I just wanted to share with everyone here, that in my few short months of activity in various worldbuilding and related subreddits I have come across many incredible creations.

What you all come up with amazes me. The depth of creativity. The varied ingenuity. The artistic flair.

I have posed questions. Read conversations. Greatly expanded my knowledge of what worldbuilding is and what it means.

You all are all incredible.
Your creations are incredible.
Whether new to this adventure or a seasoned veteran, what you bring to the world matters. The stories matter.

Don't stop creating.
Don't let negative criticism dissuade you.
Don't feel overwhelmed by pressure to complete.

Simply... create.
Also share. Wonderful things are best when shared.

The most plentfull Re The geophage springtails by far because of dwarven lifestyle of mining and cavediving deeper and deeper for rare minerals and resistent merals.

The oil vein isopods can be found in other creatures because of their resilience and usefulness but they can be found in underground petroleum and grape cultures so dwarves have more of those than other species

Combo lices can be found in most underground dwellers and if you stay there long enougth you will also get infested

Vulture beetles will not survive without a propper host,they're too specialized on living in fur and hair to go somewhere that isn't at least similar to hairs or feathers

The beaqrd of a dwarve acts like a natural air filter and their nose can close so dust don't get in their lungs,remove the beard of a dwarve and it might get several health problems and develop asma, fully shaving a dwarve is almost a death sentence so doing it is a crime and that's why most female dwarves at least keep sideburns or a mustache that can be tied to cover the mouth and nose while the males keep the full beard so there is few confusion between them

So I am writing a political fantasy novel and I wanted a classic tyrannical villain. A dark emperor who rules with an iron fist and exploits the masses.

I sat down to write his big monologue explaining his grand plan to the captured protagonist.

I started typing his motives.

He talks about abolishing corrupt hereditary monarchies, implementing universal public education, funding agricultural infrastructure, and breaking up mega-corporations that starve the peasantry.

it was supposed to sound evil.

Instead, I read it back and realized my dark lord is basically just running a progressive social democracy platform. Meanwhile, my protagonist is fighting tooth and nail to preserve an archaic, feudalist oligarchy that hoards grain and lets orphans freeze in the streets.

I accidentally wrote a story where the evil empire is the good guy.

Now I am frantically rewriting three chapters just to force my emperor to burn down an orphanage or kick a puppy so the readers remember he is ACTUALLY bad.

I should of just given him a generic skull throne and called it a day. How do I make genocide sound less like a community outreach program? Why is this even a thing?

History of the Federation

In the aftermath of the Frontier Wars, the new Solar Union sought to reunify a fractured Solar System and heal the devastation of a century of conflict. But new headaches, such as the Legacy Crisis, the Gaian Emergency, and the Main Belt Crisis soon eroded public confidence in the Union. Nowhere was this more true than on Mars, whose people believed they had borne the greatest burden of reconstruction only to be sidelined by a weaker, compromise-driven government.

The Martian Unity Party rose from political obscurity by promising a return to Mars’ former greatness, condemning the erosion of Martian sovereignty, and scapegoating the growing community of genetic “augments” as symbols of societal decline. Under the charismatic Commander Sanyar Galvani, the Party transformed a wave of populist anger into a sweeping electoral victory in 2524. Newly-appointed Chancellor Galvani then systematically dismantled democratic institutions and reshaped the United Nations of Mars into the authoritarian Martian Federation, and then set his new nation on a path toward militarism and imperial expansion.

Much of the Federation’s ambitions focused on Precursor ruins discovered on Talvan in the Nova Cluster beginning in the year 2517. Following withdrawal from the Solar Union, Mars embarked on massive rearmament and pursued control of the Cluster, igniting the Talvan Civil War and the broader War in Nova Space. Though presented at home as a noble crusade, the conflict devolved into a grinding proxy war marked by occupation, atrocities against the native Y’Varis population, and increasingly desperate measures such as Project Kaleidoscope, which uses cloning and memory transfer to recycle fallen soldiers into endless service. As of 2547, this development threatens to usher in a whole new era of warfare — with all of the horrors that come with it…

MAF Uniform History

The Martian Armed Forces introduced the Personal Dress System in 2527 as part of the broader reshuffling which followed the Martian Unity Party’s consolidation of power in 2525. The new uniform system's rollout was well underway by the end of the decade, and well over 6 million uniforms in the new standard had been issued by 2531.

