For me it's the Iberian peninsula, just straight up a square peninsula separated from the continent by a strategically placed mountain range + the tiny strait that gives access to the big sea.

Bonus point for France having a straight line coastline for like 500km just on top of it, looks like the mapmaker got lazy.

A magic system flaw isn't, a weakness added on to it. Think Earth bending not working on platinum in Avatar.

A magic system fall, is something where even if the power is working properly. There are still risks. Think how Fire bender can kill themselves, if they bend lighting through thier chests, or if you can turn your body into stone, you are kind of dead if someone can already damage it.

This joke has been made repeatedly (and I already know there's going to be a r/worldjerking post about this) but I'm curious if anyone has ever unironically done this. Like, I wanna know how many people have actually implemented their fetishes into their world unironically.

Also, I'm aware this is probably gonna get downvoted and possibly removed. I'm fine with that I just wanted to ask this.

Edit: I was not expecting this to become one of my most upvoted posts. I honestly expected to get downvoted a lot for this lol. Thanks anyway.

In Star Wars, there’s a planet called Dathomir where the males are clearly alien, they’ve got colorful skin and horns, but then the females are just. Human. For some reason.

All the males are Zabraks, all the females are human or so close to it they might as well be. WHY.

It’s stupid, it’s lazy, it pisses me off, and I’m not following it.

Edit: I’m aware of the Iridonian Zabraks, this isn’t about them

I'll go first: I don’t like the concept of fantasy races. It’s basically applying a set of clichés to a whole species. And as a consequence the reader sees the race first, and the culture or philosophy after. And classic fantasy races are the worst. Everyone got elves living in the woods and the swiss dwarves in the mountains, how is your Tolkien ripoff gonna look different?

"Reality is stranger than fiction, because reality doesn't need to make sense".

In my opinion, to start off with something hot, I am going to say the Taiping Rebellion. Man (Hong Xiuquan) literally called himself the brother of Jesus Christ, made himself king, conquered quite a chunk of Southern China and caused the deaths of tens of millions of people over the span of 14 years. What do you think are other such events that merit the title of being more like from a worldbuilt universe than our real universe?

For me, if i was lucky and born in Lepus, Vega, or Tucana I probably will honestly. Because in my lore they're like peaceful and in good terms with each other.

This is just a personal pet peeve but I'm sick and tired of reading a book set in a magic school where there is absolutely no schooling involved.

I've read books where the protagonist joins the premier magic academy in the world. And literally the only thing we see about the school is one combat lesson, and a bunch of missions and dungeons.

IF you're using the something like that as a specific critique of the world, or you're using it to make a point about how terrible the system is, it's great. But if 90% of the growth all the characters get has nothing to do with the anything the teachers teach, why even bother with a school setting. Just make it an adventurers guild.

Don't just have the hero advance leaps and bounds in a single week, and suddenly be on par with the skills of a senior. Give them time to learn. Let your story, characters, and world breathe.

Think about the best magic school settings. Harry Potter. We see enough classes to get a gist, and we see time pass, and the students get better over time, with those classes. My personal favourite is from mark of the fool. Every class is interesting for the reader. All the characters learn slowly and get stronger and more capable through a mix of schooling and extra curricular monster slaying.

Ps. I know the socratic method is a real thing. I know a lot of schools and colleges have that annoying "teach yourself the course" mentality. But they still do have classes. Lectures. They still teach and guide. The students learn over time.

What are some themes, elements or tropes you'll never do and why?

Personally, it's time traveling. Why? Because I'm just one girl and I'd struggle profusely to make a functional story whilst also messing with chains of causality. For my own sanity, its a no go.

I've struggled a little bit trying to figure how exactly I want to have healing work in my world, which is a pretty high fantasy setting.

So far I have it set up where there are two (well technically three) types of healing magic:

The most common type is one that anyone who can use magic can do which is essential a disinfect/close wound. It works only on visible surfaces level wounds and is very limited.

The second is a lot more powerful and depends on the user's level of study. Fist the user has to have a talent for it (which it pretty rare anyway)... and second they have to have studied the human body for the magic to work properly as well as various types of specific healing spells (so they are still essentially doctors). Other than that I'm not sure what kinds of limitations/drawbacks I should put on my healers so they aren't too busted. Because I have characters that have lost limbs and have scars and I need some rules as to why they can just "magic it" better.

The one exception to this is I have one healer type which is race specific to my Kobolds, incredibly rare (like only 2-3 alive at a time), and typically closely guarded by the Kobolds. They have an ability called the "Kobold's Kiss" (pictured) that can heal any wound as long as the injured is still alive. It has the drawback that they are forced to relieve the injuries of all those they've healed in their dreams on loop (unless someone enters the dream with them and can stop the event).

Anyway, I was curious how other people set up the rules for healing in their worlds to see if I can figure out how vest to set up mine. Please let me know your thoughts. Either on what o currently have set up or on what your setup is.

Generaly, do you have encouters when one side is armed with swords and other with boomsticks? If so give more details about that.

(I hope there will be some world where swords won.)

Basically, what are things that people do in their worldbuilding that make you mildly upset, even when you understand why someone would do it and it isn't really important enough to complain about.

For example, one of my biggest irrational pet peeves is when worlds replace messanger pigeons with other birds or animals without showing an understanding of how messenger pigeons work.

If you wanna respond to the prompt, you can quit reading here, I'm going to rant about pigeons for the rest of the post.

Imo pigeons are already an underappreciated bird, so when people spontaneously replace their role in history with "cooler" birds (like hawks in Avatar and ravens/crows in Dragon Prince) it kinda bugs me. If you're curious, homing pigeons are special because they can always find their way back to their homes, and can do so extrmeley quickly (there's a gambling industry around it). Last I checked scientists don't know how they actually do it but maybe they found out idk.

Anyways, the way you send messages with pigeons is you have a pigeon homed to a certain place, like a base or something, and then you carry said pigeon around with you until you are ready to send the message. When you are ready to send a message you release the pigeon and it will find it's way home.

Normally this is a one way exchange, but supposedly it's also possible to home a pigeon to one place but then only feed it in another. Then the pigeon will fly back and forth.

So basically I understand why people will replace pigeons with cooler birds but also it makes me kind of sad and I have to consciously remember how pigeon messanging works every time it's brought up.

Personally, I find people having control over things like water,fire and plants insanely overused.

I feel that I should elaborate. My world doesn’t really have any slavery, but a good deal of other media I’ve watched have some sort of slave system in place. In something like Dune, it just appears to be a tone setter for the darkness of that universe. In ASOIAF, slavery is the source of major conflict in the story. Even something like Star Wars has slavery in its lore.

Do you include slavery in your world? If so in what capacity?

By "non visual lore, and you spending the last game I mean long and descriptive posts about a creature, a plant, a humanoid race, a map, maybe a creature's diet life cycle or habitat etc

Have noticed that whenever people post this type of lore on the sub, myself included, it seems as if everyone could either care less or they avoid it like the plague, they're usually maybe one or two upvotes if you're lucky and comments other than those from AutoModerators are usually a pipe dream

So what's the big deal with lirec if it doesn't have pictures in it, I find this to be quite a serious issue the X-ray especially given that some people, myself included, aren't really that good at drawing or painting things in great detail like this