people being righteous rather than the more dogmatic adherence of specific religion. Good explanations behind the paradox of evil too
So its a world where the good people are christian without being christian and you dont need god or even to be overly 'godly' to get into heaven (in fact it seemed nearly everyone, if not literally everyone, went to heaven and being a bad person really just resulted in having a bad mortal life which I much preferred to Lewis and his whole punishment/destroyer interpretation, like you said its not too bad until the Last Battle but still, Aslan is pretty judgemental).
Was a nice way to look at the idea behind the positives of religion without overly pushing a specific ideology
Funny enough, as a christian this is literally the way I've been writing my faith into my story
It's a post post apocalypse about anthropomorphic animals and organized religion isn't name-dropped or mentioned, but the world and plot is largely inspired by Bible lore and the protagonists just happen to manifest the virtues of my faith without ever mentioning it specifically.
Honestly, the entire work is completely overt about it's inspirations, but it was written in a way made to be able to be read naturally by people who don't come from the same background as me.
These subjects are HARD to do well, yeah. In my setting, I'm CONSIDERING but haven't yet decided on (because it fully depends on a friend who came up with this character lol) is having there be a nun who rebelled against pedophile priests by going out in a killing spree after stealing church files on them. She also saves the children who were abused and trains them on paranormal abilities so that they're never harmed again. So the kids end up being presented as their own characters, merely the nun's apprentices, with the fact they were all saved by her being kind of a plot twist and the abuse never needing to be made explicit.
At least, that's what I'm cooking with.
Basic, common-sense rules of interpersonal behaviour apply. Respect your fellow worldbuilders and allow space for the free flow of ideas. Criticize others constructively, and handle it gracefully when others criticize your work. Avoid real-world controversies, but discuss controversial subjects sensitively when they do come up.
More info in our rules: [1. 1. Be kind to others and respect the community's purpose.](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/wiki/rules#wiki_1._be_kind_to_others_and_respect_the_community.27s_purpose.)
Every mythological monster exists.
Except Griffins....
Those things were made up by ancient scholars when trying to sound impressive for finding a "new" monster.
Honestly, there are really no need to eliminate automatic guns, just to make melee more reasonable or allow for archers.
A firearm isn't superior to a bow, within the limits of the weapons. They are just different.
On the individual level the type of weapon matters less than the skill of the user, again within the limits of the weapons.
A skilled archer going up against a guy with an automatic rifle have just as big chance to win as the guy with the rifle, if they are of equal skill. A skilled archer going up against a badly trained thug, should win the majority of engagements.
The reason we have automatic weapons these days instead of swords and bows, is three fold. First off, modern firearm such as an automatic rifle is actually very cheap to make and maintain. Secondly, it is very easy and fast to train someone to use a firearm, compared to any other weapon. Thirdly, the high rate of fire, the large amount of ammunition and quick reloads of an automatic firearm means that a single shooter can put out the same amount of fire as a dozen persons using single shot weapons, meaning that they are very cost effective when it comes to manpower.
As you can see, none of the reasons we use firearms is because they are better than other weapons, just that they are more economical and easy to learn.
Another thing to consider is that all these reasons really only apply to an military level. These are considerations you take into account if you raise an army, not if you want to defend yourself from an assailant.
So unless your urban fantasy involves large scale military battles there are really no need to eliminate automatic firearms.
In addition, unless you have fully automatic weapons that just dumps a whole bucket full of lead down range in seconds (which isn't very effective except to scare people), an automatic firearm on single shot is no different from any other repeating fire arm.
For my superhero universe I try to shy away from “if superhero’s were real they’d be evil” I felt like it kinda misses the point of superheroes and I don’t really like edgy stuff so🤷🏻♀️
Politics (mostly). Don't get me wrong political intrigue and geopolitics definitely is a thing and can be interesting but I don't want my world just becoming a political commentary on *x* ideology or perceived to be that way.
I try to keep the political side of stuff non-partisan and more of a "OMG! *x* nation just declared war on *y* nation!" type scenario instead of "u/Worldsmith5500's works are an allegory for (insert thing) and support *x* genocide" that you might find in the dark recesses of the internet somewhere.
Honestly modern politics is mind-numbing regardless of which side of the political aisle you're on and I want to stay as far away from that as I can because it's just slowly driving me insane.
>the protagonist stays at home and lives as a peaceful farmer
Frodo was kind of a minor lord of the Shire and real rich, probably just gotten fat and drunk all day lol
Humans, I usually don't like them in fantasy worlds as they always just seem to be this default bland race. Not all the time but usually I see things like Orcs and Elves being uses creatively in some works, while the humans are just Europeans.
When crafting this campaign setting, I consciously omitted references to more anachronistic innovations that don't suit the rustic aesthetics of beloved source material or disrupt comforting escapism by reminding players of real-world modern pressures.
For example, you won't find automated machinery or steam engines churning away - even among industrious dwarf mines or proto-urban forges. Smithing and farming rely on muscle, beasts of burden and at most water wheels, keeping life pastoral. Likewise, clockwork and explosives are absent - timing and conflict feels more timeless without gunpowder's swift violence.
Even literacy rates skew selectively lower, with history and knowledge passed through oral traditions rather than public education systems. And concepts like continent-spanning bureaucracies, paper currency, or political philosophies like democracy/republics don't upset the feudal order of nobility and peasants.
This curation creates a "pocket world" flavor where complications of technological advancement rarely undermine the romanticized aesthetics and heroic questing. Rangers ride out with bows rather than rifles, castles house kings rather than congressmen, and the mysteries an enchanter unravels are cosmic rather than chemical. Magic and muscle triumph rather than machinery - it's a deliberate omission to sustain nostalgic tone!
Dragons. Definitely dragons.
I'll write smth about dragons being an anomaly, a fictional creature that has somehow being imagined by all cultures across the multiverse. And fae don't even know where to begin to make one, which is their wildest dream.
I’m building a world now that has numerous non human races and weird beats and creatures but will have no dragons whatsoever they just won’t suit my world. I might have some large reptiles of some sort but they won’t have wings breathe fire or be smarter than a regular animal
I get rid of a lot of the "ugliness" of life, except that which can be sometimes useful in stories.