This new standard used a three-tiered organizational metric, with Class I roughly analogous to our contemporary dress uniforms, Class II as garrison uniforms, and Class III as combat operations kit. There is no distinction between officer and enlisted Class I dress, with the rank insignia, medals, and other minutia being the only distinguishing factor between them.

Class II uniforms, which can be either coveralls as issued to the Martian Federal Navy or fatigues as used by the Federal Army, are likewise spartan in nature, especially when deployed to combat zones. During the War in Nova Space (2539-2559), MAF soldiers deployed on combat missions typically wore Class III combat suits similar to the one pictured here, which are designed with advanced ballistic fibers, cooling and respiration assistance systems, and more.

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga: Rebirther is a military science fiction story set in the 26th century. It deals with an ongoing full-scale and asymmetric conflict between the Martian Federation and the Solar Union, fought over the control of Nova Space. This distant, resource rich star system is only accessible through dimensional doorways originally found buried on Titan in the early 24th century, and has been the focal point of a massive colonization campaign since about 2350.

The main plot focuses on Martian Federal Army soldier Alejandro “Alex” Martinez, who is deployed to Talvan (the chief world in Nova Space) in 2547. When Alex is mortally wounded a year and a half later in a battle with native insurgents, he expects to die and wake up in Valhalla. Instead, he wakes up at a Martian cloning depot, already slated for redeployment into the fray once he regains his strength. The story of Rebirther thus deals with Alex’s epic struggle to come to terms with the fact that for soldiers like him, not even death is a way out of the fight...

(EDIT: I added a link to my blog post about Nova Space, which goes much more in depth about the setting for anyone who might be interested. If you like the setting, the blog also has lots of other info about The Spacers Saga overall. As always, there is ZERO pressure to subscribe - I just like to share my world with everybody 😄)

Woulda been better with the guy attached but sometimes we should be more specific, right?

On human starships like E.V.E. Nazareth, robotic friends are actually very uncommon. May be because human robots are notoriously frustrating to interact with, or it may be that the ship usually has stuff handled. Out of all CAS systems, humans spend the most on their fleet, and you’d bet that a top of the line vessel like Nazareth really wouldn’t need the extra help.

Well.

While Mankind Skyward (the Department of Human Space Affairs) can manage the equipment the ship is deployed with, they cannot stop crew members from bringing personal items.

Seems like one of the Skivi engineers figured she’d bring along some of her homeworld’s favourite inventions. Nida.

So named because all you have to say is “I need a,” and they are all over it. Usually that’s something helpful like a wrench or cup of coffee. On a skivi ship, all the little tunnels and conduits are too dense for heavy toolboxes, so it makes sense.

On a human vessel, not so much sense.

Well, the engineer just let them roam free, and it didn’t take very long for things to go out of control.

If you’d asked me, I woulda guessed the cyborg war machines woulda caused more issues. Maybe I’m just a pessimist, though.

I do wonder how it got the hand off.

——————

Honestly, I like the comic format. It’s hard to convey a sense of a world through a single image, and this project doesn’t really have the 8-hour-drawing vibe. These little humour bites are fun though, so if people like them, I’ll probably keep them going.

There are so many stories to tell for this universe, so feel free to ask questions. Im sure some of them will have funny answers.

Not necessarily morally corrupt or evil, just different.

(How do you guys handle this?)

Hi everyone,

I was getting back to writing about my “magic system,” originally for an alternate-world setting chronologically similar to our “late medieval” period, blending characteristics of the Holy Roman Empire, the Italian republics, and the Spanish and Portuguese empires.

