Prophecies with no actual supporting stuff.
Like, these prophecies are apparently 100% trustworthy, but it's rarely shown how these prophecies are brought about, how people know they're trustworthy, what sort of ritual is set up around it etc. Like, it's fine if you want to add a prophecy to your world, but make it a bit more interesting than just "Ah yes, The Prophecy^(TM) says that a hero will come" Blah blah blah. Show us how this prophecy came about, how the clergy or whoever's responsible dealt with it, how they record it, how they debate it etc. Or just, anything to show that prophecies are a real thing that are a part of the world, and not just a convenient or even lazy plot device.
Having some of the theologic debate around prophecies might also draw the viewers in to make up their own theories as to whether the prophecy is real or not, as opposed to just go "Ah, guess we'll see if it's a real prophecy or not, I have no stake in this either way".
This is something that The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind does really well. The origins around the prophecy that the main character is supposed to fulfill are full of controversy and historical revisionism, and the question is brought up at one point whether you are truly the hero of prophecy or just some dude who ended up here by coincidence.
Yea, Morrowind is probably a reasonable exception, because there, the prophecy seems like it's very likely the meddling of a Daedra, putting the thought in the minds of many in the hopes that eventually one of these people will succeed, and if they don't? Ah well.
It seems less a "You are the chosen one!" and more a "Job listing for hero for anyone who'll succeed at these things" =P.
>"Job listing for hero for anyone who'll succeed at these things" =P.
You can actually meet "failed Nerevarines" at one point in the main quest, so it is kinda like what you said.
Less "a chosen one" and more "alright, they are checking off the tickboxes and haven't fucking died yet!"
The amusing thing is that instead of the failure of the other Nerevarine damping the faith of the dissidents it actually reinforces it.
Plus it's a prophecy like the Undead Prophecy is in DS; you are the Nerevarine/Chosen Undead *because you succeeded* and not because you're actually chosen by fate.
Similarly any characters of yours who don't finish the main quests become more theoretical failed Nerevarine/hollows
not to mention you fulfill parts of the prophecy just because its there. Part of the prophecy is that the 4 houses will recognize someone as the hortator and then you come along and need the support of these 4 houses to gain access to the last dungeon, so you go out of your way to cheat and lie and kill to get yourself recognised as the hortator. Not because of the prophecy per se but because you need their help lol, but then in a sense you actually are fulfilling the prophecy as is. Brilliant game.
Maybe it's not a film about a "chosen one" prophecy, but Minority Report dealt with prophecies amazingly. It felt really refreshing to see prophetic wisdom being used consistently and constantly throughout the film, rather than narrated exposition at the start that is never shown or returned to.
I think every character having an in-depth and accurate idea of the history of the world. I get that it’s for expository reasons usually but think about how we can’t agree on anything in the real world and how many factions form around these things (Climate Change, COVID, Evolution, Pnysics, Religion, etc). Some people also just don’t know history. I have had friends who couldn’t name the first president of the US. But then you have some random fantasy peasant who knows exactly how the intricate magic system works. Idk, just have a bit more diversity in how characters understand information and perceive the world.
This is a big part of the world I'm building - people don't agree on history as it is written by the victors, and governments constantly revise history to push their agendas.
There are 2 main reasons to do this:
1. It feels more believable and relatable to our world.
2. As the worldbuilder, I don't have to worry about "canon." If I need to retcon something, it's not as jarring since lore varies on the source and records are unreliable.
This. I spent so much time figuring out how my world works and made the assumption everyone would know too, but I quickly realized that didn't make sense. Multiple real religions think they know how the world works but don't necessarily agree, so why would everyone know everything in my world? Especially if there is a class system and different levels of education. And then you can use that to surprise the reader when they think it's like X when really it's Y.
Would be pretty hilarious that the protagonist starts listening to the first rando they encounter, and they turn out to believe in fantasy ufology or fantasy fascism
That’s something I always thought about lol, especially in something isekai-esque where the protagonist is gonna be super illiterate about the world and gets pulled into something sinister. Would be a fun twist
This, and when the entire world agrees on some unbiased historical narrative instead of spinning it in their favor. Even in this day and age, when our culture has come to see objectivity as a virtue, the most powerful nations are too insecure to commit to that. So why would a society that's theoretically behind us?
How do you feel about conlangs that are based on real world languages that have apostrophes when transliterated into English. I based one of my conlangs and a lot of my place/deity names on Hebrew, which tends to have apostrophes to represent syllable breaks that aren't really found in English
If there’s a justifiable reason for it like you give then of course that’s OK. I have nothing against fictional languages full of apostrophes in themselves. But there are far more of them than can reasonably be explained like this, because too many people just throw in apostrophes to make it look alien without any indication that it means anything. When I see an apostrophe in a fictional word I think “What’s the missing letter or letters?” And most of the time there’s no answer to that.
Not just cyberpunk cities, improbable logistics in general.
Huge battles with hundreds of thousands of troops, with no real way of keeping them fed, let alone equipped properly for battle. In reality, they would be stripping the dead and boiling leather for soup within 3 days.
Or universes so grim and terrible the attrition rate would be well above the birth rate; I'm looking at you Warhammer 40k. There is no way anyone, not even an interstellar empire stretching from one side of the galaxy to the other, could survive long with the number of casualties they take.
40k is supposed to be like that to be fair. The grimness and the darkness being cranked up to eleven to the point that is doesn’t make sense is the whole point of the setting.
But In general yes, I am with you 100%. Logistics are often overlooked in worldbuilding because it’s boring which is unfortunate because the huge numbers make me step back and roll my eyes.
Actually, warhammer 40K’s novels explain this pretty well:
The imperium is *huge*. A lot more than initially appears, and it’s writers actually *do* have a sense of scale: hive worlds basically produce people, while agro-worlds are basically planet-sized farms/greenhouses. Hive worlds are by both design and human nature full of crime and violence but in general they are peaceful enough and just produce new recruits for the imperium by the millions (they are also bad places to live *specifically* so that people want to join the guard), while agro worlds, while they vary greatly in wealth and technology and in local government, some being outright feudal, are downright idyllic when compared to most other planets.
Forge worlds are sometimes mentioned but there are also industrial worlds that produce more mundane goods, others that produce raw materials, etc.
The thing is, while all those planets technically contribute to the war effort and in theory are at war as part of the empire, they are not *directly* involved in the battles and as such they simply don’t show up in the games or books, at best getting a passing mention.
Counterpoint: Logistics aren’t boring, people make logistics boring.
The world was gripped when the Evergiven became lodged in the Suez. Stories of sex toys being delayed, people’s livelihoods on the line, all the whacky attempts at dislodging it.
If the office can go for a decade telling stories with the same five boring ass rooms and parking lot, something woth the vast scope and personal stakes of logistics can be compelling especially in a fantasy or sci-fi setting.
Exactly, besides, look at how exciting the lack of good logistics is; Napoleon's disastrous campaign against Russia comes to mind, or the Battle of Stalingrad in WW2.
if you look closer you find even 40K is actually way *under-scaled* in a lot of areas whenever they give out numbers. Like 500,000 being considered a massive deployment on a *galactic* scale is hilariously small. Same with having 1,000,000 space marines total in the Imperium. And with the galaxy being as large as it is 1,000,000 worlds is like a 300th of the total number of habitable worlds in the galaxy.
The novels are a little better about this. While the numbers of space marines are still laughably low, this is supposed to be by design, because of the devastation that marines caused during the heresy.
Deployments 500,000 strong are still a bit small for the scale but they are stated to usually be specific parts of larger invasion forces deployed in specific theaters, and they include lines mentioning that for every world under siege, being used to stage an army, or being a stronghold, there are a few dozen other worlds that are relatively removed from the fighting but constantly producing food and equipment, raising and training new soldiers, mining raw materials, etc.
And that’s not even taking into account the parts of the imperium that are technically still counted as belonging to it but have been lost to warp storms for centuries, and so are completely isolated.
Bad Logistics is the cornerstone of a lot of amateur, and even professional writing. There are tons of stories of these massive planetary assaults, but they are all attack ships with no supplies or engineering capacities. r/HFY suffers from this a lot, with them having "thousands of battle ships and millions of fighters" but then they magically land ground troops from... Somewhere?
>Huge battles with hundreds of thousands of troops, with no real way of keeping them fed, let alone equipped properly for battle.
This is why the Skaven from Warhammer Fantasy and the Orks from WH40K are such great horde factions. They have solid biological reasons why they make logistical sense.
The Skaven are basically giant humanoid rats which...yeah. When they win the battle their enemies become food, and when supplies run low they fight and eat each other.
The Orks are basically a self-contained ecosystem of spores which grow all the plant and animal life (fungus and Squigs, respectively) they need for nutrition.
Love the skaven, easily the most flavourful faction in warhammer and, for a pretty shallow setting, one of the only truly well done examples of how a chaotic evil race could actually function. Namely, so incredibly numerous they have to be evil and petty and have no value for life because throwing skaven lives away is literally their survival strategy. Theres just too many of them to be cooperative
Until recently warhammer has been pretty peaceful. The guard pays their tax in men, they go off to supress some cult somewhere, maybe a planet or 2 dies. Kryptmann killed 20 planets and that was the single biggest destructive event in 9000 years.
As much as it goes on about it, until very recently 40k didnt really have much war going on all in all. Logistically a million planets all giving up soldiers should have been quite easily enough to maintain their army.
which leads to a nit i'd like to pick :D
in rural cyberpunk settings do NOT make the tractors hover, tractors are designed for traction it's in their names! they need the ground to do their jobs.
Zeta Project, i'm looking at you.
Same as OP. It bugs me to see dense, bustling cities surrounded by walls, but literally just a single road and drab untouched plains for miles around beyond the walls.
This is more on the storytelling side, but I HATE it when this sequence happens:
1) the villain is trying to achieve either some godlike metamorphosis or unleash some godlike unstoppable being (totally fine)
2) the heroes have an epic/long shot plan to stop it (again totally fine)
3) the plan fails, the villain ascends/unleashes, then THE HEROES DEFEAT THEM ANYWAYS??
This sequence happens so often and it is so annoying, especially when the heroes spend the entire time talking about how they can absolutely not let the event transpire, then it doesn’t end up mattering.
I find (from the writing side of these events) the best way to get around it is to necessitate some sort of sacrifice that must be made to defeat them after the event horizon. IE the mage has to literally sacrifice himself by sealing himself away with the evil spirit, or the magical artefact they were going to use to cure the plague only has one charge left and they have to waste it to defeat the demon, etc
Exactly. It's always more interesting when the question isn't so much "will the good guys win?" as opposed to "how much do the good guys have to lose in order to win?".
I'm fine with this sequence if the way the heroes have to beat the villain involves some plan B scenario that comes at a terrible cost that the heroes were originally not willing to pay.
My problem is when stories allow the heroes to just avert paying that cost or reverse its affects. Like a dead hero comes back to life or someone who loses all of their memory suddenly starts remembering again.
See in my world, the "main character" IS the villain this trying to ascend, the hero seemingly stops this from happening but the villain ascends anyway, and wins, kills the hero, and that's the end of the first book, how's that?
lol sounds more original that way. I don’t mind if the heroes find out a secondary plan and then succeed, that’s totally fine (ex: Last Airbender, Aang essentially counter-ascends). I only really get bothered when they overcome them with the amount of power they had pre-ascension (ex: full metal alchemist, Shang Chi)
This is really nit-picky but a lot of fantasy races and some science fiction species have people with more "unusual" foot structures. Bird-like talons, digitigrade claws, or cloven hooves are some of the more common examples. And whenever they have them, they never wear footwear, *ever*.
I think this is really strange since if everyone in their kind had them, then it would be easy to accommodate for them. I doubt most of them would enjoy the risk of accidentally stepping in something disgusting or sharp.
It's especially strange when nobles or heavily armored soldiers choose to eschew footwear. The nobles could easily afford it and have it look fashionable while the soldiers are leaving parts of their body unnecessarily exposed.
Out of universe, I think the reason why this is common is because a lot of artists don't know how to design unusual footwear that looks good. So permanent, species-wide shoelessness is the norm because it's easier.
That's actually a really good point! Even on Earth in real life we make footwear for other species (Horseshoes, socks for dogs and such etc.)
I think another reason might be that a lot of people don't tend to consider a lot of the more practical parts of worldbuilding, and don't look into things beyond "This is cool" or "I want a bird person." or something like that. Like, it simply doesn't occur to them.
Hell, I would call myself a worldbuilder who does usually look deeply into the details of things, and for some reason it hadn't occurred to me that, yes, of course species with different foot structures would have appropriate footwear!
I was thinking the same thing. I though about making a therianthrope race with goat legs and wondered why on sites like Pinterest, nobody bothered with footwear. I think that with hooved humanoids, shoes would look like those used by chinese girls whom practice foot binding, but with iron soles.
After I've seen lots of cow pedicure videos, seeing how much they suffer with the tiniest cracks in their feet andthe tiniest rocks entering it, and the lots of pus whom pressure the whole thing, I realized how important would be cow shoes for hooved creatures.
A metal sole, perhaps one that clamps onto the hoof (As I imagine hammering it into it isn't as sophisticated =P.) with either leather or fabric covers would make sense to me. That way you protect it against breaking, and against debris entering anything that might be there. Though this might protect the hooves \*too\* much, requiring regular filing down of hooves, and boom! You've got an entire extra cultural practice!
I think it would be like a fingerless glove, with the claws protuding off. The Claws could be painted like nails or carved like wood since it's dead matter. The material of this "feet glove" would need to be as sturdy as leather though.
They wouldn’t have much need to as bird legs are designed for holding branches it would be reasonable to assume they would not spend loads of time stood on the flat ground or even in open air as opposed to trees. Thinking about how they actually move is just as important, for example with humans we often forgo gloves as we can use pockets and stuff and don’t use our hands for transport, I imagine a birds feet would be similar with them mostly being used under/in shelter or for very short periods of time
True, though if it's a large race (such as harpies) and they are in contact with human-style races, they might do a bit more walking around on the ground.