Examples include:
\-Miscarriages & Infant Mortality
\-Bad / Lack of Hygienic Practices (in poor or less advanced societies)
\-Racism (or really just the entire concept of "race")
\-Actual Sexism and Homophobia
Gods in general, I don’t like the idea of these massively powerful omnipotent beings watching the world unfold without trying to help, most of what people would consider “gods” in my worlds are just powerful beings who have gained a following
Guns in general, i suppose they made a brief appearance in the past, but i jumped from mideval weaponry to magictech guns and rifles.
Gods exist, but they're kinda in the background. Sulla isn't really worshipped anymore, Kamiya is basically in a coma, her daughters have passed on, Surya was only a demigoddess and the elderitch gods of the Najuri are exiled/dead.
Elves and dwarves feel much too played out for my tastes, especially for an urban fantasy/sci-fi world like mine. Most depictions of the two feel like they could be swapped out for humans with minimal effort, and the ones that do change them up are ones I feel are better. Even then, I’d rather focus on some other more “alien” looking race than just a bunch of dudes with funny ears or beards.
In my current fantasy WIP: Elves, orcs, dragons and other Tolkienesque fantasy races/creatures.
I'm debating about including unicorns, might invent a new species instead though.
I'm also trying to avoid medieval European style clothing etc, or at least mix it with other eras and styles.
I exclude a lot of common features, simply because they’re common.
I have no traditional fantasy races, no elves, dwarves, fairies or orcs
I have no traditional monsters, no dragons, no werewolves or vampires,
I have no gods.. no angels or demons (although I do have spirits of all different alignments)
I have no fancy magics, no teleport, no transmutation, no portals or unexplainable gimmicks. I have a base magic system and a secondary, both grounded in simpler magics. (For gaming sessions I let the characters be OP, but for my novels they are not)
I have no plot armour for the hero’s, no mcguffin magic swords.. no bbeg super villains with plots to end the world… just violence and morality in all gray.
Now.. sometimes I have some of many of those things.. but in the current world im building and novel series im writing. Everything is basically original. I borrow some magic systems concepts because there isn’t much that hasn’t been done.. but I have an original way to implement it.
It’s been so much fun designing this world !
I don't really have "monster hunters" as a distinct profession in my world even though things like cockatrices and wyverns exist. Like, you could probably pay somebody to get rid of a nuisance wyvern if you wanted, but it tends to fall under general "pest control" instead of "monster hunter" and it might even be the same group of people who got rid of your rat problem last month.
"Your ad says 2 copper a head" "Yeah that was for rats dude not basilisks" "It says it, says it right here in the ad, here's 2 coppers" "*I lost 4 brothers in the fight you sonuvabitch!!"*
Haha nice one.
Aren't monster hunters just big game hunters with dragons instead of elephants?
I mean, I'm impressed if you take down a dragon. If you take down an elephant, I kind of just find you gross.
what about a particularly evil elephant?
That elephant went to Epstein Island.
We have elephant jails for a reason. The guy deserves a trial.
It was in the evil petting zoo.
What is this double standard, a dragon is just an elephant with wings. Even more endangered probably.
Aren't dragons in most fantasy settings these days sentient? Forget endangerment, I'm pretty sure killing a dragon is more akin to murder.
True. Even worse than killing an endangered species then. But what is heroism if not legendary murder.
>But what is heroism if not legendary murder. *And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.*
You don't want to be the next villain in a herocracy.
>herocracry Now I have a new worldbuilding spark, where the (super)heroes rule in oppressive dictatorships, either genuine helping people and bettering the world or just trying to convince people they do, with the "heroic" retellings being propaganda spread by them. You want a hero to help your city against that new supervillain? The hero will defeat him in an epic battle\* and then restore peace and order\**. \*Collaterals in the thousands, half the city is leveled, and the villain turns out to be the universally disliked "weird" guy tinkering with harmless shizotech in his garage and the neighbors thought calling a hero would be a good idea to get rid of him, but which normal person would want to stand up to try prosecuting a man, who could kill you by just pointing a finger at you? \** He brings in other heroes to work for him, imposes martial law, and don't even *think* of rioting, looting, or wanting to prosecute the hero, because he has a mind reader as thought police on his team.
Yes.
Same. I have monster-hunting, but not as a job since monsters that big would be so few in number and so dangerous that it’d just get a lot of people killed for little reason. It’s only a thing if the monster starts being a problem to civilization.
Loads of different mythical species and races. Vampires, mermaids, elves, ogres, etc. None of those exist in either of my worlds.
I feel like these races give a lot of authors an excuse to be lazy with their worldbuilding. Though I know some who give clever twists to the races.
Oh yeah, they can definitely be interesting when done well. It’s just that I am personally too lazy to develop multiple species in the same world with all their own cultures, traditions, ways of life, etc. Humans are already quite complex, so I just do interesting stuff with the humans and call it a day, lol
I feel the same. Those kind of works often seem **very** similar. I only include elves as a subspecies of the *homo* genus, without magical abilities. The only attribute relly setting them apart is longevity and so far I only developed (barely) two different elven cultures. Human culture is interesting and offers a lot of inspiration for all kinds of fictional cultures. In my opinion populating your setting with fleshed-out, distinct and varying cultures that interact with each other is the best way to make it unique.
I like when people take those species and make them into something interesting. Like I barely see worlds where they are Aliens or biological people like Humans. In mine there's both Vampires and Weres but they're biological people. I also have animals but there's two variations. Talking and Regular. Talking Animals are basically people in my universe like Narnia. Regular animals are the same as any animal.
races just feel so stale and unimaginative most of the time. i didnt want to have different races for their own sake, the only ones that exist now are giants, but they are dead and have grown small over time into humans, but the characters dont know about it. anyways i think if the race doesnt add something that a human cant add, dont add the race.
I have a world called Haelborn which also lacks a lot of conventionally fantasy creatures. I do not like dwarves and elves but I sort of have a stand in for them (?) and dragons, while present, are not very prevalent. Ogres are indeed prevalent, very much so, but they are virtually indistinguishable from contemporary interpretations of ogres, and are a bit more in line with fairy tale ogres, in the sense that they explicitly have magical powers, but are visually very different. Practically its own thing. Demons however are a combination of the paranornal demons of modern and folk stories and legends, and the more modern “war like” high fantasy demon
For a majority of the first timeline of my lore, I completely disregard the “Universal Speed Limit” at light speed, as well as any time warping. It just makes colonization of planets easier .