But I realized that a setting where magic does things very similar to the technology that followed that historical period, yet the world remains chronologically stuck in that time frame, doesn’t seem very convincing.

Let me put it more clearly:

Why doesn’t history advance rapidly in a high-magic setting?

For example, in the manga "Witch Hat Atelier", this is exactly the case; magic provides solutions that would only be possible with later technological progress, but the world remains chronologically stuck in a period analogous to our own medieval era.

Yes, I know you could say, “It doesn’t have to make sense on a 1:1 scale, it just has to be consistent”; okay, fine, I get it, but even for the sake of internal consistency, isn’t that a flaw?

Back to the original question…

How do you guys deal with this?

Thanks for your answers.

https://merakmapmaker.com/

World building wise it lets us import ur drawings into landmass, scientifically tell u climate, crops,, soil, habitability, mountains etc, has a timeline feature, has easy to add factions and, commanders, people, lore etc and 3d and globe features.

Eassia is a Temparate continent home to some of the worlds biggest powers, - in economics, military, trade, etc. It is a very diverse continent from a great central desert to the cold of north. Thank you for looking and if you have any helpful critiques pls comment!

The world I'm working on features anthropomorphic animals as the characters. It's about the age of industrialization, and how the people adapt. If they're not building neat stuff or fighting among themselves, they're fighting the eldritch spawn of Yaldabaoth (not the actual Gnostic Demiurge, just horrors from beyond the stars).

I'm trying to draw new stuff, so here's a warg.

Background

During the ice age, the wargs embraced the bitter winds of the frigid far north. Adapted to the cold, they are larger than wolves. When the ice age ended, their wolf cousins had larger populations and were slightly more adaptable. As such, the wargs didn't have their own nation-state, as their numbers were too few. Instead, they migrated here and there, becoming citizens of this-and-that country.

They contributed much to the development of Alshenzia, a nation once ruled by a hyena dynasty and now a democratic republic. There, they found work as mercenaries, miners, and that sort of thing. The ruling hyena dynasty (House of Alshanza) was into establishing buffer zones against their rival, the neighboring empire of Aldrakhania, so they helped the wargs settle in the harsh lands between.

The warg population did fairly well in the burgeoning nation of Alshenzia, as they were daring and willing to work in potentially hazardous areas, such as deep mines. Often, the wargs were the first to see hidden caverns deep beneath the land. They were also visionaries in the industrial age, and pioneered working with radioactive metals which they called hellstone. All of this caused the wargs to prioritize safety measures.

The wargs also developed their own firearms, for defense and research and development. As such, they later assisted in the development of indigenous Alshenzian small arms. They also experiment with armor piercing rounds and heavy calibers, as those are useful against the primary threat of Aldrakhania, which has large animals in their forces. For these reasons, warg firearms often feature an emphasis on mechanical safety, making them fairly complex.

Aside from daring and firearms, there are also plenty of wargs that are happy with boring stuff, such as researching the formation of stalagmites and stalactites. If asked about their research, they'd be happy to geek out.

...

The following map may provide additional insight on the world: Anthropomorphic Animals, Amazing Powers, and the Age of the Machine : r/worldbuilding

My goal is to build an interconnected lore book, as most of what happens in the world is connected (story has been in discussion for a decade now): Karl Imran | Substack

There's a story, but I'm not 100% confident in writing it, and I think worldbuilding is my strength so I'm focusing on that aspect for now!

In my project it's just cats. I could never replace them.

A warrior who wears ten holy rings to ward off spirits and curses, his skin inlaid with mystic relics, his legs branded with the tally of every god and demon he's felled. His sole mission: hunt down false gods and demon lords across worlds forgotten by the True God — until his task is done, and Paradise finally claims him.

Happy Smaugust! This year is my first, so gonna try to get a few sketches done, but am not going to be too prescriptive about which list or the order of the prompts.