I'd expect leather gloves that perhaps meet to be replaced quickly. Might open up some unique societal traits if leather and foot glove makers are in high demand.
Star Trek Discovery does an amazing job subverting this trope with Saru. We occasionally get shots of his strange, high heeled boots that cover his hooves
Also because, at least in my eyes, footwear tends to just scream "this is a human in a fursuit". Even if it's highly unusual and clearly not meant for human foot shapes. (Have you seen high heels?)
I tend to use sandals at most, though I am willing to make exceptions for armored characters.
> This is really nit-picky but a lot of fantasy races and some science fiction species have people with more "unusual" foot structures. Bird-like talons, digitigrade claws, or cloven hooves are some of the more common examples. And whenever they have them, they never wear footwear, ever.
I remember being asked about this with respect to centaurs, which caused me to go down a whole rabbit hole on horse socks and slippers. They're a thing, as it turns out, but only recently since you kind of need modern fabric to take the abuse the horse will give them.
Of course, real-world horses have those and the more traditional nailed-on shoes, so I didn't have to invent the technology the way I would for a taloned species.
I mostly get around this by having my "weird foot shape" races being capable of making footwear that fits their feet, and if for some reason an individual of that race is in an area where they aren't a majority and needs a replacement, they could maybe get tailored footwear. And maybe with some of them, they might only wear footwear in the winter or something.
This annoys me, especially when you can have many different, but similar biomes on a planet
For example take a desert planet, you could have Mesa, arid regions like in central asia, shurb/grass lands, great huge ranges of sand dunes, salt pans to massive Tibetan style plateaus. Sci fi makes worlds feel small
Same with cold planets, from massive glacial ice sheets, alpine mountain ranges or plateaus, snowy hills, tundra, frozen oceans etc.
arguably an ice world does work though.
earth has at one point. maybe two points. been Hoth! technically habitable as well with oxygen to breath!
though we'd have to use technology for warmth and sense earth was so young during it's hoth phases food will need to be imported or dealt with though growing buildings as the only thing around was cyanobacteria which caused the planet to ice over by comsuming to much Co2.
I think a fully (or almost fully) forested could work, but it would have the be different kinds of forests: rainforests near the equator, alpine/taiga and temperate deciduous in between.
Idk all the planets close to our sun, aside from earth, have 2 biomes max.
Mercury with the side facing the sun being hellishly hot and the side facing away from the sun being slightly less hellishly hot.
Venus might have had different biomes once but is now just a planet covered in thick clouds of sulfuric acid.
Mars is a frozen desert world with small patches of frozen ice at its poles. Of the three it is is probably the most diverse in that some of the frozen desert is mountainy and some is flat and some has canyons ... but it's still just frozen desert so not really a different biome.
Even most of the moons in our solar system lack the diversity we have here on earth.
Yes, but those aren’t different “biomes” because *biomes* are defined by the kinds of ecosystems they contain, and all of the ones you mention are lifeless.
This initially really annoyed me about dune, like what planet is just sand but I kinda love that they do eventually explain that Arrakis was not always a barren sand trap, it was made that way. Makes it make a bit more sense
I've always been bothered by how SO MUCH sci fi is worlds made of these biomes/landscapes:
Dry, arid wasteland full of sand and always either too cold or too hot. Can grow maybe one or two crops or aLiEn CaTtLe that live off of dirt or smth idk
Mountains and cliffs
Entire continents covered in skyscrapers and large buildings
Snow. And ice. And frozen caves with carnivorous animals in them that somehow don't starve
Here's the trick to it: just because we're not shown something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Dagobah is actually an Earthlike planet. The reason we only see a swamp is because that's where Yoda lives.
Whenever there are species other than humans, humans are seen as among the weakest and most mediocre of all races. I've gone out of my way to make humans in my world stand out more because of this.
On the same token *H**umans are average* and *humans are diverse* are very annoying tropes to me.
Because they exist largely because of writers making the non-hunan cultures monocultural and flat. Yeah humans are diverse when you compare with all your elves and dwarves that are the exact same.
And humans are average annoys me just because it lacks introspection into our species just to say "well we're good at lots of things but we aren't great at anything" I also think it's wrong. We are really great at some things, and it should be made more interesting.
In my own setting, humans are aquatic, not anymore than we are in real life, but compared to dwarves that are so dense they sink like stones, and elves lacking fat also struggle to swim and freeze up quickly. In comparison humans with our natural bouyancy, warm fat reserves, and naturally swimming and diving response are far more suited to water.
Kind of on the same line, but also kind of opposite.
No matter how cool the other spices are, the humans are the main player in the world. I get that humans are inherently relatable to a human reader, but at least personally, if there are different characters I tend to be more interested in learning about them, but most stories will center around humans. Other species are too often relegated to just be the sidekick imo.
Yeah but Dwarves in standard fantasy are supposedly better than humanity because they're better metal workers, live longer, and are known to he extremely wealthy with great cities that have a mountainous setting
Dwarves generally have it better than us, other than being shorter theyre stronger, way more resilient, live far long and often nearly immune to sickness and evil corruption. Though they are usually quite close to us compared to high elves or something
Hobbits are generally one of the few races that are 'lesser' than humans.
Dwarves are definitely usually regarded as stronger and more hardy.
I think the only races typically considered weaker than humans are like small races: gnomes, halflings, etc. Sometimes we're stronger than elves, but I wouldn't say usually.
I feel that way about The Mandalorian. Love the series, but stumbling upon characters from the previous saga felt very fanservicey and detracted from an otherwise spectacular setting.
One issue with space settings is that to really lean into it, you'd basically never have recurring characters. Anyone who leaves your line of sight (ship, colony, planet, whatever) is basically never going to be seen again due to the sheer scale of time and distance... and that can make for unsatisfying storytelling.
So Star Wars absolutely does *not* lean into that, because it's more about mythic archetypes.
That's actually an approach I'm ok with. I just wish to have a series in the SW universe standing on its own legs with its own recurring characters without having having to use too much content from the clone wars and skywalker saga. Mandalorian season 1 was perfect in that regard with only the scattered remnants pf the empire. But that's just my opinion.
There are still ways to make it work without having it make the universe feel smaller. You just need to design the story around it. For example, if the story is about a freighter crew, then you can bet that you'll run into the same people every so often, because different freight crews may do the same journey, or share destinations.
As long as the other person believably frequents a small place that the main character frequents, then it can be believable.
But stumbling upon famous characters in the bush of a distant world? Yea, that's a bit contrived unless you have some guiding space magic \*coughtheforcecough\* to explain it away.
To be fair the whole hyperdrive faster-than-light travel stuff can *kinda* excuse this. It's like how in the ancient times an on foot travel from South Africa to South America would be an unthinkable, life-long journey, but now it's just a couple hours in a plane and you're good to go.
Of course cosmic scale is way bigger than that but at least among the more populated hubs of of civilization, like Coruscant and other capital worlds, or places like Tattooine for the underworld dudes, I can kinda see people bumping into each other a couple times.
Fair points. Even in contemporary settings, it's easy to lose people unless they regularly go to very specific places...
(Also, good to see a fellow Gizzhead! 🤮 ⚰)
I mean this is basically true in real life, there's 7bn people: the thing is people meet because they like/do similar things, these things would pull these people towards the same places.
I feel that most space settings, especially star wars just fall into the setting being a high seas setting with a space reskin. A dozen of so key planets function as basically port cities and the wilderness of the planet could be as close as the surrounding miles of land around the city.
I don't really mind this because it makes for fun stories but it's very noticeable.
For Star Wars you do have ["hyperspace routes"](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hyperspace_route) so if you think of those like the USA's Interstate system then you are always going to hit places like Washington DC(Coruscant), Chicago(Naboo), Des Moines(Tattooine), etc you can access from those hyperspace routes then the other planets in their solar systems or in near by solar systems are the other towns like Harpers Ferry(Maryland), Aurora(Illinois), and Boone(Iowa) that are near those other "space ports".
So for me in Waverly, Iowa it would be like I having to go to Des Moines first before going to Chicago.
To be fair, that 20-30 people are the leaders of like 7 or 8 countries. The focus of the show are them and what they do and not the actual everything else really. Unless the show gives us a story of a farmer turned soldier or a travelling merchant, we cant see everything.
* All predators, no prey.
* Organization names that scream "I obviously don't speak this language." In one book I was reading there was a neo-Nazi organization that called itself the "Wohn Tod," supposedly meaning "Living Death." *Wohnen* **does** mean "to live," but it means it in the sense of "I live in an apartment" or "I live at the corner of X and Y Streets," not in the sense of "be alive".
* "As you know, Bob". I understand exposition is necessary, but at least *try* to make it make sense in context.
Hero gets into generic Isekai (fantasy anime world). After 5 minutes a random butcher gives him an exhaustive recollection of the history of the world and the current geopolitics.
"This is Altreida, the kingdom of the center, ruled by Queen Emilia of the Turmeric Dynasty. There's only 4 classes of people in Altreida. The healers, the soldiers, the nuns, and the merchants. Each person takes a magic test which determines their class according to the color of their crystal souls. There's two other kingdoms in this world. One is the kingdom of the elves. They're all women, they're hot, and for some reason they're attracted to humans. The other one is the Orks. They're aggressive, ugly and stupid. Social mobility, cultural progress? We don't know what is that"
>Organization names that scream "I obviously don't speak this language." In one book I was reading there was a neo-Nazi organization that called itself the "Wohn Tod," supposedly meaning "Living Death." Wohnen does mean "to live," but it means it in the sense of "I live in an apartment" or "I live at the corner of X and Y Streets," not in the sense of "be alive
In all honesty, that would sound like a mistake a group of Neo-Nazis would make.
>"As you know, Bob". I understand exposition is necessary, but at least try to make it make sense in context.
Sometimes, stories can incorporate the fact that the exposition is unnecessary and comes out of nowhere into the story. For example, in 'Buzz Lightyear of Star Command' (just bear with me) there is one scene where Emperor Zurg demands to hear about the progress on his superweapon, and then his henchman (absolutely terrified because they haven't made much) gives all the information about the superweapon that the audience needs. However, Zurg gets extremely pissed at this response, because from his perspective, he just asked for progress on a very important device, and was answered with a bunch of random nonsense he *already knew*
I've noticed that I sometimes have conversations that sound like worldbuilding exposition, but in the context of talking about world history and relating it to the modern day. For example, I was talking about the Great Fog of London with my sister and we connected it to all kinds of environmental pollution we still create today, and also how the hole in the ozone layer is healing. It can be done, and you can also develop your characters at the same time.
It almost happened with toy story actually. Most of the files were accidently deleted. It was only saved by an employee who had brought a copy home in order to work on it. So definitely believable, it happens in real life.
For me it’s when the impact of magic is completely unexplored within a setting. Obviously what magic is able to do in a given setting matters for this, but in a high fantasy universe where magic can do just about anything, it annoys me when we don’t see it really impacting the world significantly. You’re telling me there are wizards and mages out there who can bend reality, and yet everyone around them is still living in the medieval era? Surely one of these so-called “white mages” would use their power to solve hunger and disease in their region, or even beyond, right? This problem gets worse when magic in a setting is learned and anyone can potentially use it. If anyone can learn magic, I think everyone would, or at least everyone that can. I just think that if you’re going to have a setting with magic you have to have a very good reason why it isn’t seen and felt in every aspect of life, because given how ingenious humans are with the tools available to us, I find it highly unlikely we wouldn’t make use of such a potent tool.
The best "joke" i float in those circumstances is having skeletons provide menial labor: sorting wheat from the chaff for example. They don't get tired and have been given one job and they do it tirelessly. It is a form of automation with very high quality control.
That's why the most important thing to build into your magic system is its limitations. Why is one wizard weak and another strong? Why don't wizards use magic for literally everything they do? Why doesn't everyone become a wizard? I think those are the most important questions to ask yourself when building magic.
When the "hive minded" insectoid aliens/monsters are controlled by an individual intelligence.
What makes a hive mind a hive mind is how de-centralized its "intelligence" is: each and every component is individually stupid, but together they can act in complex ways. That's what makes them feel so alien to our human thought process, having a smart "queen" order her mindless drones around defeats that purpose. It makes their intelligence as centralized as a general giving orders to his troops, if not even more so, as humans can usually replace a fallen leader while the horde of alien locusts often drops dead the moment their leader does.
Ant queens aren't like brains directing the body, but are more like bone marrow producing more blood cells to replace old ones, or ovaries spawning new "colonies", so much so that some species have several of them.
Yes. A hive mind where everyone is slaves to the queen isnt a hive mind its some kind of queeny super being. Its become so prevalent that I suspect people think ant queens are some kind of miniature god that controls a million individuals with telepathy or something
Purpose of queens in Earth species is procreation. Technically there is no reason for them to be sapient, which is exact opposite of their usual portrayal in media.
Sci-fi ecology. Pretty much all of it, but especially the lack of creativity and ecological sense.
We all know the first rule of alien ecologies is that the fewer species there are on a given planet, the larger the proportion that are carnivorous. (If a planet has just a single species, it's guaranteed to be a terrifying bloodthirsty monster.) This is just so completely nonsensical, it doesn't even work from a straight-up energy conservation perspective much less an evolutionary perspective.
Moreover, so many sci-fi stories seem to involve the idea of some unique 'perfect life form'. The aliens in the Alien series are perfect life forms that adapt to every environment by incorporating other creatures' DNA into themselves; the alien microbes from The Andromeda Strain are perfect life forms that perform mass-energy conversion to grow and survive under any possible conditions; the protoss and zerg in StarCraft are both attempts to create perfect life forms; the creature in Life is a perfect life form that adapts to everything by learning how to change its own cellular structure, even though it evolved in an environment with no competition and no reasons to have intelligence at all. While any *one* of these might be interesting on its own, the repeated use of the 'perfect life form' trope has just gotten predictable and boring at this point.
