#worldbuilding

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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 …

Eden: Crude jokes aside, you two really are inseparable, huh?
Liam: Guess so. I’ve just gotten used to having no privacy.
Kait: It was a very boring privacy anyway.
Eden: Heh. Like some feral kitten rummaging your underwear drawer. Figuratively, I hope. I assume there are still lines.
Kait: [puts on a comically wide grin]
Eden: … No.
Kait: They’re very comfy boxers!
Eden: Liam, you need a spray bottle or something.
Liam: All property is transient. Only experience and knowledge are eternal – and even those only when shared with others.
Kait: That’s why the monks kicked him out. Too much even for them.
Liam: Ha-ha.
Eden: At this point, I think that might just be a defense mechanism.

#scifi #ttrpg #pnp #voidfront #worldbuilding #gamedesign #AmWriting #Writing

Tired: in a setting with casual space travel, everyone is piloting around a planet-buster weapon.

Wired: in a sci-fi setting with casual space travel, everyone is flying around a camper van that can go anywhere, any time, and keep its passengers alive for a lifetime. Good luck finding them again.

is political.

reviewed Flybot by Dennis E. Taylor

Dennis E. Taylor: Flybot (AudiobookFormat, 2025, Audible Originals)

Mysterious tech, a devious AI and a couple of scientists in over their heads collide …

Entertaining but Predictable with Some Interesting Points

Content warning Significant plot elements

I am coming to the conclusion that the galaxy map of Star Wars (first created in 1998, I believe) makes no sense.

In the first movie they are going from Tatooine to Alderaan and to Yavin, which is pretty much a trip across the entire galaxy and appears to be maybe an hour of flight at most. (More examples in replies.)

If the distances and positions of the map are correct, then any jump is near instant teleportation to any location, making a map pointless.

28 Apr 2025: "Do you pick the story, or does the story pick you?"

I honestly can't say which. Maiden-Heretic evolved from a project with no aim that technically started March 12, 2000. I remember putting the header they taught us in class on the paper by habit and thinking how silly that was!

Totally solved it. I removed strict latitudinal constraints on climate zones and everything that had been unassigned fell neatly into the existing categories.

- Pink = tropical
- Yellow = arid
- Green = temperate
- Brown = continental
- Grey = polar

Whew, I was worried my method was more deeply flawed. And it's a bit faster to do, which is nice.

Oh, and 'cause of the whole "gay continents" thing, this planet is officially named Antinous.

A world map of a fictional planet, with land colorfully marked by climate type. It seems pretty arid, but most of the land is also in lower latitudes, with almost nothing beyond 60 degrees north and 30 degrees south.

Apr 5: What's the most important thing about for you?

Follow-through. So you've got a premise? Cool cool cool.

What are its *consequences*? Now, what are the consequences *of* those consequences? And how do those consequences interact? Can you make sure it's consistent?

I can enjoy stories for their writing and characters and plot. But I won't enjoy them as much if the worldbuilding doesn't make sense and people don't react like humans.

One thing that I always find particularly interesting about the late Iron Age and early Middle Ages is the great ambiguity of scale and scope. There's talk of many kings and kingdoms, and whole nations travelling all across Europe, but barely any authors dare making even general estimates for numbers.

I found one claim that Wales in the 11th century had 150,000 people. But with a dozen "kingdoms" in that land, that means only some 10,000 people per "king".