#worldbuilding

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Remember, not everything in your world will be finished. Perhaps there is a reason construction was stopped. Perhaps they've only just started.

(Gundelon Castle in France, being hand built using only traditional techniques.)

A four turret castle with an enclosed courtyard backed by a hall.

The first post in a (hopeful) series doing some world building using Matt Finch's "Tome of World Building". I approached it like a solo game. No specific intent of using the world at the end - although this is coming up more and more in my "GM shower thoughts".

I've got notes and maps from several sessions prior to breaking my fingers.

https://blog.psionic-cyclops.org/article/tome-of-world-building-session-1-genre-and-theme/

1/ @rorystarr asked me about some ideas for folklore-themed dungeons - specifically, dungeons that are connected to the "Feywild". So I took a look at my repository of translations of German folk tales, and here is what I found.

But first, a word about definitions. German folklore almost never uses the German equivalent of "fairie" ("Fee"). Instead, a more common term is "Geist", which is a direct translation of "spirit" - and can describe almost any supernatural entity.

Thus, in my exploration of this theme I have limited myself to places linked to entities which are (a) not clearly ghosts, and (b) not clearly demons. This is as close as we will get to "fairies", I am afraid...

The painting "Dark thoughts" by Arthur Hughes. A scared-looking man sits on a spiral staircase, while some black bat/cat hybrids are fluttering around near the ceiling.

While idly I realized I seem disproportionately inclined to invent places with both tropical beaches and deep forests. My imagination likes itself a good forested archipelago.

After our last session, a player had an idea for a lovely detail.

We’re in a city fractured by walls of dangerous shadows. You can slip into them and never return. Parts of the city have tight alleyways and paths formed by these walls, and in some places they have built fences to keep people from falling in.

Not all paths have this protection, though, and it is not uncommon to see little candles or bouquets in places where a loved one has fallen into shadow to never return.

It had been years since a member of the Enclosed Kingdom's people had been seen in the lands of men. This could only mean trouble.

Find out more at:
https://www.amzn.com/B0FNS4YP4M

Rhongwen faces a group of angry men.

It had been years since a member of the Enclosed Kingdom's people had been seen in the lands of men. This could only mean trouble.

Find out more at:
https://www.amzn.com/B0FNS4YP4M

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Rhongwen faces a group of angry men.

Open question to the Fediverse/Universe/Mastodon:

Has anyone used Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator in a TTRPG campaign? I'm super curious about people's experience with it. The amount of crunchy world details it provides are substantial, and theoretically I understand how one could use it as the setting for a campaign.

But I'm interested in if anyone HAS, and if so details like, for what system, and what was the experience like? Was it useful? A hindrance? Etc.?

Castrovel Inspiraitonal Pic of the Week
Artist: Frank Frazetta - realized I hadn't posted anything by him in a while!

This juxtaposition illustrates a central question on Castrovel: is intelligence enough to be successful, dominant species?

Art by Frank Frazetta - two dinosaurs in a swamp, a triceratops and a tyrannosaur face off while in the foreground a lone man crouches, holding a spear. The tyrannosaur lifts its head, as if noticing the man.

Mastodon doesn't really seem to be the place to have meaningful discussions, but maybe some interesting thoughts could come out of this anyway:

Aside from not having regular space travel (though maybe airships), are there significant differences between and ? Are there really differences in stock characters, stock plots, and archetypes?
Couldn't Dune just as well (or even more) be called Planetary Romance than Space Opera?

A thought on - style where the player characters can be classified as "professional treasure hunters" either deliberately (they go into dungeons in order to seek treasure) or accidentally (they find treasure while they go into the dungeon for other reasons).

The absurd amount of valuables the player character find has ample precedent in European (click on the link for a few examples), and indeed, the whole concept of treasure hunting has precedent in the "Magical Treasure Hunting" craze of Early Modern Europe.

However, folk tales are almost always "one-shots" - the person who finds the treasure either gets rich and lives heavily ever after, or they feel regret for the rest of their lives because they missed their one big shot at riches.

In contrast, TTRPG usually feature ongoing campaigns, and thus the PCs will usually delve into "dungeons" and …