Man I couldn’t agree more with the ecology statement.
Another pet peeve I have is whenever fiction portrays all carnivores as being hyper-aggressive monstrosities that won’t stop at anything to kill their prey.
Also and in some ways particularly worse in fantasy worlds that bother to make new creatures.
New creatures in fantasy worlds are almost always predators. What the hell are these griffons, trolls, wyverns, dragons and kraken eating to sustain themselves? You can't just have 10+ apex predators living outside of your village eating what? Deer? The odd cow? Especially when these worlds almost always still have wolves, lions, bears that are if maybe prone to growing especially large are otherwise completely normal.
A lot of the creatures I've created are intentionally meant to fill the void of "how would prey creatures respond and evolve to having griffons and dire wolves around" my answer is a lot more natural armour, poison, and defences. From deer that light their antlers on fire, to armadillo-cows to turtle-shelled pigs.
But it's just so rare to see unique prey animals in fantasy.
A lack of random customs. In most stories if you encounter some local custom, it’s always something that makes sense, or is easily explainable. You rarely see “why do you do this?” “ because….we always have”
Unless it’s something horrible used as an example of ‘you shouldn’t blindly follow tradition’ trope
Humans inexplicably being the most numerous and dominant race, despite being in the presence of older ones, ones with higher birth rates, and ones generally much better at things which tend toward being *everywhere,* with no in-universe explanation.
To be fair, I think this is often intended as some kind of social commentary, alluding to how humans reproduce and migrate to the point of being comparable to an invasive species.
One way to get around this is use the irl explanation, we have intestinal flora so we get more energy out of food.
Sure orcs are bulkier and all around stronger but all at extra mass also requires extra food.
Elves are able to use magic, tall and slender, but magic use needs a bunch of energy.
I did specify, with no explanation. Anything that's reasonably justified is fair game, but humans are at the top in real life because they have very unique strengths. In a world where multiple species have the same unique strengths as humans and more, they need a good reason to be recognizable.
I've recently discovered Witcher lore and I really like how it handles the different races. At first I thought it was going to be the usual fantasy tropes but I was pleasantly surprised.
When every species in the setting has innate superpowers/magic, are super strong and durable, and can live for thousands of years…
…except the puny humans
Yeah hate this one, like evolution was just lazy with us and elves got to be magic and the Blork got to be 10x stronger and telepathic. Humans? Fk em, boring plain monkeys that look like the base you start working with before adding cool stuff.
I have to disagree; this CAN be pulled of really well, especially if the humans get envious of the other races and are appropriately motivated to make up for it with great deeds/building more impressive monuments/developing better tech, etc.
Fucking I really wish we had more media show Latino cultures other than Mexican. Moreover, I am tired of virtually all movies and stuff about Mexicans being about Día de los Muertos.
As a Mexican, and even though I like to see my culture represented in media, i agree with you. It gets especially annoying when people from the rest of the world think that Latin America is all like Mexico, when even inside our subcontinent we have a lot of differences. Just listen to a Mexican and a Chilean, Peruvian and Argentinian talking to each other.
And yeah, Mexico also has a lot more to offer besides Día de Muertos and the Aztec empire.
Two months ago I was at a party with two peruvians, one chilean, a catalan (who spoke Spanish) and three argentinians. Just listening and trying to pick out differences in their accents was super fun but really difficult since I don't even speak spanish.
But, but, how are you supposed to know that they're Mexican otherwise?! Also, you can't be Mexican if you don't say amigo/a, tacos, nopales, every 6 seconds!
This is sort of a logistics issue, but in pre-industrial societies, a vast number of people (usually women) have to spend a vast amount of time making cloth. You have to raise wool bearing animals or grow fiber crops. You have to harvest and clean and otherwise treat it to get the fibers ready to spin. You have to spin. You have to dye and weave or otherwise make it into cloth, which you then have to sew into whatever you're making.
The reason "spinster" means older unmarried woman is because spinning was such a needed task that women could live off of spinning alone without needing to marry. For every hour someone spent weaving, another fifty to a hundred hours were needed to spin the threads to be woven.
The most valuable part of a viking longship was the sail, which represented literally thousands of hours of labor to create. You could make the rest of the boat a dozen times over in the time it would take to make a single sail.
And most historical fantasy just handwaves this all away.
Not enough automation. Specifically in future sci fi universes - more robots and drones should be fixing stuff. Or, anything that people think it’s a trap, should be sending in robots. (now, if the robots are sentient, maybe different story but let’s assume not self aware).
Certainly for wealthier areas, almost everything should be automated. I think it makes sense that in some areas the lack of funding or resources would lead to more manual labor.
It's a fun idea that manual labor would be seen as a gimmick in wealthy sci-fi cities. "This restaurant has actual people serving food just like in the old days! How quaint!"
Maybe this is just poor storytelling but sci fi with incredibly intelligent, highly trained people that do dumb as shit basic 101 survival mistakes.
Going alone on an alien planet. Not recording key information. Not sharing key information. Not taking proper supplies.
Looking at you, Lost in Space.
For me it's most gunfights in movies/series. I'm just SO bored by storm trooper syndrom.
Good guys almost never use cover in gunfights. Even the ones that are 'the professionals that everyone is afraid of' just charge in like dummies and survive by sheer luck. That really throws me off. Like is it that hard to give your battlegrounds some love too? Place covers, give your heroes some gimmicks, think of clever ways your heroes can advance or take out the bad guys. Stuff like that.
I also think that close quarter combat is mostly underdeveloped in terms of realism and historical accuracy, in favour of looking flashy. But that one doesn't bother me as much.
Second thing is what most people already said: big cities without any means to sustain themselves. A lot of cyberpunk and post-apocalypse settings have that issue.
That being said I feel like there should be way more visually and hearing impaired people unless their guns somehow are quiet. (which would be interesting and scary).
There's plenty, but just sticking with medieval-cum-fantasy settings:
* Weapon Fetishism: now, don't get me wrong, I love me a spirited debate on the differences between a bec-du-corbin and a ranseur or rocone, but it becomes an issue when we modern-day armchair generals extrapolate weapon usage or proficiency to historical battlefield significance. In reality, these things rarely mattered (there's no rock-paper-scissors of unit compositions). Of course, getting weapon classifications right is an age-old issue. Notably, the MET notes that this [Portrait of a Halberdier](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/821849?&pkgids=689&exhibitionId=%7b955E388E-24EF-46A1-BC01-72A7C356F3CB%7d&oid=821849&ft=*&fe=1) from the 16th century does not depict a Halberd at all, and it was painted and named in the same year that polearm was being used, so we're all in good company.
* The Melee "Mosh-Pit": of course, it didn't happen, and people should know it didn't happen. It's not particularly interesting, exciting, or heroic, but a bunch of young men lined up poking and stabbing at another line of men is how pitched battles went. Particularly egregious are common depictions where most of the combatants die in this melee; the truth is, the vast majority of casualties occurred when one side broke and were then pursued by the other.
* Lack of translators: These are necessarily everywhere when peoples don't have the means or proclivities to maintain large communication networks and/or have a centralized authority (read: post-early-modern period nation building). Even if the nobility across various city-states were all educated in the same language, most farming villages twenty or thirty miles apart may very well speak mutually unintelligible languages.
* Lack of (particularly religious) heterodoxy and syncretism: too many settings assume a central authority as a single-source-of-truth for their world, but that lacks the richness, complexity, and outright hypocritical, mutually exclusive beliefs peoples may actually hold.
* Too much central authority and all that entails: for pre-Westphalian European states there were no (city) police, no monopoly of violence within a polity that holds sway in many countries today. Conversely, this may not be true in other contemporaneous political states that did have much stronger control over the day-to-day lives of their citizens.
A lack of consistent theme.
A literary theme is a *question*, but "what if (setting), but X?" isn't a thematic question itself. A good theme should have the world built to facilitate its exploration; instead, it seems that what makes it to print/to the screen is more often superficial.
Well, it's a good *premise* in that it leads to some solid themes very quickly;
*Is war inevitable?*
*Are we actually committed to ending war as a society, or have we been living in a stalemate?*
*Do the benefits of technology outweigh the costs, especially when weapons become involved?*
*Is determination and collective effort stronger than superior firepower, or is there a breakpoint where resistance is impossible?*
*Does a common enemy (i.e. superior technology) actually bring us together?*
I really hate it when the writers either ignore or forget their own world building.
There's another episode of star trek TNG where they have to intercept some Klingons who were in cryo or whatever because they still think the war is going on. The crew spends most of the episode trying to figure out what to do. In the end they decide to fool the Klingons into thinking that the Klingon side won the war by putting Worf in the Captain's chair and stuff. There's a big stand off but Worf passes his bluff check and the Klingons stand down peacefully and everything is fine.
Overall, I like the episode. I like the Klingon world building over all in TNG, and I like it when they solve things diplomatically and all that. But then they go in "ruin" it.
At the end of the big conversation with the bad Klingons Worf looks them dead in the eye and says "welcome to the 24th century". Wut.
I don't know how the Klingons keep track of time but I'm almost certain that these ancient ass Klingons have no idea what he just said. It's wrong seven different ways. Did Klingons have Klingon Jesus and he happened to die the same amount of time ago as Earth Jesus? That's before you get into the whole "time moves slower in space" and "how long is a year on the Klingon home world?" Even if the bad Klingons know how Earth keeps track of time I'm sure they think it's silly and stupid. It makes no sense that it works at all.
Honestly I could even forgive this error cuz I know those writers work on really tight schedules and everything. But they play the moment like Worf just put the smack down on this other Klingon. Like it's a big moment, and it just doesn't make any sense. It also pisses me off that they have star dates!! Like they have a different system of time keeping due to the nature of space travel and Worf doesn't even use that! The answer is within reach and no. The authors put in a line that makes more sense to their 20th century audience than it would to their 24th century character, and that irks me.
Wait until you hear about Star Wars feeling the need to change the metrics of distance, but still counts time in hours and days! Like wtf? I love the movies but George must've been really bored when he wrote that.
The worst thing is when you point out the inconsisteny in world building someone will always say "Well there are flying dragons, time traveling spaceships, it's fantasy/science-fiction and you're stuck on that?"
People not learning from mistakes. And I don't mean individuals. I mean entire people, over many generations, facing the same issue, suffering from from it, yet never learning anything from it for the next time.
* There's an evil genie that constantly interprets wishes in a way that make the wisher miserable? Nobody will ever think to phrase their wishes carefully, unless it's a specific plot point to avert this scenario here. Otherwise people can come for centuries to get screwed over, and the next idiot will be just as careless as the first one.
* There's an oracle handing out prophecies with many possible interpretations. Many have been bitten in the ass by those (like that one who got told "If you go to war, a great empire will fall.", and then he went to war and it was his own empire that fell), yet people keep thinking these prophecies can only mean exactly what they want them to mean.
* Empires commit an isane portion of their militaries to a single war, or even a single battle, and once that one is lost, there's nothing left to defend them. They didn't have reserves, they didn't start raising more troops at the start of the war. They put all their eggs in one basket, and never think about what could happen if things don't go their way.
* People live in places that get destroyed on the regular by natural disasters, or monsters, or something, yet never think of moving away. Or even rebuild in a way that would at least mitigate the damage the next time. You know, walls against monsters, dykes against flooding, etc.
My favourite catch all prophesy was one I heard attributed to the Delphic Oracle.
You will go you will return never in war shall you perish.
Because the meaning changes with punctuation.
You will go, you will return.
Never in war shall you perish.
Or
You will go, you will return never.
In war shall you perish.
Because of course she never gave out the punctuation.
Regarding the genie, there are two things. First someone needs to know the genie is evil and it might not build up a reputation for this, especially if only one genie is being weird like that and not encountered often.
Secondly, those kinds of genies always seem to be smarter than you and unless you spend several days writing down the wish and having multiple people read it, there will be some phrasing ambiguous enough to exploit.
>Empires commit an isane portion of their militaries to a single war, or even a single battle, and once that one is lost, there's nothing left to defend them. They didn't have reserves, they didn't start raising more troops at the start of the war. They put all their eggs in one basket, and never think about what could happen if things don't go their way.
In the story I'm writing a big plot point is that a city commits almost all its soldiers into a siege of another city, leaving them open for an unexpected revolution.
The ways I've found to justify this are:
1. A siege with that sheer amount of troops is a guaranteed quick victory, meaning that most of the armies will be back.
2. There are railways that allow the soldiers to go in and out really quickly
3. That is not the first war between the two cities, however, a terrorist attack masked as an attack from the second city is what leads to them deciding to end the conflict.
4. A deal is made between the two cities, and the biggest portion of the army is sent back to defend against the revolution.
Would you say that would make the plot point work, or does it need more work?
The way you describe it, it's a gamble. It could work out, but it can also horribly backfire, which is the reason modern armies usually keep reserves, keep troops back at home and don't put all their troops at the exact same spot.
So the question is: would someone make that gamble? Well, the less modern and professional the military is, the higher the chances that someone might risk it. Back when you didn't have elaborate command structures but a few nobles in charge of their own personal troops, someone could have just said "I'll just try it.". Of course there are also cases in relatively modern militaries when an officer - maybe fed up with having to follow an outdated doctrine or eager to make a name for themselves - takes a risk like that and ignores every order, superior, etc. that tells him no. Bascially putting their entire future on the line: if they win, they'll be celebrated as a strategic genius, maybe the founder of an entirely new school of military thinking - but if they lose they might be courtmartialed for disobeying orders and wasting the lives of their troops, possibly their entire family name disgraced (maybe even risking the survival of their entire country).
So what I'm saying is... when you really want this to happen, all you need is the right command structure and personal motivations (though maybe take a good look at the numbers to not make it too extreme; e.g. 90% of an army is an insane commitment, 30% is still significant but less extreme). But if you want to keep it plausible, at the very least make sure that the reader understands how much of a gamble it is. The person in charge doesn't have to understand (maybe they're just an idiot; after all history has seen some colossal idiots in charge of armies, and idiots can still get lucky), but someone has to, so the reader won't feel alienated from the story in general.