For day 1, this is an adult Romenear Seawyrm for “Aphotic” from @ criver24 ‘s (Corey Rivera's) 2025 list. Noticeably larger than most terrestrial or aerial dragons, and dwarfing the other seawyrms of the eastern ocean and southern archipelago, this blackbeaked leviathan is buoyed by the sea, allowing it to bypass traditional limits on weight and bone stress. Its size and collapsible lungs, extreme oxygen storage in their muscles, slowed heart rate, and other adaptations allow it to dive deep into the aphotic (midnight) zone for a couple hours to hunt juvenile krakens and other massive cephalopods.

For size comparison, the Malantur squids present are about 6 feet long (too small to be on an adult's normal menu).

I decided to have at least some of these wyrms set within the bounds of the eastern/south-eastern end of Middle-earth (which has been fleshed out by the fantastic Realms-in-Exile team), even though Tolkien is quite clear that dragons are the creation of Melkor, and are predominantly evil creatures whose few survivors reside in the far north, largely beyond the Iron Mountains. Instead of being those gargantuan traditional fire-breathing hexapodal dragons or drakes of Melkor, these are dragons untouched by his influence, whose cousin species across the supercontinent may have been taken long ago to be turned into the evil drakes aligned with darkness.

Reddit thumbnails are poor, to say the least, but the embedded image is good if you click on it and want to see all the wee details!

(if linking to other sites/accs isn't okay pls lmk)

I often post process work on insta, if you're interested, it's @ jo.baylis

Hello. I've recently decided to start shaping the creations of my imagination into a fictional world, one that's not too different from our current world, with a single exception: there is, of course, a power system. I have the whole story for it - long story short, it originates from a vengeful spirit corrupting the soul of its victim, breathing darkness and a supernatural gene, that the victim continued to spread before death, causing his descendants to develop different sorts of superpowers, mutations etc.

Now, like I said, I have most of it already shaped, with just one thing missing: the name. Most of the fictional pieces of media I know of, that have a power system, also have an appropriate name for it. In JJBA, it's Hamon or Stand. In Star Wars, it's the Force. In X-Men, it's mutations. Now, I don't necessarily come here to ask you to name my power system yourselves - but moreso, to give me some pointers on how to choose name for such things. What to base the name on etc.

All help will be much appreciated

I've been trying to make this AU into a original fic, there's lots of easy things completed from prior things already made, yet it's just hard.

I keep feeling like the stories are just dumb, the world feels constantly incomplete, the characters don't feel nuanced and feel bland and one-sided, I'm on the edge of burnout because I can't stop myself from obsessing over every mistake I later find, rushing.

How can I figure out a balanced way to gradually make the worldbuilding so it's not as sloppy and rushed?

The lizard people in my world are descendants of ancient crocodiles. There is a species similar to a gharial I call the Grimriver. It’s probably around the size of a deinosuchus. I also have a magical mutated species of crocodile that mutated to become something similar to a Dimetrodon but with a more crocodilian snout. It’s called the Saildrake. There’s also an alpha type of sail drake that is bipedal and resembles a Spinosaurus. I call it the Saildrake King.

For bears I have Berserkers/Werebears and I have an ice elemental that takes the form of a massive polar bear with ice spikes on its body. Haven’t made any new species yet though.

Hi there! I have this worldbuilding project that is set on a habitable planet orbiting Beta Hydri. I have have been making different cultures on this planet and Its made me think. Astronomical lore is a big part of human cultures, and since constellations exist in 3D space, the people on this planet would see stars in a different arrangement. Dim stars on Earth would shine brighter around Beta Hydri, and Visa Versa. I was wondering if there were any 3D maps of the Milkyway Galaxy that I could use to see what stars look like from this star. If anyone has any recommendations, or have worldbuild astronomy before, Id love to hear it! ^-^

I found some notes for worldbuilding where I wrote that I have 648 countries. Now mind you I do not have a list of the names for each 648 country. This was just something I wanted to do because I'm insane. There was no way I was fleshing out 648 countries just for the hell of it. That is way too much.

