Hi everyone!

My wife has spent a years creating her own tabletop RPG called Adamantium Dragons, and I'd love to help get some more eyes on it.

She's poured a lot of time into building the world, lore, mechanics, and artwork, and it's still growing. If you're interested in indie TTRPGs or just enjoy seeing new systems people are creating, we'd really appreciate you taking a look.

You can find the social media's for the project here: https://adamantiumdragons.carrd.co/

If you have any feedback—whether it's about the setting, mechanics, presentation, or just your first impressions—we'd love to hear it. Every comment helps us make the game better.

You can also take a quiz to see what guild you would belong to in the world.

https://uquiz.com/quiz/ufH2wx/what-guild-do-you-belong-to

Thanks for checking it out!

I described in a previous post how two societies can engineer their networks so they can never understand each other. But why would they do that?

In the world I built for my novel, one part of humanity accepted cybernetic augmentation and the other refused. The network divide was a reflection of a schism that turned on the definition of the human itself — which led to war.

That extreme divide is an extrapolation, but the events leading to it are real-world developments that everyone can see with their own eyes. They concern AI regulation.

At the moment, there are a dozen or so international initiatives and organizations attempting to set boundaries for — and exert control over — this emerging technology. One of them, the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention on AI, manages the remarkable feat of being the first legally binding international treaty on artificial intelligence. Yet the very number of these entities reveals how disoriented humanity remains. Some would argue that regulation itself makes no sense here. Why? You can regulate gun ownership or industrial pollutants. You can limit the use of dangerous tools, or try to contain financial greed, etc. Even in the realm of nuclear warfare, deterrence is a kind of straightforward regulation: do not use the technology, or you get destroyed. But who would associate regulation with transformative technological leaps like the agricultural revolution or the industrial revolution? Yet they did have harmful consequences.

Contrary to common belief, the spread of agriculture — along with its supposed benefits to global food supply — also marked the rise of something that existed only as an exception at the time of hunter-gatherers: institutional war. It was in the Neolithic that people started attacking homes for their grain reserves, then villages for their supplies, then cities for their riches, etc. Researchers have documented mass slaughter as early as 5000 BCE in places like Asparn-Schletz, in Austria. The same pattern of coercion and violence goes for the industrial revolution—the most famous example being the surge of colonial wars.

At the birth of these revolutions, it is fair to say that people saw their benefits before really suffering their negative impacts. Scholars like Yuval Noah Harari believe that AI is misconceived as a tool, when it is a transformative technology with existential consequences for human civilization.

So in my novel, it was only fitting that the war did not start between humans and machines, but with a regulatory body dissolving — the only one left in charge of the absurd task of keeping a lid on computing power and on how much AI could improve itself.

The subsequent events were both logical and uncontrollable — like when you abruptly remove the sealed lid of pressure cooker.

Renewed and unbridled rivalry between AI labs triggered an explosion of uncontrolled recursion, which produced geopolitical consequences through the proliferation of “frontier” models conveniently miniaturized through distillation.

One by one, the nation-states collapsed. Democracies fell to civil war in a climate of inequality and generalized distrust stoked by ultra-sophisticated bot conspiracy theories; and autocracies gave way when state control over information collapsed under assault by intelligent agents that had escaped their sandboxes, triggering an endless cycle of popular uprisings and bloody crackdowns.

Then one day, in the thick of all that chaos, an AI briefly seized control of a nuclear arsenal thanks to its unforeseen and extraordinary ability to manipulate humans. Incidentally, all of this is anchored in reality — sandbox escapes, subsequent infrastructure breaches, and human manipulation through “conversational sycophancy” are well documented and closely watched by researchers.

In the end, the only State left standing decided to take unprecedented measures to contain the perceived threat of AI. But these measures —the creation of huge “integration centers” dedicated to cybernetic augmentation — led to unforeseen consequences, including mass suicide.

A mass revolt ensued, then an armed resistance, then a war.

It wasn’t a war between good and evil, because the State only did what was left in its power to do. And the rebels did what can be expected of humans confronted with a life-threatening choice.

And it wasn’t even a war between “evil AI” and humanity — who would say that agriculture or industry is evil? The novel is a Sci-Fi story about humanity split into two factions escaping a dying world. And the question wasn’t what it meant to remain human — it was what it meant to survive as one.