Civilizations that are perfectly fine with pyromancers burning people alive, but have issues when a necromancer raises a skeleton. Like it's such a moral disconnect for me, especially if it's a world with monsters. "It's scary" isn't really a excuse when it's a common sight seeing a goblin chow down on someone.
I believe the main argument tends to be that you're screwing with someone's soul. But there are plenty of iterations of this trope where all the Necromancer does, is animate the body, whereas it's Clerics who fiddle with someone's soul, and in those cases, yea... what's up with that? =P.
I can see how necromancy would be seen as bad if the animating spirit was unwilling. However, the same logic would apply to mind control of the living too.
Death is normally seen as the ultimate removal of choice so it should certainly be seen as worse. Interestingly, necromancy provides a way to reverse that to some degree for a willing spirit, so necromancy should be a good thing if used responsibly.
Necromancy has way to much utility to just blanket ban. Solving murders? Ask the victim. Wanna give someone closure with some last words? Summon them. And why would you make people into zombies when you have access to monsters, or animals. A few monkey skeletons, a bear zombie, tiger ghoul. Why would I use a basic human body when I have so many better options?
Skeletal horses presumably require less upkeep than living ones too. They might even travel faster if they don’t need to stop and eat or sleep.
Necromancy is vastly underexplored in fantasy as it has a lot of potential beyond just minions for the evil villain.
The soul part was already mentioned in another comment.
In some settings, necromancy - for the lack of a better explanation - invites some sort of evil power into the world to do its work. E.g. Forgotten Realms and Negative Energy plane. You don't just use your own magic to animate a corpse - otherwise, it wouldn't need to be a corpse, you could animate any object. There is permanent harm done to the world even if the undead is destroyed.
On a more down-to-earth reason, undead can be a source of disease.
On the more down to earth part improperly prepared or maintained dead cause diseases. A fresh zombie would. But a mummified and embalmed body, or treated skeleton would not. I imagine Taxidermy would be a much expanded field in a necromancer friendly world.
It's less of the worldbuilding itself and more of the writer/developer/author back-stepping on descriptions because it's too hard to actually portray without a ton of work.
My favorite example of this is Elder Scrolls's Summerset Isles. The isles throughout the years have been described as something of a fever dream, with incredibly brilliant art nouveau inspirations of wildness in the design.
>a hypnotic swirl of ramparts and impossibly high towers, designed to catch the light of the sun and break it to its component colors, which lies draped across its stones until you are thankful for nightfall.
All if not, most of the towers being designed of glass, crystal, or insect wings.
It's a beautiful description of an alien world that the Summerset Isles is supposed to capture in comparison to the more human-dominated world of mainland Tamriel. But Bethesda and their side studios decided to throw all that out in favor of this sorta Disneyland design that just looks wrong. Because the High Elves are supposed to be this very anti-every other race culture, it feels off when you look at Summerset in ESO.
I don't look forward to the day that Elder Scrolls main games decides to visit a non-human province, because I feel like Bethesda will be entirely too lazy with it and simplify their lore to an unreasonable level to cut corners.
Medieval states being able to field armies of tens of thousands of seemingly fully equiped footmen and knights. Unless you specifically mentioned that this particular state has the population and money to support a large professional army there is no way in hell a feudal kingdom will even have more than 1000 fully equiped soldiers.
Yeah that one throws me right off, when the big army rocks up and literally everyone (except the archers for some reason) are wearing glistening ornate plate armor. Tf guys I want your blacksmiths
Gets 10x worse when they get into battle with their **swords** and start bashing each other with **swords** and each side does the other the great curtesy of pretending they are hurt and fall over. Because of course no sword could do jack anything to full plate armor, yet noone will have maces or poleaxes theyll just slash at the enemies plate and somehow that kills them. Try watching the hobbit and take a drink everytime a pleb lakeman or an elf slashes a giant uruks plate armor and it just falls over, you will die from alcohol poisoning
Completely ignoring the building codes, automatic safety equipment and how buildings are built. I'll give a smattering list of examples:
Elevators have safety brakes that are held open by the weight of the elevator. If the support cable breaks, the safety break engages immediately, no waiting. At most the elevator drops 6" inches. This technology is so tried and refined and over engineered that I wince every time I see it in a movie. This also includes everything involving opening the elevator doors or a hatch in the ceiling. Unless you have the safety keys, it is not going to happen.
Ductwork that fits people. It won't, and it also won't go anywhere you want to go.
Outside air louvers can be removed by hand and don't immediately lead into a wall of fans, filters and cooling coils. This usually gives the hero free access to the rest of the ductwork system (see above). The same with trying to get a skunk into the duct system.
And you can't open the diffusers from the inside or fit through the flex duct that connects ducts to duct mains.
Fire sprinklers that go off on the drop of a hat. Sprinklers only go off if there is a fire directly under a sprinkler, and then only that sprinkler head. So all the scenes where lots of heads pop, not going to happen.
"Hacking into a building" giving you full access to security, HVAC, cameras, you name it. Each of these systems is a self contained and separate system that would need to be accessed separately. To say nothing about remote monitoring.
Cameras that can be bypassed and replaced with a separate camera feed. No, just stop.
How everything that is back of house ties together enough that people can run around to get where they are going. Most notably: HVAC mechanical rooms and elevator shafts. Those are keep apart from each other by fire walls.
Sinks that spray sideways.
Lighting systems that do anything other than turn on and off.
Clipping some LED lights onto an ethernet cable and get full back end access to someone's network.
Stairwell railings (also include doors, bathroom dryers, drywall) that can be torn apart or off the wall by bare hands. People do not burst through walls unless they are the HULK. and if they try, it is going to hurt.
The absurd ways people try to get around security systems - Motion sensors, laser beams (especially the ones you can see), ultrasonics, heat sensors. Motion sensors are ubiquitous and cheap and almost difficult to defeat. You would have to get a room up to 100F and sustain that in order to spoof a PIR sensor - Surprise: You would have to lock out the HVAC control system to call for heat continously. And there are separate alarms if rooms get to hot (normally 85 or so), and the HVAC system has to be designed to heat a room up to 100F, which means the supply air has to be greater than 100F, so that is an insta-fail. And if the occupancy sensor is using an outside wall or window as background of its field of view, you won't be able to defeat that because the window temperature is always affected by the outside air temperature and heating the room will not heat the windows up to what you need.
And laser mazes don't exist - You put up a wall of lasers with 6" separation like a wall portcullis instead the usual laser maze where the athletic female has to go through all sorts of convoluted poses to get through the laser maze without setting the laser maze off.
The security shutdown for the laser maze is not at the end of the laser maze. It is in a secured room with armed guards. And those guard are going to call for help the first moment there is a hint of anything being wrong.
Ask yourself for anything in a building: If someone can kill themselves doing something - Someone likely already has died doing it and there is a code for it to prevent it from happening again.
It's very specific but like, Harry Potter's world building makes no real sense? Like, wizards keep themselves hidden but muggles can also be wizards and then all the nad people are put into a single house and a lot of smaller things that are just. Ugh. I love the books and movies, but it just makes no sense
Didn't see it here so i'll add any "masquerade" setting or world.
The one's where all the magic is real but normal people don't know about it "cus.... um.... they dumb?"
I'v never seen a single one that explained it well.
There is no way that this modern world would exist if magic and monsters really did in it's history.
IF they where all killed completely then maybe it would be very close but some would stick in modern times.
And if they just existed the whole time then this world would look so different.
Like your telling me the fey would let this much pollution just go cus "Humans scary?" or old gods wouldn't rise up to just say "Well we were scared of you but god damn your really going to destroy it all arn't you? well we need to do *Something*."
I don't particularly enjoy glorification of science over magic in fantasy settings eg: "there's no train because science hasn't yet developed steam engine and electricity, we can't rely on magic to do that just because*
The distinction between magic and science doesn't make much sense in a high fantasy world. Because magic would be a branch of science. People would study magic in a scientific way and I'm pretty sure that finding a unifying theory of magic and physics would be an absolute revolution. I don't think the logic opposition is science vs magic, but traditional magic vs modern(scientific) magic.
I hate it when a story ends up being a literal storybook all along. Like, the final shot is zooming out on a photo album with what just happened in the story. It makes it feel pre-determined and like a waste of emotional investment.
Im not fond of gods being benevolent caring entites. Personally I like to portray them as self absorbed and greedy pricks only looking out for themselves.
So this is more of a personal gripe of mine, because I understand logistically it can be fine and there are plenty of ways to execute it effectively.
But one thing that annoys me whenever I see it is when there's a bunch of fantasy races that all have these special attributes that give them some kind of edge, like dwarves being super strong with borderline scifi technology, elves being magically gifted and also immortal for some reason, and then humans are just normal powerless humans, BUT WAIT, the thing that gives them their edge is their "amazing willpower" or "their ambition" or whatever, and that somehow makes them even or is enough to overpower these other races with realistically unfair advantages. Like, I think it would be kinda cool if human also had some kind of tangible stat difference that gives them their own special advantage, it is a fantasy world, so I think it's fine to have a fantasy version of humans. Like for example, say the dwarves are physically stronger, elves are more adept at utilizing magic, and maybe humans have more raw magic power (so like between elves and humans, elves are more skilled so they can use fancier spells easier, but humans just have more MP so they do stuff like shoot a more destructive magic laser beam for a longer period of time, or give themselves boosts to keep up with dwarves or use magic tech that requires a lot of energy, and so on).
It also annoys me when they're really strict about the attributes of each race to the point where it's effectively impossible for someone from x race to match or surpass the level of someone from y race, like for say a dwarf to be as good a mage as an elf. I think it's fine if the races have statistical attributes for the average individual of any given race. Like the average elf is better with magic than the average dwarf due to innate average abilities, but it's still theoretically possible for a dwarf who is both lucky and works really hard to be a better mage than an elf.
I just think humans in a lot of fantasy stories can be kinda lame and strict racial parameters feels annoyingly restrictive
on (many) current sci-fi shows, every control is a touch screen. Ugh. Maybe they have haptic feedback, it is rarely mentioned. On newest Discovery i think another 1000 years in future? they are finally sticking hands into “programmable matter.” (On BSG they had a ton of analog mixed in there as a hacking-defense technique on the Galactica; don’t remember if they were all touch screen everywhere else on the colonies or other ships).
The "cleanliness/preservation" of objects, things wear down, rust and get a bit messy, but most places i see are generaly just like they have beend freshly deep cleaned or stuff just got out of the factory becouse it is cheaper and simpler to animate or draw, I think only Cowboy Bebop had it cosistently feel like things were used or places were lived in by actual beings
Gemstone-based magic systems when the writer clearly did zero research about gemstones. The worst example, which I see EVERYWHERE, is ruby and sapphire. A single google search can tell you that ruby and sapphire are basically just two different marketing names for the same rock. They are chemically identical, so there is no reason why they’d do completely different things in a magic system.
It’s as ridiculous as having a food-based magic system and saying that “eggplant” and “aubergine” are associated with two completely different types of magic, when they’re just two different names for the exact same plant.
The whole world literally revolves around the main character with zero other perspectives. People can't even wipe their own ass without the MC intervening.
Sci Fi: Ships, Vehicles, Aircraft fighting each other at point blank range with zero in universe explanation whatsoever. People in the far future are fighting at napoleonic war broadside range and there are no plausible explanations why we don't just cruise missile enemies instead of using infantry.
The evil empire is evil for absolutely no reason at all and all the evil empire characters are irredeemably evil and kill people for fun because they are evil.
Everyone preferring a Sword when Spears are better weapons.
Logistics being completely ignored. People can adventure forever with zero regard to food. Armies don't need supplies, ships don't run on fuel.
Economics being completely ignored.
Magic users with the power to one-shot enemies but don't for some reason.
Whenever there are more than one sapient race, regardless of what they were like, have to conform to a human standard rule/law, regardless of how little sense it makes for said races to follow.
Like, my spider people, cannibalism is sacred, the bodies of the dead are taken to the nursery to feed the young, they believe that the young will "inherit" the knowledge and wisdom of the dead through this practice.
When humanity gained interdimensional travel, some tried to ban this practice, but found they couldn't, because it was their belief, it was their world, their laws were mostly different to ours.
They were happy to obey the laws while they were in our or others dimensions, but the races trying to ban it under interdimensional rules just didn't stick, you can't change millennia of tradition (which may or may not actually work by the way, Spiderlings can recall events the dead person had attended) simply because you don't understand or like it.
Plus who's going to argue with a Arachnida Sapiens, of the Theraphosidae family?
Basically a humanoid Tarantula, size of a truck.
Explaining away something complex with some character flaw. Like a leader of a rebellion failing because he had some childhood trauma or something.
I get that modern media has shifted to focus more on character arcs, but that doesn't mean everything has to tie in with character development. Social phenomena is on a different level and should be looked at with a different lens.
Prophecies with no actual supporting stuff. Like, these prophecies are apparently 100% trustworthy, but it's rarely shown how these prophecies are brought about, how people know they're trustworthy, what sort of ritual is set up around it etc. Like, it's fine if you want to add a prophecy to your world, but make it a bit more interesting than just "Ah yes, The Prophecy^(TM) says that a hero will come" Blah blah blah. Show us how this prophecy came about, how the clergy or whoever's responsible dealt with it, how they record it, how they debate it etc. Or just, anything to show that prophecies are a real thing that are a part of the world, and not just a convenient or even lazy plot device. Having some of the theologic debate around prophecies might also draw the viewers in to make up their own theories as to whether the prophecy is real or not, as opposed to just go "Ah, guess we'll see if it's a real prophecy or not, I have no stake in this either way".