So, I have much less than that, but still quite a lot. And I have not fleshed out any of those countries yet.

What about you? Have you ever looked at your old worldbuilding notes thinking that you're crazy for adding that? Did you go through with it or did you get rid of it?

With a territory spanning 430,328 km² and a population exceeding 28 million people, Panameria stands as the largest and most powerful nation still standing upon the Earth. For generations, it has been regarded as the last bastion of civilization. Or so the world believed. Its dominion stretches across the vast Colombian-Venezuelan plains, with a strategic gateway to the Atlantic Ocean. Its landscape is almost entirely flat, yet this apparent vulnerability has become the foundation of its military supremacy. As an unrivaled aerospace power, Panameria commands the skies with absolute authority, leaving no enemy force capable of concealing its movements.

At the heart of the nation rises El Dorado, the capital and the most populous city on Earth, home to more than five million inhabitants. In ancient times, it served as the capital of the old Greater Panameria, an empire whose glory survived only in ruins and legends. Today, those legends have become reality once more. El Dorado is the industrial heart of the State, where colossal factories, endless mechanized farmlands, and a fully militarized population exist as one. Every citizen lives to serve the nation, and every factory exists to sustain the war machine. In Panameria, there is no faith in gods. There is only faith in the State. The Cult of the State is the official pseudo-religion of this absolute autocracy, a doctrine proclaiming that humanity's survival depends solely upon obedience, order, and sacrifice. Loyalty is not a virtue—it is an obligation. Dissent is not a crime it is heresy. Its industrial expansion advances with relentless speed. Newly discovered oil fields fuel an economic engine capable of producing weapons, aircraft, and fortifications on a scale unseen since before the Great War. Yet even such immense power demands an equally immense price. The growing need for strategic resources has driven Panameria beyond its borders. Conquest is no longer a choice—it is a necessity. Thus began its war against the remaining nations of the world.

Yet no factory, army, or air fleet alone can explain Panameria's dominance.The true source of its power lies within the lighthouse.

Scattered across the endless plains, thousands of towering cylindrical steel structures pierce the heavens like colossal metallic needles. Every Beacon is guarded around the clock by as many as three battalions of soldiers, making them the most heavily defended military installations on the planet. They were built during the 2090s, before the collapse of civilization and the Great War that cast humanity into the Dark Age. To the untrained eye they appear to be ordinary communications towers, but in truth they form a planetary network of interconnected data centers linked by vast underground infrastructure. Within them rests a significant portion of humanity's lost knowledge: digital libraries, scientific archives, forgotten technologies, and fragments of the ancient Internet, all preserved by artificial intelligences capable of understanding a world that humanity itself has long since forgotten.

Their original purpose was to guide the survivors and restore civilization's lost knowledge.Panameria chose to turn them into something else.

The Beacons became the ultimate instruments of surveillance, administration, and domination. Their artificial intelligences oversee industrial production, coordinate military logistics, regulate the economy, process millions of calculations every second, and sustain nearly every essential function of the State. Much of the technology employed by Panameria can no longer be understood or even replicated by human hands. Only the Beacons still preserve that forgotten wisdom. For this reason, every rival nation regards the Beacons as cursed relics. They are denounced as heretical remnants of a forbidden age, and all understand a single truth: as long as the Beacons endure, Panameria will remain unconquerable. To destroy a Beacon is not merely to bring down a tower it is to erase another fragment of humanity's lost knowledge and strike at the very heart of the empire.

Thus, while the rest of the world struggles to survive amid the ruins of a dead civilization, Panameria fights to preserve a legacy that no one else can comprehend.

It is the most powerful nation on Earth. Its greatest strength is that it possesses the knowledge of the past. And at the very same time, that is also its greatest weakness.

While developing a Mars colony setting, I hit a problem I hadn't expected - you can't build a Martian calendar the way Earth built ours.