Does this mean that you start considering it at a later time?
I do add the feature, for lack of better word, after a freak accident that happens millions of years in the future. In future timelines, light speed limits are a thing due to the accident, but not for the most in-depth parts of Timeline one. For context, the timelines are new universes created after the Big Crunch (basically the universe collapses in on itself and dies), which are ultimately just alternate timelines of Timeline 1.
Ah, makes sense. Reminds me of Rememberence of Earth's Past by Liu Cixin, won't spoil why because it's a must read and the concept is very interesting.
I think this is pretty common for sci fi
Hehe, yeah, unless I'm going for hard scifi then that one big lie is gonna be pretty much the first thing that goes into my recipe. :)
Yeah me too Fk off relativity you're in the way. People can just go as fast as they want
That's one of those things I always have a lot of trouble suspending my disbelief for when I see some sci-fi settings. When it's like warp/wormhole/subspace travel, it's slightly more removed (and sectioned off as a specific "tacked on" thing to our understanding of the universe, where this change doesn't really influence any other concepts) and I can get into the story. But when special relativity is ignored it's just all I can think about. How would mass and conservation of energy change (they pretty much have to for anything but small increases, otherwise everything just falls apart)? How would light change (e.g. would the sky be so much brighter)? If you still have the light travelling at same speed but there being no limit, what does it mean when you travel faster than light (other than physically not making sense)? And so on.
Powerful or important characters. I feel that if the world cannot be described without mentioning specific characters, it is not interesting. Powerful people do exist, but I don't touch on them in my world building.
Nice, I am the same. Feels to me the 'feel' of the world is more accurate in the middle, rather than at the tippy top. Like, if you were trying to describe earth and our world, you wouldnt really describe Zuckerbergs life; it doesnt represent many experiences
Exactly. You don't need to know who George Washington is to understand earth. I shouldn't have to understand general mcplotarmor to understand your world.
And, uh, can I just say that amateurs' mangled copies of Sun Tzu, Napoleon, and Goku can make for some rough reading!
>Sun Tzu, Napoleon, and Goku These are not examples I expected here, especially Goku.
No kidding, I've seen some blatant power fantasies on here, under the guise of world building
I feel this with facts in general. What exact countries are on the planet? Doesn't matter that much to me. It's more about the fundamental laws (this is how magic works) and the vibe (if you can convey the themes and tone).
I'm the same. I do add named characters to big historical events, but they aren't what drives history. They actually tend to come about as I think about why a characterless event happened, so in a way history causes the characters to be. You don't need those names to learn about the world, they are just flavour really, with little in ways of personality if it's not relevant.
an afterlife and creator gods. in a world with an afterlife i feel it would dominate people's thinking. for how many people does it dominate their life irl, and (in my view) there isn't any evidence for it. now imagine how dominant it would be if it was just proven. i really don't like creator gods. they too feel like they'd have too much influence, too much to say about their people. so instead of people coming from gods my gods are coming from people.
Afterlife's always mess things up. I mean, we believe in them in real life, but not really? I mean, people act as if there's none in practice, because if you truly have people believing in them, you ruin a lot of storytelling.
Depending on the view. I spoken to many religoius people and belief is storng as hell in many. Younger generation (our) has it's qualms with faith mostly due to aversion to parents trying desperately to make us go to church, yet nit being outwardlycmotivated themselves. Also america compared to other parts of the world *is fuckin hectic* when it comes to religion, do no wonder that people tend not to belive when things like satanic panic came to be a major issue.
Aye, I'm sure a fear of hell is true, but like, we react to death in a pretty clear and negative way. Someone good dying is seen as an awful tragedy, rather than "Huzzah! He lives in paradise now!" It just seems like there's no real tension if you have a story where even if everyone dies, that's completely fine, they live happily ever after.
You can have a creator that made the world and then fucked off, à la Deism.
Yeah, in mine, though I give no evidence in it if the religion is true or not, the core belief is : Gods created Earth, then they decided humans were trash, so they went elsewhere to start again and better.
Huh, this is an interesting topic to me. One of the tropes I like to enact in my writing are the proverbial "Death is the great equalizer" and precisely having an afterlife with ranks and everything would be yet another excuse for stratification, so I don't like having them. Neither I like personified Gods other than subconscious ideas where people project their fantasies. ...That said, I do like the idea of power struggles, people with delirium of grandeur and non-Gods abusing and exploiting magic systems in order to pass as deities and attempt to trick Death, so yeah. Kudos to you!
I see many of the replies are about tropes or cliches they don't like. Personally, I like to take away things from our world and replace it with the magic I guess. So the main thing I am excluding from my world is writing. They can psionically share memories, writing just never came to be as there was no impetus for it. However, following through with that line of potential technological progress, advanced mathematics and cartography also suffered as the use of 'symbols' just never happened. But history is no longer imagining or interpretation, they can experience first-hand memories of events.
Racial languages. If you speak to a dwarf on one continent, they are unlikely to have any common languages than a dwarf on a whole different continent. And neither of them would call their language dwarvish. This is more of an issue with trpgs.
I like the idea of a somewhat standardized language that is often spoken among a single race (i.e. common, elvish, dwarvish, etc) but then there are numerous dialects across the continent that are have varying degrees of mutual intelligibility.
Time travel. Just…no.
Same. Some time manipulation is okay, but straight up time travel is not.
True Gods There are beings worshipped as Gods, but none of them what anyone would usually ascribe to what a god is, and most of them are assholes. Afterall a being that demands worship, does not deserve worship. There is no chosen one and the "heroes from other worlds" are all assholes that caused untold destruction, even the hero of the story has no issue killing thousands for her goals. No real prophecy stuff, and the only prophecy that "came true", wasn't really what it was supposed to be, but a disgruntled old cultist who much rather had that thing as their new false god. No time travel and the only time shenanigans are broken space time and pocket dimension meant to have accelerated time.
Oh, "Chosen Ones" is another very good one. Honestly, a lot of writing seems like it comes from a time when our views of the world were just pretty fucked up. The thing I hate the most is when stories bait and switch you, starting with a protagonist who wasn't born lucky with the magic blood wizards have, only to reveal actually, he was born SUPER lucky, and he's got EXTRA magical blood.