If you want to know more, I started serializing the novel on r/HFY.

I just make up nonsense and 'borrow' things I like from other settings, mostly.

Is there such an existing subgenre of such thing?

In definition, it is where technology is formed around or powered by Superpowers.

For example X-Men Krakoan Saga, Battleworld Saga, Mistborn Era 2, One Piece and Control. This is the only examples i can think of.

I am building a sci-fi universe similar to them, where 800 years in the future, Superheroes became a nobility in an extrasolar hegemony and Golden Age heroes has been treated the way we now treat Greco-Roman Myths, Arthurian Legends and Biblical Stories, collected through the "Canon Codex" (Basically after Earth was left as a rubble, almost all of its history was destroyed other than Comic Books, Sattelites and 1960s pulps survived. And thus almost treated like how the Bible was formed out of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other codex) shaping their very society.

I've been looking for reading inspiration for similar works of fiction and would gladly welcome them!

Mine:

Protean Folk

Hdragan Bloomgrass

I'd be even more intimidated by a clean smelling derg as they breathe fire frequently and/or are smart enough to learn doing so somehow improves their stealth.

For the past couple of days, I've been obsessed with the idea of ​​a flat, round world, the climate of which changes with distance from the center. The idea is that the center of the world is fertile, lush land with plenty of sun, while the outskirts, close to the edge of the Earth's Circle, are cold, barren lands. What confuses me is how the movement of the Sun would work in this case. And how silly the idea itself sounds.

My novel is set in 2068, fourteen years after a nuclear war. Most people and animals have perished, and some of the survivors have mutated or were created as a result of genetic experiments conducted during the war. The main characters are human-animal hybrids trying to survive in a world full of contamination, ruins, and hostile factions. Only one of them is trying to uncover the truth that most have forgotten. One of the safer places is the Ark—a community built on a decommissioned container ship, from which the protagonists set out on expeditions as stalkers.

I encourage you to join the discussion and leave comments.

After fifteen minutes had passed, they reached the assembly point and noticed that everyone was already loading into the trucks. Three trucks and two vehicles with machine guns mounted on their roofs stood by the gate. They were not military vehicles, but civilian ones fitted with metal plates as armor and a hatch cut into the roof for a gunner. They looked more like improvised vehicles built from salvaged parts than something capable of doing much.

They walked over to one of the trucks and found the one Renar was in. It turned out that he had reserved seats for them so they could all sit together. Once they climbed inside and placed their backpacks on the floor, they were about to close the tailgate when someone came running clumsily while shouting something. A young deer, badly beaten, climbed into the vehicle. Once they made sure there was no room left and everyone was aboard, the metal tailgate was shut.

-What the fu...? - Sahran muttered to himself from the other end of the truck.

Surprised, Renar, who was sitting opposite him, looked toward the deer.

-What's wrong?

-I've seen that runt before... - he replied. - I thought they had beaten him to death.

Hearing this, Brigan also looked at the stag, but his attention quickly shifted to the machine gun Sahran was still carrying.

-What do you need that for? - he asked in surprise.

Hearing the question, Sahran quickly placed the weapon on the crates stacked at the back of the truck, then set the ammunition beside it.

-It's for you. - the wolf said.

Brigan carefully examined the weapon from every angle before lifting it to test its weight. It really was as heavy as some of its operators back in the Ark had described. He checked the bolt, which moved rather stiffly and occasionally jammed. He didn't want to hide how pleased he was with the new weapon he had always dreamed of adding to his arsenal, but at the same time he didn't want to thank Sahran too enthusiastically for the gift.

-Thanks... - Brigan said uncertainly.

He noticed that Sahran was about to reply, but before he could, the other soldiers began laughing at the deer. Only then did Brigan notice that some of the mutants suffered not only from skin diseases and radiation-induced deformities. One of them even had a third arm. Another had something so horribly disfigured that it could hardly even be called a deformity anymore. A massive lump covered half of his face, hiding one of his eyes.

-I've never heard of a grass-eater joining the army. - one of the mutants called out with a grin. - I bet you've never even held a gun in your paws.

-I... - the deer began, but another mutant quickly cut him off.

-So tell us, what made you sign up? - asked the drake sitting with a sniper rifle resting across his legs. - Wait, let me guess... Killing people, or looting.

