Thinking lately about sins against world building related to ttrpg s I can't ever seem to find a world that avoids these traps.

-global pantheons, most seem guilty of this. The entire word worships a single pantheon.
-time locked, most fantasy settings set in a pseudo medieval period spend way too much time there. They like get to the Middle Ages and just stop inventing shit. If your medieval period is 10,000 years long that's excessive.
-gods are ever present, communicative and all powerful. This just strips mortals of their agency and meaningful choices.
- resurrection, god I hate this spell. It really lowers the stakes. High profile assassination of emperor bigus dickus? Shame he's obscenely wealthy and is just gonna be brought back to life shortly.
- the power of magic in the world should be proportional to its rarity, I'm surprised faerun hasn't just fallen due to the law of entropy.
-magic is too common for how little it effects the world. For a medieval setting they have a surprising lack of medieval problems.
-world peace is the rule, seriously too many campaign settings have every nation of similar alignment just allied or friendly with each other. When there is war it's some evil necromancer or orc horde never just mundane reasons where politicians try and get people killed. Peace is the exception not the rule
-meaningless titles, nobility in worlds like faerun mean jack shit other than occasionally being called lord or sir. Even knights should be loaded with cash. Fitted Medieval plate armor accounting in terms of modern currency is like buying a Ferrari and easily can cost in the millions.
-language barriers, they should exist.
- cultural diversity and cultural exchange. Quit sticking random outliers smack in the middle of things. Cultures bleed over on each other, historical maps showcase this the best you shouldn't have Mongolians popping up between france and Spain.
-your kingdoms aesthetic should represent their environment. You aren't going to have a landlocked kingdom or even mostly landlocked kingdom subsist primarily on seafood.
Anyway just a topic I was thinking of much to my frustration on most settings I read about.

Quote-global pantheons, most seem guilty of this. The entire word worships a single pantheon.

If gods are actually real, that's hardly surprising. Worshipping multiple pantheons is a side effect of gods being imaginary.

That aside, Forgotten Realms has multiple pantheons, even without considering Kara-Tur and Zakhara.

Quote-gods are ever present, communicative and all powerful. This just strips mortals of their agency and meaningful choices.

The whole premise of Dragonlance to start with is that the gods didn't answer any prayers and had forsaken the people of Krynn, and it once again returned for Dragonlance 5th Age.

Quote- resurrection, god I hate this spell. It really lowers the stakes. High profile assassination of emperor bigus dickus? Shame he's obscenely wealthy and is just gonna be brought back to life shortly.

You still need a portion of the body to do a resurrection, and there are spells to make sure someone can't be resurrected. But that means you need a party - someone to infiltrate and get the wizard in, and someone to actually cast the finishing spell.

Quote- the power of magic in the world should be proportional to its rarity, I'm surprised faerun hasn't just fallen due to the law of entropy.

Proportional to its rarity in what way? More rare means more powerful or less rare means less powerful?

Quote-magic is too common for how little it effects the world. For a medieval setting they have a surprising lack of medieval problems.

Are you sure you meant to write that? Common magic would be exactly why there is a lack of medieval problems.

Quote-meaningless titles, nobility in worlds like faerun mean jack shit other than occasionally being called lord or sir. Even knights should be loaded with cash. Fitted Medieval plate armor accounting in terms of modern currency is like buying a Ferrari and easily can cost in the millions.

It makes more of a difference than just that in Cormyr for instance. Fitted plate armor is very expensive in AD&D.

Quote-language barriers, they should exist.

They do, it's baked into D&D mechanics. DMs choosing not to enforce it has nothing to do with worldbuilding.

Quote- cultural diversity and cultural exchange. Quit sticking random outliers smack in the middle of things. Cultures bleed over on each other, historical maps showcase this the best you shouldn't have Mongolians popping up between france and Spain.

I guess you don't know anything about the Basque, Albanians, Finns or Hungarians?

Quote-your kingdoms aesthetic should represent their environment. You aren't going to have a landlocked kingdom or even mostly landlocked kingdom subsist primarily on seafood.

I agree, but what do you have in mind that actually falls into this trap, given you say that you can't find a world that avoids them. But then you've specifically named Faerun and it does avoid a number of the traps you listed.

Quote from: migo on April 24, 2022, 05:44:12 PM

Quote-global pantheons, most seem guilty of this. The entire word worships a single pantheon.

If gods are actually real, that's hardly surprising. Worshipping multiple pantheons is a side effect of gods being imaginary.

That aside, Forgotten Realms has multiple pantheons, even without considering Kara-Tur and Zakhara.

Quote-gods are ever present, communicative and all powerful. This just strips mortals of their agency and meaningful choices.