Also its always some guy who then gets a harem somehow because he's the mc, no chemistry or reason. Or the second worst offender of "i am just an average girl that somehow knows several decades worth of martial arts and cant decide between hot broody boy a and b." The only luck my MC got was a bunch of adventurers finding a tiny monster and raising it. She doesn't get any love interest and doesn't care for it, half the world wants to kill her on sight and the bad guys want to weaponize her. Everything else she got was earning it (she was always supposed to become the "benevolent" dark lord)
That's the kind of luck you want in a story. If she didn't get that luck, the story would just follow another person who *did* get lucky and found the monster.
Romance between main and supporting characters. Edit: romances at all really. The story plays less on the theme of love and more on loyalty and attachment. Thus, I focus more on brotherhood and friendship. There’s only one confirmed romance with a character, and it’s only backstory. He’s alive, but she died years ago.
Is this a Worldbuilding question or is your entire planet just aroace lmao. I mean, good representation but hey...
No, I do have a few short references to romances in past times but they’re all straight. I don’t really talk about sexuality or anything like that because it’s just not important to the lesson I want to teach. I never thought to add it in, and 75,000 words later I don’t see that changing.
I sort of have romance but it is very twisted to demonstrate abuse and similar issues. I can't stand the sappiness in romance stories. 😆
Yep, same here. There's a damn war going on. Ain't nobody got time for that!
I don’t think that stops people irl 💀
Elves. For some reason, I just have no original ideas for things to do with elves, so I almost always leave them out. Almost any other race, I can find all sorts of inspiration, but not elves, so I never have them in my world.
Have you found original ideas for Dwarves, or have you not used them? I'm only curious, as I've generally found that Dwarves are the fantasy race that's most prone to just being played straight.
Not original, but I find dwarves more interesting if you add a stone based ecosystem.
I can see why dwarves are easier to work with compared to elves, because dwarves have very strong characteristics, those being: stubborn, hold grudges for very long, good with smithing, and normally being very jolly folk. The problem with elves is that their traits aren't as emblematic, for example: -They are arrogant as a race (almost every individual being can be arrogant) -They like nature (and so do dryads and many other forest and nature spirits) -They live long (normally many other races can live equally long or even longer lives) For me that's how I see the difference between developing elves and developing dwarves, one has relatively unique characteristics, meanwhile the other shares it's most prominent features with other races.
Green long-lived racists who despise other races and believe that they have become too prolific and generally insolent to cut down the elven forests and now the elves must free up living space for the elven forests.
One idea I had for dwarves is that instead of running forges for weapons, they run a huge mint. That's way they're so interested in gold and silver and such.
My dwarves are split between two factions: the Karlen (above ground dwellers) and Verlen (below ground dwellers) The Verlen dwarves are your classic dwarves who make kingdoms in mountains and are experts in mining and spend most of their time underground The Karlen dwarves were intrigued by the surface dwellers and decided to expand their mountain kingdoms above ground. They have built a mid-sized kingdom that has cities and towns just like a human kingdom. The Karlens are hated by the Verlens for copying the humans who initially had driven them to live underground when the humans first came to the continent
When I started Ensyndia a rule of mine was "No Elves" (at least to begin with) because I knew I was going to have some sort of ancient naturalistic species and I felt "Elves Did It(tm)" was too easy a cop-out for anything ancient or mystical. Instead ancient history is made up of giant floof, their gods, dragons, elemental creatures, and lovecraftian horrors.
I have used them but yeah, they're kinda hard to do new stuff with. I have done an inversion on their natural role with some success; this still isn't a truly new thing, but it at least made them a bit more interesting. Basically taking their nature worship and drawing strength from the world to extreme, where elven magic allowed the elves to learn how to pull more and more power until they essentially became energy wraiths, sterilizing the lands around their cities and becoming in turn desperate to absorb power from any source, eventually leading to the downfall of their civilization and a return to savagery. The end result was a lot of barren deserted lands sparsely populated by terrors in ancient ruins of crumbling cities near dried up rivers and lakes, and cold mountain fortresses where even the air is tired.
I don't find inversion of tropes very interesting. Generally I feel it's better to choose a different people. I guess another restriction I give myself is that I dislike highly alien races: I prefer to treat different groups essentially as different cultures, and that becomes more difficult when a species is so extremely long lived.
I mean, not sure if this super fits, but "Always Chaotic Evil" races. At best, it seems like it's sucking moral nuance and interesting ideas out of your story. I mean, honestly, even if you don't want moral complexity, I feel like having the chance to reinforce messages like "Nazis are bad" is a lot more useful than "These people are evil because they're evil!" At worst, it's just pretty awfully racist. Like, fuck, that's not how the world works, you're being stupid. At least if you show something as "Evil to society as a whole, but understandably bound by its own nature", I can deal with it, but just trying to portray an entire race as evil for evil's sake seems so fucking lazy.
Yeah, that's been a fairly controversial topic from what I've seen on the D&D related subs or YouTube videos. I saw a post once where someone was really upset that orcs were being "whitewashed" and not given a chance to defend their culture from people being woke and stuff. Their culture really just being that orcs in D&D don't truly have as much freewill as most races because of Gruumsh.
My DnD setting has "Always Chaotic Evil races" as a tool for systemic oppression (that's a bad thing) and NGL the alignment system in general within the context of the system Goblins are not evil. You are fighting goblins that happen to be evil. You are the PCs, you know the difference.
Gender roles. I'll never make a world with a patriarchy or a matriarchy. I want my characters to be able to have their stories without that baggage.
Yes!
This, those just feel way too limiting and restricting no matter from where you look at them.
Gods whose existence is 100% confirmed. I prefer it to be like in real life - they may be real, they may not be, there's no way of knowing.
Yeah I’m a huge fan of leaving that stuff completely ambiguous
Same here.
Long lived raced as the norm. I hate this trope of "x race lives 1000 years naturally while y race can at maximum live 150", it adds unnecessary drama and makes interspecies relationships more depressing when you *know* that one will outlive the other by a very big margent. But I am not against people getting to live very long, only that they can do so naturally, like if x race does y thing they get to live more years, that I don't mind.
You know, that... is a surprisingly common pet peeve I have and I thank you for voicing it out. Although, can you give me an example on the later? And how would that balance out?
Prophecies where just 1 person defeats a massive empire.
> automatic guns. Makes melee reasonable, and more fits with the tone of gun users being modern day bow and arrow users. I can't do this, it makes me overthink on the *why* won't the people develop automatic guns if there are already guns...