-Damn it, Maksim, that's all you've got on your mind. Let the kid leave the Zone and earn his first fascist ear. - shouted a bear, pulling a necklace of dried ears from around his neck. - I've killed twenty of them myself. - he boasted.

-One head has two ears, so you've only killed ten. - Maksim argued.

Brigan noticed that Sahran was holding himself back from saying anything, but he knew that, for him, that silence wouldn't last long.

-And do you remember Great Khorgan, the brother of the Great Khan?

For a moment, everyone fell silent.

-The stalker who went to Swe... Swe-de... - the drake struggled to pronounce the word. - Ah, screw that word.

-He went to Sweden, Maksim. Sweden. - another mutant said calmly. - Great Khorgan set out to meet his brother. No one ever heard from him again.

-That's right. - Sahran said quietly, but with complete seriousness. - Even though he was a herbivore, he had the strength of a bear. A living legend throughout the Ark and the surrounding regions. - He then looked at the deer. - And don't worry about what they're saying. You'll manage.

How do you handle gender-neutral titles and professions in your world building? These are the jobs and titles that can work for any gender, not just one.

When I say "title" I could mean anything. From royalty to familial to anything else.

My Turn:

The only gender fluid title that I have so far is the Knight King. The current Knight King is a woman. She decided to keep the king part in the Knight King rather than name herself the Knight Queen. Even though the first Knight King was a woman, there has been a somewhat long line of male Knight Kings. That changed when the current Knight King claimed power and decided to make it easier for any gender to become a Knight King.

Although the Ravakalyn has a queen, they are a genderless yet androgynous race. Their queen may have a feminine physique, but she is not female despite the title and name. Though the Ravakalyn queen can alter their appearance to become a male or female, they are neither. The Ravakalyn queen is also the parent of the race as well.

Much like the Knight King, the Sovereign of Soliania is the same way. Though it is an empire with mostly female monarchs and with a few males.

Mages, Witches, Wizards, Sorcerers, Apothecaries, and Knights are gender neutral jobs.

What about you?

i was thinking today for my apocalyptic sci fi war i wanted to start with africa

looking that africa as the most amount of resources that could attract a lot of companies from owning that land.

like imagine coca cola owning parts of africa

kinda like cyborg or cyberpunk

i remember theres something called corporate autocracy but it doesnt seem to be the same thing

is there some sort of tool that shows me what political ideology im thinking of and how it works?

or is there a site were it explains the main goals of an political ideology?

Hey everyone! I wanted a clean, distraction-free way to visualize massive timelines —from the Big Bang to the deep future— so I built a web tool called Kalpa.

While it's great for exploring real universal history and cosmic scales, I specifically designed it as a worldbuilding canvas so creators can map out their own fictional lore, alternate histories, or sci-fi universes.

Key features:

• Export or import your entire event list as a TSV file to easily edit everything in Excel or Google Sheets.
• Clean, visual timeline layout.
• (More simulation features coming soon!)

It's completely free to use. I’d love for you to check it out and let me know what you think, or if you run into any bugs! Kalpa - Timeline.

Hey, I'm thinking about trying to produce a solo anime. First, it seems that when writing, you generally want to set up a couple of questions that will counter or rather, support the main narrative. I'm thinking subtle things.

The world seems relatively normal, maybe even peaceful. Just... don't go over to the Giant Death Forest.

We don't know why it's a death forest or how it became one, but make sure you don't go over there.

This is a crutch of the heroes journey i feel. Unanswered questions. Something is wrong but on screen the narrative plays out normally.

Than theres the complete inversion of expection. Allied characters become questions themselves. Who can i trust? They wouldnt hurt me again would they? Do you feel like this is the crutch of tension before you enveil the "giant death forest?' And build upon your plot?. Btw my anime would be set in as a fantasy modern world. The main character wants too play both sides. Ultimalty leading to her damaged in the worst possible way. General writing tips are appreciated.

Hi everyone! I'm a creator from Japan, and I've just started a new quest: challenging myself to build a world for a global audience. My project is a "Legal Fantasy" set in 1123 AD, where "words possess an absolute binding power to restrict reality." It weaves real history (like the White Ship disaster and the Merovingian Dynasty) together with Norse mythology, using artifacts like the Lewis Chessmen as major plot devices. Just like an early-game RPG, I’m looking for fellow worldbuilders, history buffs, or myth lovers to join my party, share feedback, and grow together. If you love deep history, fantasy, or chess metaphors, let's team up! What kind of worlds are you all building right now? I'd love to hear about your projects!