The whole premise of Dragonlance to start with is that the gods didn't answer any prayers and had forsaken the people of Krynn, and it once again returned for Dragonlance 5th Age.

Quote- resurrection, god I hate this spell. It really lowers the stakes. High profile assassination of emperor bigus dickus? Shame he's obscenely wealthy and is just gonna be brought back to life shortly.

You still need a portion of the body to do a resurrection, and there are spells to make sure someone can't be resurrected. But that means you need a party - someone to infiltrate and get the wizard in, and someone to actually cast the finishing spell.

Quote- the power of magic in the world should be proportional to its rarity, I'm surprised faerun hasn't just fallen due to the law of entropy.

Proportional to its rarity in what way? More rare means more powerful or less rare means less powerful?

Quote-magic is too common for how little it effects the world. For a medieval setting they have a surprising lack of medieval problems.

Are you sure you meant to write that? Common magic would be exactly why there is a lack of medieval problems.

Quote-meaningless titles, nobility in worlds like faerun mean jack shit other than occasionally being called lord or sir. Even knights should be loaded with cash. Fitted Medieval plate armor accounting in terms of modern currency is like buying a Ferrari and easily can cost in the millions.

It makes more of a difference than just that in Cormyr for instance. Fitted plate armor is very expensive in AD&D.

Quote-language barriers, they should exist.

They do, it's baked into D&D mechanics. DMs choosing not to enforce it has nothing to do with worldbuilding.

Quote- cultural diversity and cultural exchange. Quit sticking random outliers smack in the middle of things. Cultures bleed over on each other, historical maps showcase this the best you shouldn't have Mongolians popping up between france and Spain.

I guess you don't know anything about the Basque, Albanians, Finns or Hungarians?

Quote-your kingdoms aesthetic should represent their environment. You aren't going to have a landlocked kingdom or even mostly landlocked kingdom subsist primarily on seafood.

I agree, but what do you have in mind that actually falls into this trap, given you say that you can't find a world that avoids them. But then you've specifically named Faerun and it does avoid a number of the traps you listed.

It's rare setting will have all of them but some have more than others in the case of the last one it's rokugan. They tried keeping it pseudo Japanese but removed everything that made Japan well Japan.

In faerun all the gods are different names for the same beings. They have a global deity set.

If they lacked medieval problems then you'd think they wouldn't be so stagnant.

As for magic it's the more powerful it is the more rare it should be. By powerful I mean it's ability to shape the world not just obliterate one dude. Also you shouldn't have to vaporize the corpse to prevent resurrection

I think a lot of this is because fantasy is built around mythology. In myth, people generally assume very little technological development. This is why Greek myth generally looks classical or even Hellenistic, even if a lot of it was supposed to happen hundreds of years before. Something similar happened to Arthurian myth.

QuoteIn faerun all the gods are different names for the same beings. They have a global deity set.

You're simply wrong. There's the standard Faerunian pantheon and then there's the Mulhorandi pantheon, just as one example. Then there's the Zakharan non-pantheon and the separate Kara-Tur pantheon.

QuoteIf they lacked medieval problems then you'd think they wouldn't be so stagnant.

If you have magic, there's no drive to solve problems with science and technology. And using FR as an example, they're hardly stagnant either. Look at Halruaa.

QuoteAlso you shouldn't have to vaporize the corpse to prevent resurrection

Why not? With modern medicine you have to work harder to make sure someone stays dead, whereas in medieval times you could rely on infection doing it.

Need to do this one point at a time lol, with modern medicine we can fix a lot but we can't fix dead. Someone gets their brains splattered or their heart exploded they're done. It doesn't take a wizard to ensure they can't be brought back

It's a fantasy world, you shouldn't be complaining that it's not like the real world.

Quote from: migo on April 24, 2022, 06:10:07 PM
It's a fantasy world, you shouldn't be complaining that it's not like the real world.

That is a really dumb way to look at it. The world needs to make sense and throwing your hands up and saying it's fantasy it doesn't need to make sense is lazy writing at best.

Quote from: Ocule on April 24, 2022, 06:22:21 PM

Quote from: migo on April 24, 2022, 06:10:07 PM
It's a fantasy world, you shouldn't be complaining that it's not like the real world.

That is a really dumb way to look at it. The world needs to make sense and throwing your hands up and saying it's fantasy it doesn't need to make sense is lazy writing at best.

Realism is the basis of all meaning. A fantasy world that has no realism in it is meaningless by definition. It would be just the imaginal equivalent of radio static.

Quote from: Ocule on April 24, 2022, 06:22:21 PM

Quote from: migo on April 24, 2022, 06:10:07 PM
It's a fantasy world, you shouldn't be complaining that it's not like the real world.

That is a really dumb way to look at it. The world needs to make sense and throwing your hands up and saying it's fantasy it doesn't need to make sense is lazy writing at best.