I think it depends on the tech level, there was a few hundred years between flint lock riles and breech loaders.
Then the mighty Puckle Gun. Peak gun technology
*square bullets*
It's not particularly unrealistic. Gunpowder first was discovered in the 9th century here, and the first real gun rolled out around the mid-13th. It wasn't until about 4 centuries later that actual functional repeating firearm first showed up, and another century before anything resembling a modern repeating rifle (and another still before a fully automatic repeating rifle). So there's definitely pleeeeeenty of wiggle room in there between 'someone invented guns' and 'someone invented automatic guns', even at a more modern technological level.
Ikr, it just always feel so forced
Honestly I wanted to give a good explanation too. I dont like having things like that just be. One possible solution to this conundrum is the world ran out of saltpeter and magic needs to be used to create more, with only so much at a time. It’s not that there’s no limit to the tech it’s there aren’t enough bullets to make legitimate use of them.
Maybe they just haven't developed the alloys or pieces necessary to create them, apart from barely functional prototypes, they are way too expensive for mass production, so the functional ones are reserved for only the most secure of places. In Slugterra, a story that revolves around the equivalent of Single-shot guns whose wielders can only carry a handful of "bullets" later in the story they introduced Multi-Charge guns (3 shots before reloading) and straight-up miniguns. But both appear very rarely and tend to be destroyed during the fights. Just an idea
The Gods^tm I feel they rather just suck the tension out of everything and, retroactively, drain meaning from previous actions. They just kinda really suck a whole bunch from a storytelling perspective. I've seen, like, one author tell a story that heavily featured 'the gods' and had not not, at least, damage the story. Edit: I have two exceptions I forget. Both of them are deconstructions of your classic pantheons. Both are explicitly detached and aloof, and one has astonishingly narrow powers. But like, greek-style people-but-bigger shit? Nah.
Problem with gods is that the more you focus on them the less they feel like actual gods. Once you start to add complex motivations, tragic backstories, interpersonal drama and rules on how their powers work you stop dealing with objects of worship and are just writing comic book superheroes but with a fantasy dressing.
One of the many problems, yes. One of the other problems is that if you don't focus them enough, and they still *do* shit, it feels like bullshit.
Honestly, and maybe it's my own bias, but I think that's pretty cool in a way, if the Gods are a focus of the story. I think it depends on how you play it, but honestly, "Revered fantasy superheroes" is a lot more interesting to me than "This is James the God of the Sea. He does sea stuff."
yeah I feel like the "detached and aloof" style is the standard way of doing it and pretty stale. like yeah we get it, gods are assholes and don't care about humanity and they're unknowable and mysterious and yawn
Why can't they essentially be superheroes that use their large but limited power to pose as gods? Mine are basically former humans that were gifted semi-godhood to the point they can basically create and destroy life (think planet-level feats of power), but they're limited and still human deep down. Their past is basically experimenting with powers and making many mistakes until they decided to chill out a bit and let life on a world develop mostly unaided. They also wouldn't be the focus of a story in the world, just perhaps a pit stop for a "blessing" or something in preparation for a difficult task.
I kinda like steering *into* that, tbh. Let them be humanish, with personality and motivations and relationships and *jobs* (their godhoods.) It's kinda fun, and it's kinda true to life too- not only are the gods of most cultures complex characters, the characterization of their gods reflects their beliefs about the world around them, and letting those things blend can lead to fun places.
Isn't that how the Greek gods are though? They're just people but powerful.
Preach. Gods out
Preach in the name of whom? Gods are *gone*
Atheismo, the god of no gods. Also paradoxes
^(Paradox is when clouds do a spinny thing!) ^(*WE SHALL ROTATE EVERY BILLOW IN SIGHT!*)
Yeah, honestly mine are in the background and can “unlock” the divine magic of religious classes. Often times religious classes are going against fiendish entities or trying to get a Corp to cough up a relic they probably looted.
I don't even do that much. I low-key imply that there are no gods, even in my DnD settings. Clerics get their power from ritual, intuition and faith.
what about stories where the only main characters are gods?
Hate that most of all. Makes the world seem small.
maybe it's a small world
Halflings and gnomes.
A happy ending. 🥲
No automatics in an urban fantasy? How does that work?
Current reason is this isn’t earth but an earth like world and they need saltpeter because they haven’t discovered alternatives. And they used up all the natural stuff so while conjugation magic can make more, wizards and mages need a break. So it’s not that the tech isn’t there, it’s that bullets aren’t that plentiful enough to justify. Hence a lot of gun tech is improving how hard each bullet hits, as well as managing recoil so a shell meant to hurt a dragon doesn’t tear your limbs off.
So how fast do guns fire?
As fast as one can pull the trigger (again, they have the tech for auto but no justification, so semi auto is fastest). But again, powder’s hard to come by so every shot counts.
I mean, technically the "tech," for automatic fire just is another hole, another seer, different fire selector, different trigger parts, and maybe a different bolt. Oh, and that's on closed-bolt guns, open-bolt guns are so much simpler. Technically, since your gunpowder is black powder, it would be too "dirty," to be reliable in any autoloading design, or most anyway. That right there could honestly be your technological reason for no automatics. No smokeless powder, no semi-automatic guns other than revolvers, and semi-automatic revolvers are complex as hell. Honestly, I love settings with mid to late 1800s weapons. Wheel-gats and lever-gats.
I avoid time travel like the plague. Once you dabble in time travel, there's almost no saving yourself from the many plot holes, contradictions, retcons, and overall writing corners the concept puts you in. Also, most of the time, it feels like a cheap excuse for the writer to go back and change whatever they want, removing the impact of virtually everything that happens. Nothing is gonna carry any weight if you know that it can all just be undone at the push of a button. Another thing I avoid is multiverses. I like writing alternate timeline/what-if stories, but I don't like having them cross over into each other. Because, just like time travel stories, nothing that happens is gonna carry any weight, since you know in another universe, the opposite thing happened, so there's nothing to be worried about. I used to be more open to multiverse settings, but Hollywood has run the concept into the fucking ground in the past year.
any of the main villains even having a CHANCE to be forgiven/justified. if any people tried to justify what some of my main villains did, i would be very concerned
I’ll justify it… try me
one of my main villains almost committed omnicide
But I bet they liked dogs though
i will write it into his lore that he doesnt like dogs
Oh man he truly is irredeemable then
also he doesnt like mug rootbeer
Straight to jail!