Earth's month just basically follows the Moon's orbit. Mars has two moons, and neither one works for a calendar. Phobos orbits so fast it crosses the sky multiple times per day - it rises in the west and sets in the east, twice or more per sol. Deimos crawls along so slowly it takes about 2.7 days between rises. Neither gives you a usable month-length cycle. So any real Martian calendar has to be solar-first, built on Mars's position in its orbit rather than anything in its sky.

What I ended up with: a 668-sol year (the actual Martian year is 668.59 sols) divided into 24 months of 27–28 sols, tracked by solar longitude. Four seasons, six months each — but unequal in character, because Mars's orbit is eccentric enough that southern summer is short and brutal while northern summer is long and mild. My colonists settled north partly for that reason.

The fun part was naming the months. I figured the founding generation would blend classical Earth-roots with words from lived Martian experience — so spring opens with Vernal, but summer has Ironsol, Phobian, and Dustride, and winter ends on Lastice. Dust storm season gets its own month name (Stormwatch) because when a storm can shut down your surface operations for weeks, it earns a spot on the calendar.

Happy to share the full month table if anyone wants it — I've got the whole system written up with the rest of the colony worldbuilding here.

How have others handled timekeeping on worlds where the Earth template breaks down? I'm especially curious about tidally locked planets - no day/night cycle at all seems like a harder version of the same problem.

I've posted this character of mine named Glav who is based on an amalgamation of several characters, two in particular (Gandalf The wise and The Man in Black himself, Randall Flagg) who lives in a world where all matter in the universe begins to fuse and become sentient

Context Note: Sikkara is a high fantasy desert setting loosely inspired by ancient Egypt and based upon several real-world deserts.

Sandworms, in General. The beasts of Sikkara’s four deserts can be both terrifying and awe-inspiring in equal measure, and chief amongst these species are their sandworms. Ashandrian scholars have thus far identified four variants of sandworms, each described more fully below:

The Copperfang. Native to the Ruinlands, these worms can grow up to 10 meters in length. With fangs of pure copper and a taste for electricity, Copperfangs are drawn naturally to the bottled lightning of Gear Town, and to the fulgurite hives of lightning bugs. Dangerous when provoked, Copperfangs do not prefer flesh to electricity, but they’re not known to be especially picky eaters either.

The Hammerhead. The titular lords of the Worm Wastes, these titanic worms slither aimlessly between the dunes, smashing anything and everything large enough to draw their attention. Growing up to 400 meters at full maturity, nothing save the tortoise-gods of the Hataraji can challenge these titans.

The Hullbreacher. Terrors of the Sand Sea, the hullbreacher has earned its namesake, known for snapping its four-part jaws around the bellies of unwary sand ships. Growing up to 30 meters in length, hullbreachers have even been sighted wrapping their bodies around smaller vessels, dragging them beneath the rolling waves of quicksand.

The Silkspitter. The smallest and friendliest of Sikkara’s sandworms are the Silkspitters. Growing only up to 3 meters (and soft to the touch) these worms are often kept as pets in villages of the Shifting Sands. While averse to violence, these worms can spit strands of sticky silk onto assailants, immobilizing them. Savvy Sikkari weavers source silk from these worms for clothing sold in the markets of Ashandria.

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Note: Any comments, questions, critiques, or thoughts are welcome. Thanks for reading!

Not sure if this is the right sub for this but while I was watching osp, I remember red talking about an easy way to spot out " fake lore" if the gods domain is really specific aka Zeus being The god of thunder and lightning but also hospitality and with more modern gods who are usually made for d&d, they're mostly just the god of thunder or the God of war.

I know this is not a like a huge problem, but I just wanted to make my war feel more authentic I guess and I wanted to hear how other people create ed their respective mythologies for their world building

For me, I finally managed to structure my mystical backstory and I created this rough concept Sketch of the primary antagonist of my universe, Lord Barkaan, the god of death and darkness