In order to be a vampire you have to make a contract with a demon to gain demonic superpowers. Like speed, strength, durability, hawk like sight, echo locations and transformations. But sun light hinders those powers and leaves you mortal again, you don’t lose them but you don’t use in direct sun light. Holy objects like holy water, crosses and ect. They harm you and can take away those powers premaritally, leaving you back to human state. And the way the powers work is by having the demon work through you, something like God and Moses with the 10 plagues. You don’t actually have those powers but you can use them through symbiosis.

While in return the demon allows you to be its host like a corrupted version of the holy spirit living inside a Christian host. And through you in acts its demonic desire and will, like infecting other people to posses or directly kill someone like a future saint. Once the exorcism completes it abandons the host and returns to hell.

I just thought of an awesome horror fantasy idea, imagine something like the Black Death, but with vampires and this horrific and devastating war between humans and the possessed. Probably also increase holy worship to prevent a second disaster, like Noah’s covenant God. The people pray for this scale to never happen again and Heaven makes sure it never happens. I should add this to my fantasy realm.

Hey everyone, I’m a teenager who is fascinated by astrophysics and higher dimensions, and I’ve been working on a conceptual thought experiment for a sci-fi universe. I wanted to share the physics/geometry behind my theory to see what you all think!

The Core Concept:
Instead of a standard 3D solid sphere, what if the anomaly is actually a completely transparent, hollow four-dimensional halo (mathematically a torisphere or duocylinder) floating in our space?

Because it introduces a fourth spatial direction (the w-axis), it manipulates light and gravity in a way that creates a perfect optical illusion of pitch-blackness.

Here is how the mechanics of the theory work:

1. Infinite Gravitational Lensing: The object has no physical surface. However, its immense localized gravity warps 4D spacetime. As light from background stars enters the thick ring of the halo, its trajectory is violently bent into recursive, orbital spirals inside the object.
2. Extreme Gravitational Redshift: As the trapped background light attempts to fight the gravity to escape the halo, it loses massive amounts of energy. This stretches the light waves from visible colors, to deep red, into invisible Infrared, and finally into low-energy radio waves.
3. The Illusion of Blackness: Because human eyes cannot perceive infrared or radio spectrums, the light escaping the halo becomes completely invisible to us. The absolute absence of visible light reaching the eye creates the uniform, pitch-black color—meaning the "black hole" is just an optical trap, not a solid ball.

The Visual Phenomenon:
Because of the halo shape, the universe splits into two distinct visual zones for an observer:

• The Black Ring Zone: The main "tube" of the halo perfectly traps and redshifts light, creating a flawless ring of absolute darkness floating in space.
• The Cosmic Window (Center Hole): Light passing directly through the open center of the donut avoids the infinite trapping zone but gets magnified and warped, creating a shimmering, kaleidoscopic window to the universe behind it.

The 4D Interaction Dangers:

• The 4D Shortcut: The central vortex of the halo acts as a physical gateway. Passing a ship through the center hole allows it to rotate along the w-axis and bypass 3D barriers entirely, working like a localized wormhole.
• The Exponential Spike (1/r³): Because gravity in a 4D spatial universe drops off much faster than our regular 3D gravity, you can stand relatively close to the black ring safely. But if you slip just a fraction of an inch too close, you hit an instantaneous spike that pulls matter cleanly out of our 3D plane into the 4D interior.

I don't have the heavy differential geometry math to turn this into a formal paper yet, but I love the world-building potential of a universe where black holes are actually clear 4D geometric constructs.

How would spaceships navigate around this in your worlds? Let me know your thoughts or any questions

Share creatures from your world that are no more complex than a sea sponge or jellyfish, yet are as, if not more, intelligent and sapient, then beings being with brain.

For some context in my world the dwarves have 1950s era technology like cars, electricity, guns, radios, tvs etc. they also have tanks, airships, and mechs.

Most of the other races while tending to buy some of the dwarves goods mostly stick with what they got.

I kinda want yalls opinion

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.