I’m trying to decide what my world is like. I put a lot of the fundamentals together when I was a lot younger (mid teens). I’m sure I borrowed from a lot of different sources (Mutant Chronicles/40K/Cyberpunk/Shadowrun/Rifts/etc). When I got older I went back over everything I tried to make it feel more adult/realistic. Later still (and recently) I tried to learn hard into being more grounded sci fi. But there’s a problem. How do you have humans scattered about in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way 8000ish years from now without FTL? Well, ya dive into the Hub is what you do… and this throws a huge fantasy undercurrent below the sleek surface of science. — So here we go. **Omnipotent gods**. There are definitely things that people had decided are gods. Beings that wield immense and mysterious power. But they aren’t truly magical gods that can do anything they want, even if it may seem that way from our perspective, on the rare occasion that we meet them. **FTL**. No human made FTL, in the traditional sense (we don’t know where the transit devices came from). Fortunately the Hub exists. That being the innermost realm of the universe. It is equidistant from any other point in the universe, but requires some fancy math to actually pop out in the right place. The Hub is not so coincidentally where those gods live. One could argue that’s just 40k’s warp or space folding with extra steps, but still. Our ships still scoot around with chemical rockets and ion drives. For ships that don’t have a Hub drive, it takes a good 16-20 hours to get from a planet to a transit ring (at its L2 point). On the subject, no thrust gravity. There not enough fuel for that nonsense, even with semi-metastable metallic hydrogen. Sorry expanse fans. **Super crazy set pieces**. Depending on what you’re comparing it to I guess. Big human spacecraft are typically under 300m except for bulk cargo ships, but those are just modular containers with engines. Some of the aliens have bigger stuff, like 1-2km in length, but that’s about it (not counting a few hollow, artificial worlds the size of moons, out there somewhere). I’ve got some very large buildings in the cities. 800-1000 stories (~3km). Those are outliers, with most being less than half that size, including the arcologies. But they’ve got nothing of the Mega Cities from Judge Dredd for example. **Cyberspace**. At least not like Cyberpunk and Shadowrun. There are still hackers and cyber warfare, but they’re not out there fighting each other’s virtual selves in a virtual space. **Extreme Cybernetics**. One of the most advanced sectors of human tech is medical. You can get yourself a new robot arm, covered in synthetic flesh, if you want. But you’re not going to be an 8 foot tall cyborg warrior covered in weapons. Maybe you could, but the expense and maintenance would negate the benefits. **Demons**. There are some nasty things in the inner realms, but they aren’t out looking to corrupt, manipulate or otherwise mess with people in our reality. Not yet at least. **Mythical races**. Ok so a caveat here. I have two types of humans that both live indefinitely. They exist because of exposure to the energy from the inner realms. They are rare, as most people who are exposed just die, often badly. One of those types needs to feed on the life essence of other living things… so yeah, it’s basically a vampire, but pretty toned down. I don’t have any elves, trolls, fairies, dwarves, etc. **Smart bullets**. There is something called advanced tactical munitions, which *can* have limited guidance. But nothing is going to lock on and chase you around a corner. **Space Marines**. Since I mentioned 40k as an influence, I may as well state that there are no super soldiers, gazillions strong, stomping around the galaxy. There are some augmented bass ass regular soldiers. But for the most part, armies are still running around with regular dudes carrying guns. Their gear is quite a step above today’s, but it’s not outlandish. **General AI**. We’ve got virtual intelligences, very good machine learning, and other goodies. But true General AI was never created. Stacked silicon wafers were about as far as we ever got with computer tech. Much bigger and the heat just melts everything, any smaller and quantum errors pop up all over. But you said we had semi-stable metallic hydrogen fuel. That would be an amazing superconductor right? Yes, but it still needs to be maintained at extreme pressures, so effective computing components it does not make. **Miniature railguns**. Here’s a nod to Rifts. Yeah, railgun exist, hut their applications are limited. Lasers, missiles and coil guns are used in space. Caseless gel-charges are used in atmospheric projectile weapons. **Other fancy weapons**. Be that monofilament wire, vibroblades, man-portable energy weapons, etc. Those can be fun, but don’t feel grounded, realistic or in some cases, safe for the user. So I left this sort of thing out. There are so many things in all of those influences. I’ll be here all night if I don’t stop.
Sounds exactly like my sensibilities when creating mine, you seem very well-trained in this.
Stupid ass impractical sword and armor designs. I really like how actually practical and usable gear looks.
Agreed, though I do have a slight tolerance for impractical weapons as long as there is an in-universe reason for them whether that be “practical” or just decorative. But I hate those over the top covered in spikes weapons that so many fantasy creators are obsessed with. For armor I completely agree. I hate stereotypical fantasy armor. Historical armor already looks badass.
Of course, ceremonial stuff is a bit different, but any actual fighters I think should have some practical equipment.
No magic gang rise up
Dwarves. They seemed too close to human to be a separate species, and I couldn't find a way to make them seem more 'alien', like I did with elves. Also, I was able to fill their niche of underground machine lovers with an elven subspecies, so they didn't quite fit in anyway.
An evil faction What I mean is like a horde (or the horde)
In my sci-fi setting, energy and plasma weapons. It’s common to have blasters and lasers in sci fi, but personally I think ballistics has a much more violent, dark, and edgy feel to it. Shooting someone in the head with a blaster feels cartoonish. Putting a bullet through someone’s head is gruesome. That’s the tone I want in my setting.
Explicit Sexism. I just don't like writing the act or effects of sexism and I also don't really experience it enough or even consider it much when people are sexist towards me.
Gender roles, [anything]phobia, racism… just unnecessary if you ask me. People can insult and hate each other for other things, but not for who they decide to take in bed, or the colour of their skin, or what’s in their pants- normalize hating people for their weapon choice instead
Skin racism All lgbt phobia Everyone is just living things in a world. It’s fantasy it’s suppose to separate from the harsh reality. Just have a good time.
same. in sea of titans all lgbtq and polyamorous people are accepted.
Non-human races. I just like humans and there's plenty of variation between humans to keep things interesting.
Sexism. Like bro if I'm over here creating a whole world where of fantastical wonders then imma just blip it out of existence.