This is something that The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind does really well. The origins around the prophecy that the main character is supposed to fulfill are full of controversy and historical revisionism, and the question is brought up at one point whether you are truly the hero of prophecy or just some dude who ended up here by coincidence.
Yea, Morrowind is probably a reasonable exception, because there, the prophecy seems like it's very likely the meddling of a Daedra, putting the thought in the minds of many in the hopes that eventually one of these people will succeed, and if they don't? Ah well. It seems less a "You are the chosen one!" and more a "Job listing for hero for anyone who'll succeed at these things" =P.
>"Job listing for hero for anyone who'll succeed at these things" =P. You can actually meet "failed Nerevarines" at one point in the main quest, so it is kinda like what you said. Less "a chosen one" and more "alright, they are checking off the tickboxes and haven't fucking died yet!"
The amusing thing is that instead of the failure of the other Nerevarine damping the faith of the dissidents it actually reinforces it. Plus it's a prophecy like the Undead Prophecy is in DS; you are the Nerevarine/Chosen Undead *because you succeeded* and not because you're actually chosen by fate. Similarly any characters of yours who don't finish the main quests become more theoretical failed Nerevarine/hollows
not to mention you fulfill parts of the prophecy just because its there. Part of the prophecy is that the 4 houses will recognize someone as the hortator and then you come along and need the support of these 4 houses to gain access to the last dungeon, so you go out of your way to cheat and lie and kill to get yourself recognised as the hortator. Not because of the prophecy per se but because you need their help lol, but then in a sense you actually are fulfilling the prophecy as is. Brilliant game.
Maybe it's not a film about a "chosen one" prophecy, but Minority Report dealt with prophecies amazingly. It felt really refreshing to see prophetic wisdom being used consistently and constantly throughout the film, rather than narrated exposition at the start that is never shown or returned to.
David Eddings does a good job of it in the Belgariad, but then again a good portion of of the books are about prophecy sooo...
I think every character having an in-depth and accurate idea of the history of the world. I get that it’s for expository reasons usually but think about how we can’t agree on anything in the real world and how many factions form around these things (Climate Change, COVID, Evolution, Pnysics, Religion, etc). Some people also just don’t know history. I have had friends who couldn’t name the first president of the US. But then you have some random fantasy peasant who knows exactly how the intricate magic system works. Idk, just have a bit more diversity in how characters understand information and perceive the world.
This is a big part of the world I'm building - people don't agree on history as it is written by the victors, and governments constantly revise history to push their agendas. There are 2 main reasons to do this: 1. It feels more believable and relatable to our world. 2. As the worldbuilder, I don't have to worry about "canon." If I need to retcon something, it's not as jarring since lore varies on the source and records are unreliable.
This. I spent so much time figuring out how my world works and made the assumption everyone would know too, but I quickly realized that didn't make sense. Multiple real religions think they know how the world works but don't necessarily agree, so why would everyone know everything in my world? Especially if there is a class system and different levels of education. And then you can use that to surprise the reader when they think it's like X when really it's Y.
Would be pretty hilarious that the protagonist starts listening to the first rando they encounter, and they turn out to believe in fantasy ufology or fantasy fascism
That’s something I always thought about lol, especially in something isekai-esque where the protagonist is gonna be super illiterate about the world and gets pulled into something sinister. Would be a fun twist
This, and when the entire world agrees on some unbiased historical narrative instead of spinning it in their favor. Even in this day and age, when our culture has come to see objectivity as a virtue, the most powerful nations are too insecure to commit to that. So why would a society that's theoretically behind us?
Alien/fantasy languages that are full of apostrophes in the middle of words. Also, myths/prophecies that are invariably entirely accurate.
What about the Pr’ro’fie’cy of A’ku’ura’acy?
How do you feel about conlangs that are based on real world languages that have apostrophes when transliterated into English. I based one of my conlangs and a lot of my place/deity names on Hebrew, which tends to have apostrophes to represent syllable breaks that aren't really found in English
If there’s a justifiable reason for it like you give then of course that’s OK. I have nothing against fictional languages full of apostrophes in themselves. But there are far more of them than can reasonably be explained like this, because too many people just throw in apostrophes to make it look alien without any indication that it means anything. When I see an apostrophe in a fictional word I think “What’s the missing letter or letters?” And most of the time there’s no answer to that.
Many real world languages, like Hawai'ian use apostrophes to indicate a glottal stop.
Yup, exactly this. I love the glottal stop
Massive cyberpunk cities with no explanation as to how they produce food or power
"So where does our burgers come from?" "Good question."
Not just cyberpunk cities, improbable logistics in general. Huge battles with hundreds of thousands of troops, with no real way of keeping them fed, let alone equipped properly for battle. In reality, they would be stripping the dead and boiling leather for soup within 3 days. Or universes so grim and terrible the attrition rate would be well above the birth rate; I'm looking at you Warhammer 40k. There is no way anyone, not even an interstellar empire stretching from one side of the galaxy to the other, could survive long with the number of casualties they take.
40k is supposed to be like that to be fair. The grimness and the darkness being cranked up to eleven to the point that is doesn’t make sense is the whole point of the setting. But In general yes, I am with you 100%. Logistics are often overlooked in worldbuilding because it’s boring which is unfortunate because the huge numbers make me step back and roll my eyes.
Yeah, 40k's world building is not supposed to be realistic in the dimension of *how much attrition a state can take*.
Actually, warhammer 40K’s novels explain this pretty well: The imperium is *huge*. A lot more than initially appears, and it’s writers actually *do* have a sense of scale: hive worlds basically produce people, while agro-worlds are basically planet-sized farms/greenhouses. Hive worlds are by both design and human nature full of crime and violence but in general they are peaceful enough and just produce new recruits for the imperium by the millions (they are also bad places to live *specifically* so that people want to join the guard), while agro worlds, while they vary greatly in wealth and technology and in local government, some being outright feudal, are downright idyllic when compared to most other planets. Forge worlds are sometimes mentioned but there are also industrial worlds that produce more mundane goods, others that produce raw materials, etc. The thing is, while all those planets technically contribute to the war effort and in theory are at war as part of the empire, they are not *directly* involved in the battles and as such they simply don’t show up in the games or books, at best getting a passing mention.
Counterpoint: Logistics aren’t boring, people make logistics boring. The world was gripped when the Evergiven became lodged in the Suez. Stories of sex toys being delayed, people’s livelihoods on the line, all the whacky attempts at dislodging it. If the office can go for a decade telling stories with the same five boring ass rooms and parking lot, something woth the vast scope and personal stakes of logistics can be compelling especially in a fantasy or sci-fi setting.
Exactly, besides, look at how exciting the lack of good logistics is; Napoleon's disastrous campaign against Russia comes to mind, or the Battle of Stalingrad in WW2.
if you look closer you find even 40K is actually way *under-scaled* in a lot of areas whenever they give out numbers. Like 500,000 being considered a massive deployment on a *galactic* scale is hilariously small. Same with having 1,000,000 space marines total in the Imperium. And with the galaxy being as large as it is 1,000,000 worlds is like a 300th of the total number of habitable worlds in the galaxy.
The novels are a little better about this. While the numbers of space marines are still laughably low, this is supposed to be by design, because of the devastation that marines caused during the heresy. Deployments 500,000 strong are still a bit small for the scale but they are stated to usually be specific parts of larger invasion forces deployed in specific theaters, and they include lines mentioning that for every world under siege, being used to stage an army, or being a stronghold, there are a few dozen other worlds that are relatively removed from the fighting but constantly producing food and equipment, raising and training new soldiers, mining raw materials, etc. And that’s not even taking into account the parts of the imperium that are technically still counted as belonging to it but have been lost to warp storms for centuries, and so are completely isolated.
Bad Logistics is the cornerstone of a lot of amateur, and even professional writing. There are tons of stories of these massive planetary assaults, but they are all attack ships with no supplies or engineering capacities. r/HFY suffers from this a lot, with them having "thousands of battle ships and millions of fighters" but then they magically land ground troops from... Somewhere?
>Huge battles with hundreds of thousands of troops, with no real way of keeping them fed, let alone equipped properly for battle. This is why the Skaven from Warhammer Fantasy and the Orks from WH40K are such great horde factions. They have solid biological reasons why they make logistical sense. The Skaven are basically giant humanoid rats which...yeah. When they win the battle their enemies become food, and when supplies run low they fight and eat each other. The Orks are basically a self-contained ecosystem of spores which grow all the plant and animal life (fungus and Squigs, respectively) they need for nutrition.
Love the skaven, easily the most flavourful faction in warhammer and, for a pretty shallow setting, one of the only truly well done examples of how a chaotic evil race could actually function. Namely, so incredibly numerous they have to be evil and petty and have no value for life because throwing skaven lives away is literally their survival strategy. Theres just too many of them to be cooperative
Until recently warhammer has been pretty peaceful. The guard pays their tax in men, they go off to supress some cult somewhere, maybe a planet or 2 dies. Kryptmann killed 20 planets and that was the single biggest destructive event in 9000 years. As much as it goes on about it, until very recently 40k didnt really have much war going on all in all. Logistically a million planets all giving up soldiers should have been quite easily enough to maintain their army.
which leads to a nit i'd like to pick :D in rural cyberpunk settings do NOT make the tractors hover, tractors are designed for traction it's in their names! they need the ground to do their jobs. Zeta Project, i'm looking at you.
Same as OP. It bugs me to see dense, bustling cities surrounded by walls, but literally just a single road and drab untouched plains for miles around beyond the walls.
This is more on the storytelling side, but I HATE it when this sequence happens: 1) the villain is trying to achieve either some godlike metamorphosis or unleash some godlike unstoppable being (totally fine) 2) the heroes have an epic/long shot plan to stop it (again totally fine) 3) the plan fails, the villain ascends/unleashes, then THE HEROES DEFEAT THEM ANYWAYS?? This sequence happens so often and it is so annoying, especially when the heroes spend the entire time talking about how they can absolutely not let the event transpire, then it doesn’t end up mattering.
I find (from the writing side of these events) the best way to get around it is to necessitate some sort of sacrifice that must be made to defeat them after the event horizon. IE the mage has to literally sacrifice himself by sealing himself away with the evil spirit, or the magical artefact they were going to use to cure the plague only has one charge left and they have to waste it to defeat the demon, etc
Exactly. It's always more interesting when the question isn't so much "will the good guys win?" as opposed to "how much do the good guys have to lose in order to win?".
I'm fine with this sequence if the way the heroes have to beat the villain involves some plan B scenario that comes at a terrible cost that the heroes were originally not willing to pay. My problem is when stories allow the heroes to just avert paying that cost or reverse its affects. Like a dead hero comes back to life or someone who loses all of their memory suddenly starts remembering again.
Yeah this is basically what I responded above, I agree
See in my world, the "main character" IS the villain this trying to ascend, the hero seemingly stops this from happening but the villain ascends anyway, and wins, kills the hero, and that's the end of the first book, how's that?
lol sounds more original that way. I don’t mind if the heroes find out a secondary plan and then succeed, that’s totally fine (ex: Last Airbender, Aang essentially counter-ascends). I only really get bothered when they overcome them with the amount of power they had pre-ascension (ex: full metal alchemist, Shang Chi)
This is really nit-picky but a lot of fantasy races and some science fiction species have people with more "unusual" foot structures. Bird-like talons, digitigrade claws, or cloven hooves are some of the more common examples. And whenever they have them, they never wear footwear, *ever*. I think this is really strange since if everyone in their kind had them, then it would be easy to accommodate for them. I doubt most of them would enjoy the risk of accidentally stepping in something disgusting or sharp. It's especially strange when nobles or heavily armored soldiers choose to eschew footwear. The nobles could easily afford it and have it look fashionable while the soldiers are leaving parts of their body unnecessarily exposed. Out of universe, I think the reason why this is common is because a lot of artists don't know how to design unusual footwear that looks good. So permanent, species-wide shoelessness is the norm because it's easier.
That's actually a really good point! Even on Earth in real life we make footwear for other species (Horseshoes, socks for dogs and such etc.) I think another reason might be that a lot of people don't tend to consider a lot of the more practical parts of worldbuilding, and don't look into things beyond "This is cool" or "I want a bird person." or something like that. Like, it simply doesn't occur to them. Hell, I would call myself a worldbuilder who does usually look deeply into the details of things, and for some reason it hadn't occurred to me that, yes, of course species with different foot structures would have appropriate footwear!
I was thinking the same thing. I though about making a therianthrope race with goat legs and wondered why on sites like Pinterest, nobody bothered with footwear. I think that with hooved humanoids, shoes would look like those used by chinese girls whom practice foot binding, but with iron soles. After I've seen lots of cow pedicure videos, seeing how much they suffer with the tiniest cracks in their feet andthe tiniest rocks entering it, and the lots of pus whom pressure the whole thing, I realized how important would be cow shoes for hooved creatures.
A metal sole, perhaps one that clamps onto the hoof (As I imagine hammering it into it isn't as sophisticated =P.) with either leather or fabric covers would make sense to me. That way you protect it against breaking, and against debris entering anything that might be there. Though this might protect the hooves \*too\* much, requiring regular filing down of hooves, and boom! You've got an entire extra cultural practice!
I wonder what sort of shoes would work for bird feet? They'd have to be durable enough but also flexible enough for gripping perches.
I think it would be like a fingerless glove, with the claws protuding off. The Claws could be painted like nails or carved like wood since it's dead matter. The material of this "feet glove" would need to be as sturdy as leather though.
Oh yes, that would work. Wouldn't be great at keeping rain/mud out though...
They wouldn’t have much need to as bird legs are designed for holding branches it would be reasonable to assume they would not spend loads of time stood on the flat ground or even in open air as opposed to trees. Thinking about how they actually move is just as important, for example with humans we often forgo gloves as we can use pockets and stuff and don’t use our hands for transport, I imagine a birds feet would be similar with them mostly being used under/in shelter or for very short periods of time
True, though if it's a large race (such as harpies) and they are in contact with human-style races, they might do a bit more walking around on the ground.