The world does make sense - you can't just kill someone, you need to make sure they stay dead. It's internally consistent and if you want to make sure that someone stays dead, you can't rely on purely mundane means.

But if we want to talk being dumb, we have you saying that worlds have a single pantheon, specifically talk about Forgotten Realms when it explicitly has multiple pantheons. So you're complaining about settings having characteristics that they don't actually have. It would be another thing for you to be unaware of some niche setting that hardly anyone has played, but to be as wrong about Forgotten Realms as you are is really dumb.

I generally feel that pantheons and religions can't be done well in worldbuilding, period. It might not literally be true that it's irritating and preachy 100% of the time, but it feels like the ratio of preachy and moderately distasteful worldbuilding to non-preachy and not distasteful worldbuilding is...10 to 1, anyway.

Generally, my problem with RPG worldbuilding comes from the authors' approaches. Most RPG worlds are either inspired by a pre-existing world or mythology (which the designer either romanticizes or critiques, both are problems) or they are built from fictional worldbuilding you might find in a novel. In my opinion, both approaches fail. What you actually need to do is start with the question, "what are the players supposed to do to change the world?" Because, let's face it, in a healthy campaign, the PCs change the world they're in.

The only major RPG which really gets this right is Call of C'thulu, and I think that's a product of raw dumb luck that if you put Lovecraft and RPGs together, this kind of approach self-assembles and falls out. There's basically no way I'll accept that designers who thought that pairing Call of C'thulu--a setting filled with fundamentally unknowable mysteries with a percentile system did this on purpose. However, dumb luck is still better than dead wrong, which is basically the problem D&D has. D&D basically has the worldbuilding of a B-grade fantasy novel in that it is massively overbuilt, as there's a bloody multiverse, a huge pantheon, and the worldbuilding is all about magic and 0% about character or theme development.

Actually, I stand corrected. When D&D was published that was B-grade. These days D&D is probably actually D-grade, as stuff that far up rats nest alley is rare even on FanFiction.net.

The TL;DR here is that I've basically moved away from medieval-style worlds in favor of Modern, and Near Future.

Quote from: Ocule on April 24, 2022, 05:25:34 PM
-time locked, most fantasy settings set in a pseudo medieval period spend way too much time there. They like get to the Middle Ages and just stop inventing shit. If your medieval period is 10,000 years long that's excessive.

A related principle: History is too long. From Dragonlance to Bluffside, the authors always seem to like big numbers, and place events thousands or even hundreds of thousands of year ago, when it would make far more sense if they happened a 100 years ago. This could potential make sense if they were exploring the juxaposition of short-lived and long-lived races, but they never are.

Quote from: Pat on April 24, 2022, 07:08:40 PM

Quote from: Ocule on April 24, 2022, 05:25:34 PM
-time locked, most fantasy settings set in a pseudo medieval period spend way too much time there. They like get to the Middle Ages and just stop inventing shit. If your medieval period is 10,000 years long that's excessive.

A related principle: History is too long. From Dragonlance to Bluffside, the authors always seem to like big numbers, and place events thousands or even hundreds of thousands of year ago, when it would make far more sense if they happened a 100 years ago. This could potential make sense if they were exploring the juxaposition of short-lived and long-lived races, but they never are.

Oh yeah especially when the events are thousands of years old. Can't really game them they're just background info.

Quote from: Ocule on April 24, 2022, 08:17:59 PM

Quote from: Pat on April 24, 2022, 07:08:40 PM

Quote from: Ocule on April 24, 2022, 05:25:34 PM
-time locked, most fantasy settings set in a pseudo medieval period spend way too much time there. They like get to the Middle Ages and just stop inventing shit. If your medieval period is 10,000 years long that's excessive.

A related principle: History is too long. From Dragonlance to Bluffside, the authors always seem to like big numbers, and place events thousands or even hundreds of thousands of year ago, when it would make far more sense if they happened a 100 years ago. This could potential make sense if they were exploring the juxaposition of short-lived and long-lived races, but they never are.

Oh yeah especially when the events are thousands of years old. Can't really game them they're just background info.

What I find weird is the stuff that happened thousands of years ago that's treated like it happened in the fairly recent past. For instance, Bluffside is based on a meteor strike, that the cultures in the area haven't fully recovered from yet.

A meteor strike that happened 300,000 years ago.

I would agree that most published fantasy settings are pretty bad, and official D&D settings are among the worst. The good news is that you can make your own setting and apply the concepts in world building that you think are important. There are a number of resources on the market to help you do so. Have at it. If it comes out well, publish it. I might want to buy it. If it doesn't go well, you can go back to FR with a new appreciation of how hard it is to make a world that is both sensibly realistic and fun.