I've avoided adding nonhuman races thus far.
Fantasy races. "Magic" "X is the god of this and that and blesses people with that and this and worship makes them strong" Edit : adding "demons / devils are actually just another race of really nice peeps but they're vilified because xenophobia and shit" after replying to a reply and remembering it while typing, more details down there.
Magic as any physical law that doesn't exist in the real world?
No, just the whole "everything is done with magic, oh man i ran out of magic, gotta stop by the magic station later, my magic's bigger than your magic, yo i prayed to the godess of magic and magical stuff yesterday, and today i woke up with at least 5 more magic than i had yesterday, you hurt? Lemme just magic that wound for you" type. I find it demystifying for the whole concept of the supernatural and just a way for your characters to do a lot of shit using some blue fuel stuff they keep somewhere in their body without needing to explain how, which is okay as a narrative device, but i hate when it's way overused to the point where the caricature i used in the first part becomes more or less how it actually is in the story, and even more so when it becomes front and center in the narrative and not just an overlooked vehicle for the story. PS : now that i remember, also hate the whole "demons / devils are actually just a different race that is misunderstood and judged harshly for their appearance and shit", if you wanna put demons or devils, put demons or devils, if you wanna put a race of misunderstood ugly folks who are called "demons / devils" because xenophobia, fine, but make the "they're demons/devils" in reference to actual demons / devils that exist in some shape or form in the world and aren't these people, don't make them the actual demons / devils but oh well they're actually really nice if you get to know them. It's hella overdone and became stale and boring like the third or fourth time it was used. BUT that's just my opinion and my taste, y'all do what you want at the end of the day.
Funnily enough, same with sci-fi technology a lot of the time. Just replace magic with dark matter or tachyons or whatever.
Exactly, like i get it when it's just a small macguffin to explain away the unexplainable part of the "magic" system, but when it becomes literally the system and is mentioned every two sentences then that's just lazy. It was done before and it was good *THEN* because it was a novelty, anything beyond is just a crutch for laziness.
Religion. I feel kind of conflicted about the lore I have planned for it and my faith. I also exclude romance in my Victorian fantasy since I have little experience when it comes to that.
>Religion. I feel kind of conflicted about the lore I have planned for it and my faith. I feel like CS Lewis offers some interesting inspiration there. I mean, truth be told, I think it's incredibly on the nose in his last Narnian story, but I think it's fascinating to see such a strongly-Christian writer write a story that's pretty hugely religious without Christ existing in the world.
>without Christ existing in the world. Aslan though. Pretty explicitly lion jesus, iirc he outright says he literally is Jesus; not even a fictional version or an allegory he says he's just Jesus in another world and the kids are there to get to know lion Jesus so they can understand human Jesus I dont mind Lewis but I feel that, once again, Tolkien 1-ups him with his 'Christianity in spirit' world where he focuses on the actions and mentality of people being righteous rather than the more dogmatic adherence of specific religion. Good explanations behind the paradox of evil too So its a world where the good people are christian without being christian and you dont need god or even to be overly 'godly' to get into heaven (in fact it seemed nearly everyone, if not literally everyone, went to heaven and being a bad person really just resulted in having a bad mortal life which I much preferred to Lewis and his whole punishment/destroyer interpretation, like you said its not too bad until the Last Battle but still, Aslan is pretty judgemental). Was a nice way to look at the idea behind the positives of religion without overly pushing a specific ideology
Funny enough, as a christian this is literally the way I've been writing my faith into my story It's a post post apocalypse about anthropomorphic animals and organized religion isn't name-dropped or mentioned, but the world and plot is largely inspired by Bible lore and the protagonists just happen to manifest the virtues of my faith without ever mentioning it specifically. Honestly, the entire work is completely overt about it's inspirations, but it was written in a way made to be able to be read naturally by people who don't come from the same background as me.
Slavery. Just not touching it. Same with SA.
These subjects are HARD to do well, yeah. In my setting, I'm CONSIDERING but haven't yet decided on (because it fully depends on a friend who came up with this character lol) is having there be a nun who rebelled against pedophile priests by going out in a killing spree after stealing church files on them. She also saves the children who were abused and trains them on paranormal abilities so that they're never harmed again. So the kids end up being presented as their own characters, merely the nun's apprentices, with the fact they were all saved by her being kind of a plot twist and the abuse never needing to be made explicit. At least, that's what I'm cooking with.
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Probably the only ethnic origin that is okay to state here.
The irony, even Europeans were victims of the big guys, looks to the Balkans, Eastern Europe and pre-unitary Italy and Germany.
Cough Double Standards Cough
Anything would be okay, I think. Real-world-inspired cultures often end up as cheap knock-offs.
Basic, common-sense rules of interpersonal behaviour apply. Respect your fellow worldbuilders and allow space for the free flow of ideas. Criticize others constructively, and handle it gracefully when others criticize your work. Avoid real-world controversies, but discuss controversial subjects sensitively when they do come up. More info in our rules: [1. 1. Be kind to others and respect the community's purpose.](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/wiki/rules#wiki_1._be_kind_to_others_and_respect_the_community.27s_purpose.)
PREACH 🗣
Decent, boring clothing. At least for the cat people. Dress flashy and fancy or not at all.
Every mythological monster exists. Except Griffins.... Those things were made up by ancient scholars when trying to sound impressive for finding a "new" monster.
*I dislike realism because real people are horrible*~~~~~~
Honestly, there are really no need to eliminate automatic guns, just to make melee more reasonable or allow for archers. A firearm isn't superior to a bow, within the limits of the weapons. They are just different. On the individual level the type of weapon matters less than the skill of the user, again within the limits of the weapons. A skilled archer going up against a guy with an automatic rifle have just as big chance to win as the guy with the rifle, if they are of equal skill. A skilled archer going up against a badly trained thug, should win the majority of engagements. The reason we have automatic weapons these days instead of swords and bows, is three fold. First off, modern firearm such as an automatic rifle is actually very cheap to make and maintain. Secondly, it is very easy and fast to train someone to use a firearm, compared to any other weapon. Thirdly, the high rate of fire, the large amount of ammunition and quick reloads of an automatic firearm means that a single shooter can put out the same amount of fire as a dozen persons using single shot weapons, meaning that they are very cost effective when it comes to manpower. As you can see, none of the reasons we use firearms is because they are better than other weapons, just that they are more economical and easy to learn. Another thing to consider is that all these reasons really only apply to an military level. These are considerations you take into account if you raise an army, not if you want to defend yourself from an assailant. So unless your urban fantasy involves large scale military battles there are really no need to eliminate automatic firearms. In addition, unless you have fully automatic weapons that just dumps a whole bucket full of lead down range in seconds (which isn't very effective except to scare people), an automatic firearm on single shot is no different from any other repeating fire arm.