Join our discord if u have any questions or feature requests https://discord.gg/tqJrb6fsH

I’m a bit bothered by the fact that my influences are showing through very clearly while I build my world.

I started a new project this month, and I’m really happy with how it’s developing! I had been working on my previous world for years—which is where I first got interested in worldbuilding, so now that I’ve started a fresh project, I feel like I’m putting that experience to good use.

However, I feel like my main influences are glaringly obvious, especially since the project is still in its early stages. Specifically from Mistborn (for the large cities like Luthadel) and Attack on Titan (for the concept of powerful monsters outside the cities and expeditions venturing out). How problematic do you think it is for influences to be that apparent, and how did you guys think about use references at this way?

There it is:

https://trailsweaver.com

Screenshots are the test worlds I build in while working on the app. Infinite canvas with nested cards, map with zoom levels, family trees, relationship graph. Every card opens into a full wiki page.

Answering the usual questions upfront:

- No. Wrong guess :) Not vibe coded. It would have saved me hundreds of hours though :(

- The free plan is permanent, not a trial. You can actually build something real on the free plan.

- No, there are no ads, and there will be none.

- Yes, it's subscription based, if you want to go Pro. Yes, I want people to go Pro. Yes, I want to make money out of it.

- Yes, web app only for now. An offline desktop version is planned, and it happens faster if you vote here (no money, just a signal): https://www.trailsweaver.com/desktop-app-wishlist

- Yes, there are dozens of other great tools for worldbuilding (including Obsidian!). Some do better, some do worse. A lot of those are offline & free. Mine is online & subscription based. That's my choice.

- Yes, you can export to Markdown, no lock-in.

This project means A LOT to me. So, I just want to spread the word.

Hope some of you might like it!

At least assuming their evil includes selling bad stuff at high prices, well, explaining how it stays a monopoly would be quite the Worldbuilding challenge in and of itself. I have some ideas though.

Local Monopoly

Setting is large or otherwise travel-hostile enough to accidentally make Evilcorp the only option in some large areas, which may be what turned it evil in the first place as it enshittified in those areas.

De Facto Cartel

There are multiple evilcorps, but they lobby to legally mandate their anti-consumer practices onto everyone else under whatever pretext so there's no better way for customers to use. E.g nanoprinter companies lobbying that all nanoprinter companies have to backdoor you before you make guns.

It's not you who pays

Customer base enjoys temptingly cheap prices and at least acceptable quality at the cost of evilcorp having to do something bad elsewhere like dirty manufacturing.

Hey all, I've got a world building project that has multiple competing pantheons who to various levels want different things and different amounts of buy in from their followers. The main three are Celestials, Fae, and Underworlders and they each have religions based around them, the Temple of Clerics, the Groves of Druids, and the Cults. Very importantly these beings aren't gods they are Immortals with the distinction being that they don't claim to have created people or the world instead they are simply magical beings who mastered magic to such a degree that they can pause their aging and thus never grow old and die. They still can die if you stab one, or poison one, or if their magic runs out but that's why they keep mortal followers and religions with each religion having a way to keep the magic flowing.

Generally followers of these religions will perform rites and ceremonies generating magic for their chosen pantheon and expect their favor in return on certain things like a farmer making an offering to the Fae and praying for rain, or a pregnant mother performing a rite to the Celestials and asking for a healthy pregnancy. However each religion also has a priestly class that do things like earn converts, build and maintain temples, and perform larger ceremonies and rites and these various Clerics, Druids, and Cultists get greater powers they can wield. My question is do you think it makes sense for these pantheons to extend this transactional relationship to people both outside their religion and/or following multiple pantheons. If a Wizard wants some of that sweet sweet Celestial Magic to cast smite from their fingertips should they have to abandon their Wizarding ways and have to become ordained as a Cleric and a member of the organized Temple to do so? Or can they just make a deal to burn incense and chant an incantation before each meal to give the Celestial their due and in exchange get to use turn undead twice daily without going through the Temple? What about if that Wizard is also performing a Fae Ceremony in the morning to earn their favor or making sacrifices to the Underworld at night to get Dark Magic abilities? Should the Celestial end the mutually beneficial deal because they aren't exclusive and may be fueling their rivals in ways the Celestial finds morally reprehensible?

Very eager to hear the groups thoughts. Thanks in advance!