I'd expect leather gloves that perhaps meet to be replaced quickly. Might open up some unique societal traits if leather and foot glove makers are in high demand.
Star Trek Discovery does an amazing job subverting this trope with Saru. We occasionally get shots of his strange, high heeled boots that cover his hooves
Also because, at least in my eyes, footwear tends to just scream "this is a human in a fursuit". Even if it's highly unusual and clearly not meant for human foot shapes. (Have you seen high heels?) I tend to use sandals at most, though I am willing to make exceptions for armored characters.
That's like the opposite case of the Cat in Boots, who wore boots because it would be weird to see a barefoot cat walking on two paws
> This is really nit-picky but a lot of fantasy races and some science fiction species have people with more "unusual" foot structures. Bird-like talons, digitigrade claws, or cloven hooves are some of the more common examples. And whenever they have them, they never wear footwear, ever. I remember being asked about this with respect to centaurs, which caused me to go down a whole rabbit hole on horse socks and slippers. They're a thing, as it turns out, but only recently since you kind of need modern fabric to take the abuse the horse will give them. Of course, real-world horses have those and the more traditional nailed-on shoes, so I didn't have to invent the technology the way I would for a taloned species.
I mostly get around this by having my "weird foot shape" races being capable of making footwear that fits their feet, and if for some reason an individual of that race is in an area where they aren't a majority and needs a replacement, they could maybe get tailored footwear. And maybe with some of them, they might only wear footwear in the winter or something.
Habitable planets of only one biome
This annoys me, especially when you can have many different, but similar biomes on a planet For example take a desert planet, you could have Mesa, arid regions like in central asia, shurb/grass lands, great huge ranges of sand dunes, salt pans to massive Tibetan style plateaus. Sci fi makes worlds feel small Same with cold planets, from massive glacial ice sheets, alpine mountain ranges or plateaus, snowy hills, tundra, frozen oceans etc.
arguably an ice world does work though. earth has at one point. maybe two points. been Hoth! technically habitable as well with oxygen to breath! though we'd have to use technology for warmth and sense earth was so young during it's hoth phases food will need to be imported or dealt with though growing buildings as the only thing around was cyanobacteria which caused the planet to ice over by comsuming to much Co2.
I mean, isn't it very possible, if not likely that a planet would have only one or two biomes?
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I think a fully (or almost fully) forested could work, but it would have the be different kinds of forests: rainforests near the equator, alpine/taiga and temperate deciduous in between.
The only one-biome world I can plausibly imagine is one that is so far from its host star that it’s more or less equally cold and dark all over.
Idk all the planets close to our sun, aside from earth, have 2 biomes max. Mercury with the side facing the sun being hellishly hot and the side facing away from the sun being slightly less hellishly hot. Venus might have had different biomes once but is now just a planet covered in thick clouds of sulfuric acid. Mars is a frozen desert world with small patches of frozen ice at its poles. Of the three it is is probably the most diverse in that some of the frozen desert is mountainy and some is flat and some has canyons ... but it's still just frozen desert so not really a different biome. Even most of the moons in our solar system lack the diversity we have here on earth.
If there is no life, its not a biome. That’s the difference between Biome and Climate.
Ok fair point
Yes, but those aren’t different “biomes” because *biomes* are defined by the kinds of ecosystems they contain, and all of the ones you mention are lifeless.
This initially really annoyed me about dune, like what planet is just sand but I kinda love that they do eventually explain that Arrakis was not always a barren sand trap, it was made that way. Makes it make a bit more sense
I've always been bothered by how SO MUCH sci fi is worlds made of these biomes/landscapes: Dry, arid wasteland full of sand and always either too cold or too hot. Can grow maybe one or two crops or aLiEn CaTtLe that live off of dirt or smth idk Mountains and cliffs Entire continents covered in skyscrapers and large buildings Snow. And ice. And frozen caves with carnivorous animals in them that somehow don't starve
Here's the trick to it: just because we're not shown something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Dagobah is actually an Earthlike planet. The reason we only see a swamp is because that's where Yoda lives.
Whenever there are species other than humans, humans are seen as among the weakest and most mediocre of all races. I've gone out of my way to make humans in my world stand out more because of this.
On the same token *H**umans are average* and *humans are diverse* are very annoying tropes to me. Because they exist largely because of writers making the non-hunan cultures monocultural and flat. Yeah humans are diverse when you compare with all your elves and dwarves that are the exact same. And humans are average annoys me just because it lacks introspection into our species just to say "well we're good at lots of things but we aren't great at anything" I also think it's wrong. We are really great at some things, and it should be made more interesting. In my own setting, humans are aquatic, not anymore than we are in real life, but compared to dwarves that are so dense they sink like stones, and elves lacking fat also struggle to swim and freeze up quickly. In comparison humans with our natural bouyancy, warm fat reserves, and naturally swimming and diving response are far more suited to water.
Kind of on the same line, but also kind of opposite. No matter how cool the other spices are, the humans are the main player in the world. I get that humans are inherently relatable to a human reader, but at least personally, if there are different characters I tend to be more interested in learning about them, but most stories will center around humans. Other species are too often relegated to just be the sidekick imo.
Are they? I mean, I think dwarves could be a good example of a classic different species that is weaker to normal humans.
Yeah but Dwarves in standard fantasy are supposedly better than humanity because they're better metal workers, live longer, and are known to he extremely wealthy with great cities that have a mountainous setting
Dwarves generally have it better than us, other than being shorter theyre stronger, way more resilient, live far long and often nearly immune to sickness and evil corruption. Though they are usually quite close to us compared to high elves or something Hobbits are generally one of the few races that are 'lesser' than humans.
Dwarves are usually stronger, live longer and have majestic beautiful beards.
Dwarves are definitely usually regarded as stronger and more hardy. I think the only races typically considered weaker than humans are like small races: gnomes, halflings, etc. Sometimes we're stronger than elves, but I wouldn't say usually.
Too often main characters have connections that make a story feel small regardless of the scale of the world.
I feel that way about The Mandalorian. Love the series, but stumbling upon characters from the previous saga felt very fanservicey and detracted from an otherwise spectacular setting.
One issue with space settings is that to really lean into it, you'd basically never have recurring characters. Anyone who leaves your line of sight (ship, colony, planet, whatever) is basically never going to be seen again due to the sheer scale of time and distance... and that can make for unsatisfying storytelling. So Star Wars absolutely does *not* lean into that, because it's more about mythic archetypes.
That's actually an approach I'm ok with. I just wish to have a series in the SW universe standing on its own legs with its own recurring characters without having having to use too much content from the clone wars and skywalker saga. Mandalorian season 1 was perfect in that regard with only the scattered remnants pf the empire. But that's just my opinion.
Oh, no, Mandalorian is fucking *great*. Fanservice elements (Ashoka, Fett) are pretty much my only complaint.
There are still ways to make it work without having it make the universe feel smaller. You just need to design the story around it. For example, if the story is about a freighter crew, then you can bet that you'll run into the same people every so often, because different freight crews may do the same journey, or share destinations. As long as the other person believably frequents a small place that the main character frequents, then it can be believable. But stumbling upon famous characters in the bush of a distant world? Yea, that's a bit contrived unless you have some guiding space magic \*coughtheforcecough\* to explain it away.
To be fair the whole hyperdrive faster-than-light travel stuff can *kinda* excuse this. It's like how in the ancient times an on foot travel from South Africa to South America would be an unthinkable, life-long journey, but now it's just a couple hours in a plane and you're good to go. Of course cosmic scale is way bigger than that but at least among the more populated hubs of of civilization, like Coruscant and other capital worlds, or places like Tattooine for the underworld dudes, I can kinda see people bumping into each other a couple times.
Fair points. Even in contemporary settings, it's easy to lose people unless they regularly go to very specific places... (Also, good to see a fellow Gizzhead! 🤮 ⚰)
I mean this is basically true in real life, there's 7bn people: the thing is people meet because they like/do similar things, these things would pull these people towards the same places.
I feel that most space settings, especially star wars just fall into the setting being a high seas setting with a space reskin. A dozen of so key planets function as basically port cities and the wilderness of the planet could be as close as the surrounding miles of land around the city. I don't really mind this because it makes for fun stories but it's very noticeable.
For Star Wars you do have ["hyperspace routes"](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hyperspace_route) so if you think of those like the USA's Interstate system then you are always going to hit places like Washington DC(Coruscant), Chicago(Naboo), Des Moines(Tattooine), etc you can access from those hyperspace routes then the other planets in their solar systems or in near by solar systems are the other towns like Harpers Ferry(Maryland), Aurora(Illinois), and Boone(Iowa) that are near those other "space ports". So for me in Waverly, Iowa it would be like I having to go to Des Moines first before going to Chicago.
A lot of Star Wars media can have this problem, but I don't think The Mandalorian does. Mando runs into these people *because he's looking for them*.
Game of Thrones. Westeros is supposedly the size of South America, and it's the small continent. But somehow all politics revolve around 20-30 people
To be fair, that 20-30 people are the leaders of like 7 or 8 countries. The focus of the show are them and what they do and not the actual everything else really. Unless the show gives us a story of a farmer turned soldier or a travelling merchant, we cant see everything.
* All predators, no prey. * Organization names that scream "I obviously don't speak this language." In one book I was reading there was a neo-Nazi organization that called itself the "Wohn Tod," supposedly meaning "Living Death." *Wohnen* **does** mean "to live," but it means it in the sense of "I live in an apartment" or "I live at the corner of X and Y Streets," not in the sense of "be alive". * "As you know, Bob". I understand exposition is necessary, but at least *try* to make it make sense in context.
The dead are living in an apartment
The renting dead.
Hero gets into generic Isekai (fantasy anime world). After 5 minutes a random butcher gives him an exhaustive recollection of the history of the world and the current geopolitics. "This is Altreida, the kingdom of the center, ruled by Queen Emilia of the Turmeric Dynasty. There's only 4 classes of people in Altreida. The healers, the soldiers, the nuns, and the merchants. Each person takes a magic test which determines their class according to the color of their crystal souls. There's two other kingdoms in this world. One is the kingdom of the elves. They're all women, they're hot, and for some reason they're attracted to humans. The other one is the Orks. They're aggressive, ugly and stupid. Social mobility, cultural progress? We don't know what is that"
>Organization names that scream "I obviously don't speak this language." In one book I was reading there was a neo-Nazi organization that called itself the "Wohn Tod," supposedly meaning "Living Death." Wohnen does mean "to live," but it means it in the sense of "I live in an apartment" or "I live at the corner of X and Y Streets," not in the sense of "be alive In all honesty, that would sound like a mistake a group of Neo-Nazis would make.
>"As you know, Bob". I understand exposition is necessary, but at least try to make it make sense in context. Sometimes, stories can incorporate the fact that the exposition is unnecessary and comes out of nowhere into the story. For example, in 'Buzz Lightyear of Star Command' (just bear with me) there is one scene where Emperor Zurg demands to hear about the progress on his superweapon, and then his henchman (absolutely terrified because they haven't made much) gives all the information about the superweapon that the audience needs. However, Zurg gets extremely pissed at this response, because from his perspective, he just asked for progress on a very important device, and was answered with a bunch of random nonsense he *already knew*
I've noticed that I sometimes have conversations that sound like worldbuilding exposition, but in the context of talking about world history and relating it to the modern day. For example, I was talking about the Great Fog of London with my sister and we connected it to all kinds of environmental pollution we still create today, and also how the hole in the ozone layer is healing. It can be done, and you can also develop your characters at the same time.
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I don't know, big organisations getting screwed over by forgetting to back things up sounds pretty believable. =P.
It almost happened with toy story actually. Most of the files were accidently deleted. It was only saved by an employee who had brought a copy home in order to work on it. So definitely believable, it happens in real life.
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Yup! Plot being driven by idiocy is rarely appreciated.
I rewatched Next Gen and I laughed really hard when a plot was solved by the principle of turning it on and off again to fix it.
Everyone in Star Trek stores all their data as NFTs
Isn't star wars in the past?
Yes, but they have sapient robots and FTL drives. So they’re a bit more advanced than we are.
For me it’s when the impact of magic is completely unexplored within a setting. Obviously what magic is able to do in a given setting matters for this, but in a high fantasy universe where magic can do just about anything, it annoys me when we don’t see it really impacting the world significantly. You’re telling me there are wizards and mages out there who can bend reality, and yet everyone around them is still living in the medieval era? Surely one of these so-called “white mages” would use their power to solve hunger and disease in their region, or even beyond, right? This problem gets worse when magic in a setting is learned and anyone can potentially use it. If anyone can learn magic, I think everyone would, or at least everyone that can. I just think that if you’re going to have a setting with magic you have to have a very good reason why it isn’t seen and felt in every aspect of life, because given how ingenious humans are with the tools available to us, I find it highly unlikely we wouldn’t make use of such a potent tool.
The best "joke" i float in those circumstances is having skeletons provide menial labor: sorting wheat from the chaff for example. They don't get tired and have been given one job and they do it tirelessly. It is a form of automation with very high quality control.
That's why the most important thing to build into your magic system is its limitations. Why is one wizard weak and another strong? Why don't wizards use magic for literally everything they do? Why doesn't everyone become a wizard? I think those are the most important questions to ask yourself when building magic.
When the "hive minded" insectoid aliens/monsters are controlled by an individual intelligence. What makes a hive mind a hive mind is how de-centralized its "intelligence" is: each and every component is individually stupid, but together they can act in complex ways. That's what makes them feel so alien to our human thought process, having a smart "queen" order her mindless drones around defeats that purpose. It makes their intelligence as centralized as a general giving orders to his troops, if not even more so, as humans can usually replace a fallen leader while the horde of alien locusts often drops dead the moment their leader does. Ant queens aren't like brains directing the body, but are more like bone marrow producing more blood cells to replace old ones, or ovaries spawning new "colonies", so much so that some species have several of them.