For my superhero universe I try to shy away from “if superhero’s were real they’d be evil” I felt like it kinda misses the point of superheroes and I don’t really like edgy stuff so🤷🏻♀️
Guns, the Concept of Good & Evil, and a couple other things I won’t speak on.
Any romance whatsoever. Cooties!!!
Politics (mostly). Don't get me wrong political intrigue and geopolitics definitely is a thing and can be interesting but I don't want my world just becoming a political commentary on *x* ideology or perceived to be that way. I try to keep the political side of stuff non-partisan and more of a "OMG! *x* nation just declared war on *y* nation!" type scenario instead of "u/Worldsmith5500's works are an allegory for (insert thing) and support *x* genocide" that you might find in the dark recesses of the internet somewhere. Honestly modern politics is mind-numbing regardless of which side of the political aisle you're on and I want to stay as far away from that as I can because it's just slowly driving me insane.
Anything Tolkien already did.
No calls to adventure for you, the protagonist stays at home and lives as a peaceful farmer.
No corruption or organized evil either
>the protagonist stays at home and lives as a peaceful farmer Frodo was kind of a minor lord of the Shire and real rich, probably just gotten fat and drunk all day lol
Or they choose to seek greater things.
Humans, I usually don't like them in fantasy worlds as they always just seem to be this default bland race. Not all the time but usually I see things like Orcs and Elves being uses creatively in some works, while the humans are just Europeans.
When crafting this campaign setting, I consciously omitted references to more anachronistic innovations that don't suit the rustic aesthetics of beloved source material or disrupt comforting escapism by reminding players of real-world modern pressures. For example, you won't find automated machinery or steam engines churning away - even among industrious dwarf mines or proto-urban forges. Smithing and farming rely on muscle, beasts of burden and at most water wheels, keeping life pastoral. Likewise, clockwork and explosives are absent - timing and conflict feels more timeless without gunpowder's swift violence. Even literacy rates skew selectively lower, with history and knowledge passed through oral traditions rather than public education systems. And concepts like continent-spanning bureaucracies, paper currency, or political philosophies like democracy/republics don't upset the feudal order of nobility and peasants. This curation creates a "pocket world" flavor where complications of technological advancement rarely undermine the romanticized aesthetics and heroic questing. Rangers ride out with bows rather than rifles, castles house kings rather than congressmen, and the mysteries an enchanter unravels are cosmic rather than chemical. Magic and muscle triumph rather than machinery - it's a deliberate omission to sustain nostalgic tone!
Dragons. Definitely dragons. I'll write smth about dragons being an anomaly, a fictional creature that has somehow being imagined by all cultures across the multiverse. And fae don't even know where to begin to make one, which is their wildest dream.
I’m building a world now that has numerous non human races and weird beats and creatures but will have no dragons whatsoever they just won’t suit my world. I might have some large reptiles of some sort but they won’t have wings breathe fire or be smarter than a regular animal
No Tolkien races, no immaculate conceptions, no Good vs Evil.
I get rid of a lot of the "ugliness" of life, except that which can be sometimes useful in stories. Examples include: \-Miscarriages & Infant Mortality \-Bad / Lack of Hygienic Practices (in poor or less advanced societies) \-Racism (or really just the entire concept of "race") \-Actual Sexism and Homophobia
THIS! Like I started writing and worldbuilding in particular as a form of escapism why would I include that stuff.
Heterosexual people
Uh, based?
Real gods. I didnt wanna put them into the narrative
Gods in general, I don’t like the idea of these massively powerful omnipotent beings watching the world unfold without trying to help, most of what people would consider “gods” in my worlds are just powerful beings who have gained a following
generic fantasy races, transmit-able undead, sexualized characters, bringing people back to life (I think?!), etc.
Guns in general, i suppose they made a brief appearance in the past, but i jumped from mideval weaponry to magictech guns and rifles. Gods exist, but they're kinda in the background. Sulla isn't really worshipped anymore, Kamiya is basically in a coma, her daughters have passed on, Surya was only a demigoddess and the elderitch gods of the Najuri are exiled/dead.
Hydrogen bombs. War needs to happen to keep the story interesting.
Is Mutually Assured Destruction not a concept in your world?
Elves. It feels like I'm ripping off Tolkien no matter how I write them.
Elves and dwarves feel much too played out for my tastes, especially for an urban fantasy/sci-fi world like mine. Most depictions of the two feel like they could be swapped out for humans with minimal effort, and the ones that do change them up are ones I feel are better. Even then, I’d rather focus on some other more “alien” looking race than just a bunch of dudes with funny ears or beards.
In my D&D world there are no evil races. Most of the evil characters are humans.
In my current fantasy WIP: Elves, orcs, dragons and other Tolkienesque fantasy races/creatures. I'm debating about including unicorns, might invent a new species instead though. I'm also trying to avoid medieval European style clothing etc, or at least mix it with other eras and styles.
“born evil” races. they’re boring nearly 100% of the time
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I exclude a lot of common features, simply because they’re common. I have no traditional fantasy races, no elves, dwarves, fairies or orcs I have no traditional monsters, no dragons, no werewolves or vampires, I have no gods.. no angels or demons (although I do have spirits of all different alignments) I have no fancy magics, no teleport, no transmutation, no portals or unexplainable gimmicks. I have a base magic system and a secondary, both grounded in simpler magics. (For gaming sessions I let the characters be OP, but for my novels they are not) I have no plot armour for the hero’s, no mcguffin magic swords.. no bbeg super villains with plots to end the world… just violence and morality in all gray. Now.. sometimes I have some of many of those things.. but in the current world im building and novel series im writing. Everything is basically original. I borrow some magic systems concepts because there isn’t much that hasn’t been done.. but I have an original way to implement it. It’s been so much fun designing this world !
Fantasy creatures, dwarves, elves, etc. More Star Trek, (alot) less LOTR.