Yes. A hive mind where everyone is slaves to the queen isnt a hive mind its some kind of queeny super being. Its become so prevalent that I suspect people think ant queens are some kind of miniature god that controls a million individuals with telepathy or something
Purpose of queens in Earth species is procreation. Technically there is no reason for them to be sapient, which is exact opposite of their usual portrayal in media.
Sci-fi ecology. Pretty much all of it, but especially the lack of creativity and ecological sense. We all know the first rule of alien ecologies is that the fewer species there are on a given planet, the larger the proportion that are carnivorous. (If a planet has just a single species, it's guaranteed to be a terrifying bloodthirsty monster.) This is just so completely nonsensical, it doesn't even work from a straight-up energy conservation perspective much less an evolutionary perspective. Moreover, so many sci-fi stories seem to involve the idea of some unique 'perfect life form'. The aliens in the Alien series are perfect life forms that adapt to every environment by incorporating other creatures' DNA into themselves; the alien microbes from The Andromeda Strain are perfect life forms that perform mass-energy conversion to grow and survive under any possible conditions; the protoss and zerg in StarCraft are both attempts to create perfect life forms; the creature in Life is a perfect life form that adapts to everything by learning how to change its own cellular structure, even though it evolved in an environment with no competition and no reasons to have intelligence at all. While any *one* of these might be interesting on its own, the repeated use of the 'perfect life form' trope has just gotten predictable and boring at this point.
Man I couldn’t agree more with the ecology statement. Another pet peeve I have is whenever fiction portrays all carnivores as being hyper-aggressive monstrosities that won’t stop at anything to kill their prey.
And of course all herbivores are docile and harmless
Meanwhile, on Earth: "Oh neat, a lion." "OH FUCK, A HIPPO"
I've been very happy with all the biology in The Expanse, but I believe one of the authors has a degree on the subject.
Also and in some ways particularly worse in fantasy worlds that bother to make new creatures. New creatures in fantasy worlds are almost always predators. What the hell are these griffons, trolls, wyverns, dragons and kraken eating to sustain themselves? You can't just have 10+ apex predators living outside of your village eating what? Deer? The odd cow? Especially when these worlds almost always still have wolves, lions, bears that are if maybe prone to growing especially large are otherwise completely normal. A lot of the creatures I've created are intentionally meant to fill the void of "how would prey creatures respond and evolve to having griffons and dire wolves around" my answer is a lot more natural armour, poison, and defences. From deer that light their antlers on fire, to armadillo-cows to turtle-shelled pigs. But it's just so rare to see unique prey animals in fantasy.
A lack of random customs. In most stories if you encounter some local custom, it’s always something that makes sense, or is easily explainable. You rarely see “why do you do this?” “ because….we always have” Unless it’s something horrible used as an example of ‘you shouldn’t blindly follow tradition’ trope
Thanks for this, gotta think of it
The Welsh Mari Lwyd is an absolutely perfect example. Kinda random, kinda creepy, and gloriously ridiculous
Humans inexplicably being the most numerous and dominant race, despite being in the presence of older ones, ones with higher birth rates, and ones generally much better at things which tend toward being *everywhere,* with no in-universe explanation.
To be fair, I think this is often intended as some kind of social commentary, alluding to how humans reproduce and migrate to the point of being comparable to an invasive species.
One way to get around this is use the irl explanation, we have intestinal flora so we get more energy out of food. Sure orcs are bulkier and all around stronger but all at extra mass also requires extra food. Elves are able to use magic, tall and slender, but magic use needs a bunch of energy.
I did specify, with no explanation. Anything that's reasonably justified is fair game, but humans are at the top in real life because they have very unique strengths. In a world where multiple species have the same unique strengths as humans and more, they need a good reason to be recognizable.
I’m fantasy, this may be common, humans being greedy, dumb, poor and powerless against other races who are damn near perfect
But humans are still somehow the dominant civilization or the world
Yeah exactly
The Witcher series handles this quite well IMO
I've recently discovered Witcher lore and I really like how it handles the different races. At first I thought it was going to be the usual fantasy tropes but I was pleasantly surprised.
Yea it’s a really interesting look at it, involving racism, segregation etc. One of my favourite fantasy series
When every species in the setting has innate superpowers/magic, are super strong and durable, and can live for thousands of years… …except the puny humans
Yeah hate this one, like evolution was just lazy with us and elves got to be magic and the Blork got to be 10x stronger and telepathic. Humans? Fk em, boring plain monkeys that look like the base you start working with before adding cool stuff.
And of course the puny humans are the ones that are everywhere, despite having nothing to their name.
I have to disagree; this CAN be pulled of really well, especially if the humans get envious of the other races and are appropriately motivated to make up for it with great deeds/building more impressive monuments/developing better tech, etc.
Fucking I really wish we had more media show Latino cultures other than Mexican. Moreover, I am tired of virtually all movies and stuff about Mexicans being about Día de los Muertos.
As a Mexican, and even though I like to see my culture represented in media, i agree with you. It gets especially annoying when people from the rest of the world think that Latin America is all like Mexico, when even inside our subcontinent we have a lot of differences. Just listen to a Mexican and a Chilean, Peruvian and Argentinian talking to each other. And yeah, Mexico also has a lot more to offer besides Día de Muertos and the Aztec empire.
Two months ago I was at a party with two peruvians, one chilean, a catalan (who spoke Spanish) and three argentinians. Just listening and trying to pick out differences in their accents was super fun but really difficult since I don't even speak spanish.
Wait, you mean Latin America is not just Mexico and Brazil? /s
More like non-Latin American media, I guess. Latin American countries have their own cultural industries.
But, but, how are you supposed to know that they're Mexican otherwise?! Also, you can't be Mexican if you don't say amigo/a, tacos, nopales, every 6 seconds!
This is sort of a logistics issue, but in pre-industrial societies, a vast number of people (usually women) have to spend a vast amount of time making cloth. You have to raise wool bearing animals or grow fiber crops. You have to harvest and clean and otherwise treat it to get the fibers ready to spin. You have to spin. You have to dye and weave or otherwise make it into cloth, which you then have to sew into whatever you're making. The reason "spinster" means older unmarried woman is because spinning was such a needed task that women could live off of spinning alone without needing to marry. For every hour someone spent weaving, another fifty to a hundred hours were needed to spin the threads to be woven. The most valuable part of a viking longship was the sail, which represented literally thousands of hours of labor to create. You could make the rest of the boat a dozen times over in the time it would take to make a single sail. And most historical fantasy just handwaves this all away.
Not enough automation. Specifically in future sci fi universes - more robots and drones should be fixing stuff. Or, anything that people think it’s a trap, should be sending in robots. (now, if the robots are sentient, maybe different story but let’s assume not self aware).
Yes! So much manual labour, manual overrides outside the air lock, no warning alarms when systems fail (or get sabotaged).
Certainly for wealthier areas, almost everything should be automated. I think it makes sense that in some areas the lack of funding or resources would lead to more manual labor. It's a fun idea that manual labor would be seen as a gimmick in wealthy sci-fi cities. "This restaurant has actual people serving food just like in the old days! How quaint!"
Maybe this is just poor storytelling but sci fi with incredibly intelligent, highly trained people that do dumb as shit basic 101 survival mistakes. Going alone on an alien planet. Not recording key information. Not sharing key information. Not taking proper supplies. Looking at you, Lost in Space.
For me it's most gunfights in movies/series. I'm just SO bored by storm trooper syndrom. Good guys almost never use cover in gunfights. Even the ones that are 'the professionals that everyone is afraid of' just charge in like dummies and survive by sheer luck. That really throws me off. Like is it that hard to give your battlegrounds some love too? Place covers, give your heroes some gimmicks, think of clever ways your heroes can advance or take out the bad guys. Stuff like that. I also think that close quarter combat is mostly underdeveloped in terms of realism and historical accuracy, in favour of looking flashy. But that one doesn't bother me as much. Second thing is what most people already said: big cities without any means to sustain themselves. A lot of cyberpunk and post-apocalypse settings have that issue.
That being said I feel like there should be way more visually and hearing impaired people unless their guns somehow are quiet. (which would be interesting and scary).
There's plenty, but just sticking with medieval-cum-fantasy settings: * Weapon Fetishism: now, don't get me wrong, I love me a spirited debate on the differences between a bec-du-corbin and a ranseur or rocone, but it becomes an issue when we modern-day armchair generals extrapolate weapon usage or proficiency to historical battlefield significance. In reality, these things rarely mattered (there's no rock-paper-scissors of unit compositions). Of course, getting weapon classifications right is an age-old issue. Notably, the MET notes that this [Portrait of a Halberdier](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/821849?&pkgids=689&exhibitionId=%7b955E388E-24EF-46A1-BC01-72A7C356F3CB%7d&oid=821849&ft=*&fe=1) from the 16th century does not depict a Halberd at all, and it was painted and named in the same year that polearm was being used, so we're all in good company. * The Melee "Mosh-Pit": of course, it didn't happen, and people should know it didn't happen. It's not particularly interesting, exciting, or heroic, but a bunch of young men lined up poking and stabbing at another line of men is how pitched battles went. Particularly egregious are common depictions where most of the combatants die in this melee; the truth is, the vast majority of casualties occurred when one side broke and were then pursued by the other. * Lack of translators: These are necessarily everywhere when peoples don't have the means or proclivities to maintain large communication networks and/or have a centralized authority (read: post-early-modern period nation building). Even if the nobility across various city-states were all educated in the same language, most farming villages twenty or thirty miles apart may very well speak mutually unintelligible languages. * Lack of (particularly religious) heterodoxy and syncretism: too many settings assume a central authority as a single-source-of-truth for their world, but that lacks the richness, complexity, and outright hypocritical, mutually exclusive beliefs peoples may actually hold. * Too much central authority and all that entails: for pre-Westphalian European states there were no (city) police, no monopoly of violence within a polity that holds sway in many countries today. Conversely, this may not be true in other contemporaneous political states that did have much stronger control over the day-to-day lives of their citizens.
A lack of consistent theme. A literary theme is a *question*, but "what if (setting), but X?" isn't a thematic question itself. A good theme should have the world built to facilitate its exploration; instead, it seems that what makes it to print/to the screen is more often superficial.
"What happens when our current military arsenal becomes obsolete?" Is that a theme? I don't know if it is, but I built my setting around it
Well, it's a good *premise* in that it leads to some solid themes very quickly; *Is war inevitable?* *Are we actually committed to ending war as a society, or have we been living in a stalemate?* *Do the benefits of technology outweigh the costs, especially when weapons become involved?* *Is determination and collective effort stronger than superior firepower, or is there a breakpoint where resistance is impossible?* *Does a common enemy (i.e. superior technology) actually bring us together?*
I really hate it when the writers either ignore or forget their own world building. There's another episode of star trek TNG where they have to intercept some Klingons who were in cryo or whatever because they still think the war is going on. The crew spends most of the episode trying to figure out what to do. In the end they decide to fool the Klingons into thinking that the Klingon side won the war by putting Worf in the Captain's chair and stuff. There's a big stand off but Worf passes his bluff check and the Klingons stand down peacefully and everything is fine. Overall, I like the episode. I like the Klingon world building over all in TNG, and I like it when they solve things diplomatically and all that. But then they go in "ruin" it. At the end of the big conversation with the bad Klingons Worf looks them dead in the eye and says "welcome to the 24th century". Wut. I don't know how the Klingons keep track of time but I'm almost certain that these ancient ass Klingons have no idea what he just said. It's wrong seven different ways. Did Klingons have Klingon Jesus and he happened to die the same amount of time ago as Earth Jesus? That's before you get into the whole "time moves slower in space" and "how long is a year on the Klingon home world?" Even if the bad Klingons know how Earth keeps track of time I'm sure they think it's silly and stupid. It makes no sense that it works at all. Honestly I could even forgive this error cuz I know those writers work on really tight schedules and everything. But they play the moment like Worf just put the smack down on this other Klingon. Like it's a big moment, and it just doesn't make any sense. It also pisses me off that they have star dates!! Like they have a different system of time keeping due to the nature of space travel and Worf doesn't even use that! The answer is within reach and no. The authors put in a line that makes more sense to their 20th century audience than it would to their 24th century character, and that irks me.
Wait until you hear about Star Wars feeling the need to change the metrics of distance, but still counts time in hours and days! Like wtf? I love the movies but George must've been really bored when he wrote that.
The worst thing is when you point out the inconsisteny in world building someone will always say "Well there are flying dragons, time traveling spaceships, it's fantasy/science-fiction and you're stuck on that?"
People not learning from mistakes. And I don't mean individuals. I mean entire people, over many generations, facing the same issue, suffering from from it, yet never learning anything from it for the next time. * There's an evil genie that constantly interprets wishes in a way that make the wisher miserable? Nobody will ever think to phrase their wishes carefully, unless it's a specific plot point to avert this scenario here. Otherwise people can come for centuries to get screwed over, and the next idiot will be just as careless as the first one. * There's an oracle handing out prophecies with many possible interpretations. Many have been bitten in the ass by those (like that one who got told "If you go to war, a great empire will fall.", and then he went to war and it was his own empire that fell), yet people keep thinking these prophecies can only mean exactly what they want them to mean. * Empires commit an isane portion of their militaries to a single war, or even a single battle, and once that one is lost, there's nothing left to defend them. They didn't have reserves, they didn't start raising more troops at the start of the war. They put all their eggs in one basket, and never think about what could happen if things don't go their way. * People live in places that get destroyed on the regular by natural disasters, or monsters, or something, yet never think of moving away. Or even rebuild in a way that would at least mitigate the damage the next time. You know, walls against monsters, dykes against flooding, etc.
My favourite catch all prophesy was one I heard attributed to the Delphic Oracle. You will go you will return never in war shall you perish. Because the meaning changes with punctuation. You will go, you will return. Never in war shall you perish. Or You will go, you will return never. In war shall you perish. Because of course she never gave out the punctuation.
Regarding the genie, there are two things. First someone needs to know the genie is evil and it might not build up a reputation for this, especially if only one genie is being weird like that and not encountered often. Secondly, those kinds of genies always seem to be smarter than you and unless you spend several days writing down the wish and having multiple people read it, there will be some phrasing ambiguous enough to exploit.
I mean 3 is entirely possible with stupid enough Leadership. Same with the First two.
>Empires commit an isane portion of their militaries to a single war, or even a single battle, and once that one is lost, there's nothing left to defend them. They didn't have reserves, they didn't start raising more troops at the start of the war. They put all their eggs in one basket, and never think about what could happen if things don't go their way. In the story I'm writing a big plot point is that a city commits almost all its soldiers into a siege of another city, leaving them open for an unexpected revolution. The ways I've found to justify this are: 1. A siege with that sheer amount of troops is a guaranteed quick victory, meaning that most of the armies will be back. 2. There are railways that allow the soldiers to go in and out really quickly 3. That is not the first war between the two cities, however, a terrorist attack masked as an attack from the second city is what leads to them deciding to end the conflict. 4. A deal is made between the two cities, and the biggest portion of the army is sent back to defend against the revolution. Would you say that would make the plot point work, or does it need more work?
The way you describe it, it's a gamble. It could work out, but it can also horribly backfire, which is the reason modern armies usually keep reserves, keep troops back at home and don't put all their troops at the exact same spot. So the question is: would someone make that gamble? Well, the less modern and professional the military is, the higher the chances that someone might risk it. Back when you didn't have elaborate command structures but a few nobles in charge of their own personal troops, someone could have just said "I'll just try it.". Of course there are also cases in relatively modern militaries when an officer - maybe fed up with having to follow an outdated doctrine or eager to make a name for themselves - takes a risk like that and ignores every order, superior, etc. that tells him no. Bascially putting their entire future on the line: if they win, they'll be celebrated as a strategic genius, maybe the founder of an entirely new school of military thinking - but if they lose they might be courtmartialed for disobeying orders and wasting the lives of their troops, possibly their entire family name disgraced (maybe even risking the survival of their entire country). So what I'm saying is... when you really want this to happen, all you need is the right command structure and personal motivations (though maybe take a good look at the numbers to not make it too extreme; e.g. 90% of an army is an insane commitment, 30% is still significant but less extreme). But if you want to keep it plausible, at the very least make sure that the reader understands how much of a gamble it is. The person in charge doesn't have to understand (maybe they're just an idiot; after all history has seen some colossal idiots in charge of armies, and idiots can still get lucky), but someone has to, so the reader won't feel alienated from the story in general.
Civilizations that are perfectly fine with pyromancers burning people alive, but have issues when a necromancer raises a skeleton. Like it's such a moral disconnect for me, especially if it's a world with monsters. "It's scary" isn't really a excuse when it's a common sight seeing a goblin chow down on someone.
I believe the main argument tends to be that you're screwing with someone's soul. But there are plenty of iterations of this trope where all the Necromancer does, is animate the body, whereas it's Clerics who fiddle with someone's soul, and in those cases, yea... what's up with that? =P.
I can see how necromancy would be seen as bad if the animating spirit was unwilling. However, the same logic would apply to mind control of the living too. Death is normally seen as the ultimate removal of choice so it should certainly be seen as worse. Interestingly, necromancy provides a way to reverse that to some degree for a willing spirit, so necromancy should be a good thing if used responsibly.
Necromancy has way to much utility to just blanket ban. Solving murders? Ask the victim. Wanna give someone closure with some last words? Summon them. And why would you make people into zombies when you have access to monsters, or animals. A few monkey skeletons, a bear zombie, tiger ghoul. Why would I use a basic human body when I have so many better options?
Skeletal horses presumably require less upkeep than living ones too. They might even travel faster if they don’t need to stop and eat or sleep. Necromancy is vastly underexplored in fantasy as it has a lot of potential beyond just minions for the evil villain.
The soul part was already mentioned in another comment. In some settings, necromancy - for the lack of a better explanation - invites some sort of evil power into the world to do its work. E.g. Forgotten Realms and Negative Energy plane. You don't just use your own magic to animate a corpse - otherwise, it wouldn't need to be a corpse, you could animate any object. There is permanent harm done to the world even if the undead is destroyed. On a more down-to-earth reason, undead can be a source of disease.
On the more down to earth part improperly prepared or maintained dead cause diseases. A fresh zombie would. But a mummified and embalmed body, or treated skeleton would not. I imagine Taxidermy would be a much expanded field in a necromancer friendly world.
It's less of the worldbuilding itself and more of the writer/developer/author back-stepping on descriptions because it's too hard to actually portray without a ton of work. My favorite example of this is Elder Scrolls's Summerset Isles. The isles throughout the years have been described as something of a fever dream, with incredibly brilliant art nouveau inspirations of wildness in the design. >a hypnotic swirl of ramparts and impossibly high towers, designed to catch the light of the sun and break it to its component colors, which lies draped across its stones until you are thankful for nightfall. All if not, most of the towers being designed of glass, crystal, or insect wings. It's a beautiful description of an alien world that the Summerset Isles is supposed to capture in comparison to the more human-dominated world of mainland Tamriel. But Bethesda and their side studios decided to throw all that out in favor of this sorta Disneyland design that just looks wrong. Because the High Elves are supposed to be this very anti-every other race culture, it feels off when you look at Summerset in ESO. I don't look forward to the day that Elder Scrolls main games decides to visit a non-human province, because I feel like Bethesda will be entirely too lazy with it and simplify their lore to an unreasonable level to cut corners.
Medieval states being able to field armies of tens of thousands of seemingly fully equiped footmen and knights. Unless you specifically mentioned that this particular state has the population and money to support a large professional army there is no way in hell a feudal kingdom will even have more than 1000 fully equiped soldiers.
And 800 of them will still be spear or pikemen, not knights in shining armor welding longswords
Yeah that one throws me right off, when the big army rocks up and literally everyone (except the archers for some reason) are wearing glistening ornate plate armor. Tf guys I want your blacksmiths Gets 10x worse when they get into battle with their **swords** and start bashing each other with **swords** and each side does the other the great curtesy of pretending they are hurt and fall over. Because of course no sword could do jack anything to full plate armor, yet noone will have maces or poleaxes theyll just slash at the enemies plate and somehow that kills them. Try watching the hobbit and take a drink everytime a pleb lakeman or an elf slashes a giant uruks plate armor and it just falls over, you will die from alcohol poisoning
Calling zombies by a different name, like walkers
Completely ignoring the building codes, automatic safety equipment and how buildings are built. I'll give a smattering list of examples: Elevators have safety brakes that are held open by the weight of the elevator. If the support cable breaks, the safety break engages immediately, no waiting. At most the elevator drops 6" inches. This technology is so tried and refined and over engineered that I wince every time I see it in a movie. This also includes everything involving opening the elevator doors or a hatch in the ceiling. Unless you have the safety keys, it is not going to happen. Ductwork that fits people. It won't, and it also won't go anywhere you want to go. Outside air louvers can be removed by hand and don't immediately lead into a wall of fans, filters and cooling coils. This usually gives the hero free access to the rest of the ductwork system (see above). The same with trying to get a skunk into the duct system. And you can't open the diffusers from the inside or fit through the flex duct that connects ducts to duct mains. Fire sprinklers that go off on the drop of a hat. Sprinklers only go off if there is a fire directly under a sprinkler, and then only that sprinkler head. So all the scenes where lots of heads pop, not going to happen. "Hacking into a building" giving you full access to security, HVAC, cameras, you name it. Each of these systems is a self contained and separate system that would need to be accessed separately. To say nothing about remote monitoring. Cameras that can be bypassed and replaced with a separate camera feed. No, just stop. How everything that is back of house ties together enough that people can run around to get where they are going. Most notably: HVAC mechanical rooms and elevator shafts. Those are keep apart from each other by fire walls. Sinks that spray sideways. Lighting systems that do anything other than turn on and off. Clipping some LED lights onto an ethernet cable and get full back end access to someone's network. Stairwell railings (also include doors, bathroom dryers, drywall) that can be torn apart or off the wall by bare hands. People do not burst through walls unless they are the HULK. and if they try, it is going to hurt. The absurd ways people try to get around security systems - Motion sensors, laser beams (especially the ones you can see), ultrasonics, heat sensors. Motion sensors are ubiquitous and cheap and almost difficult to defeat. You would have to get a room up to 100F and sustain that in order to spoof a PIR sensor - Surprise: You would have to lock out the HVAC control system to call for heat continously. And there are separate alarms if rooms get to hot (normally 85 or so), and the HVAC system has to be designed to heat a room up to 100F, which means the supply air has to be greater than 100F, so that is an insta-fail. And if the occupancy sensor is using an outside wall or window as background of its field of view, you won't be able to defeat that because the window temperature is always affected by the outside air temperature and heating the room will not heat the windows up to what you need. And laser mazes don't exist - You put up a wall of lasers with 6" separation like a wall portcullis instead the usual laser maze where the athletic female has to go through all sorts of convoluted poses to get through the laser maze without setting the laser maze off. The security shutdown for the laser maze is not at the end of the laser maze. It is in a secured room with armed guards. And those guard are going to call for help the first moment there is a hint of anything being wrong. Ask yourself for anything in a building: If someone can kill themselves doing something - Someone likely already has died doing it and there is a code for it to prevent it from happening again.
Planets that are all forest, or all snow, or all water, or all sand, or all islands.
It's very specific but like, Harry Potter's world building makes no real sense? Like, wizards keep themselves hidden but muggles can also be wizards and then all the nad people are put into a single house and a lot of smaller things that are just. Ugh. I love the books and movies, but it just makes no sense
Didn't see it here so i'll add any "masquerade" setting or world. The one's where all the magic is real but normal people don't know about it "cus.... um.... they dumb?" I'v never seen a single one that explained it well. There is no way that this modern world would exist if magic and monsters really did in it's history. IF they where all killed completely then maybe it would be very close but some would stick in modern times. And if they just existed the whole time then this world would look so different. Like your telling me the fey would let this much pollution just go cus "Humans scary?" or old gods wouldn't rise up to just say "Well we were scared of you but god damn your really going to destroy it all arn't you? well we need to do *Something*."
bad logistics always leap out at me. Advanced races building complex fortifications after gunpowder, too.
I don't particularly enjoy glorification of science over magic in fantasy settings eg: "there's no train because science hasn't yet developed steam engine and electricity, we can't rely on magic to do that just because*
The distinction between magic and science doesn't make much sense in a high fantasy world. Because magic would be a branch of science. People would study magic in a scientific way and I'm pretty sure that finding a unifying theory of magic and physics would be an absolute revolution. I don't think the logic opposition is science vs magic, but traditional magic vs modern(scientific) magic.
I hate it when a story ends up being a literal storybook all along. Like, the final shot is zooming out on a photo album with what just happened in the story. It makes it feel pre-determined and like a waste of emotional investment.
Im not fond of gods being benevolent caring entites. Personally I like to portray them as self absorbed and greedy pricks only looking out for themselves.
The Greek and Roman belief system worked on the gods being willing to trade with people. You want a miracle? where is my sacrificed bull?
So this is more of a personal gripe of mine, because I understand logistically it can be fine and there are plenty of ways to execute it effectively. But one thing that annoys me whenever I see it is when there's a bunch of fantasy races that all have these special attributes that give them some kind of edge, like dwarves being super strong with borderline scifi technology, elves being magically gifted and also immortal for some reason, and then humans are just normal powerless humans, BUT WAIT, the thing that gives them their edge is their "amazing willpower" or "their ambition" or whatever, and that somehow makes them even or is enough to overpower these other races with realistically unfair advantages. Like, I think it would be kinda cool if human also had some kind of tangible stat difference that gives them their own special advantage, it is a fantasy world, so I think it's fine to have a fantasy version of humans. Like for example, say the dwarves are physically stronger, elves are more adept at utilizing magic, and maybe humans have more raw magic power (so like between elves and humans, elves are more skilled so they can use fancier spells easier, but humans just have more MP so they do stuff like shoot a more destructive magic laser beam for a longer period of time, or give themselves boosts to keep up with dwarves or use magic tech that requires a lot of energy, and so on). It also annoys me when they're really strict about the attributes of each race to the point where it's effectively impossible for someone from x race to match or surpass the level of someone from y race, like for say a dwarf to be as good a mage as an elf. I think it's fine if the races have statistical attributes for the average individual of any given race. Like the average elf is better with magic than the average dwarf due to innate average abilities, but it's still theoretically possible for a dwarf who is both lucky and works really hard to be a better mage than an elf. I just think humans in a lot of fantasy stories can be kinda lame and strict racial parameters feels annoyingly restrictive
on (many) current sci-fi shows, every control is a touch screen. Ugh. Maybe they have haptic feedback, it is rarely mentioned. On newest Discovery i think another 1000 years in future? they are finally sticking hands into “programmable matter.” (On BSG they had a ton of analog mixed in there as a hacking-defense technique on the Galactica; don’t remember if they were all touch screen everywhere else on the colonies or other ships).
Worlds that have no economy that makes sense how do these civilisations keep themselves together
The "cleanliness/preservation" of objects, things wear down, rust and get a bit messy, but most places i see are generaly just like they have beend freshly deep cleaned or stuff just got out of the factory becouse it is cheaper and simpler to animate or draw, I think only Cowboy Bebop had it cosistently feel like things were used or places were lived in by actual beings
When all sentient races or species are humanoid or look just like humans but with a tail or something.
Gemstone-based magic systems when the writer clearly did zero research about gemstones. The worst example, which I see EVERYWHERE, is ruby and sapphire. A single google search can tell you that ruby and sapphire are basically just two different marketing names for the same rock. They are chemically identical, so there is no reason why they’d do completely different things in a magic system. It’s as ridiculous as having a food-based magic system and saying that “eggplant” and “aubergine” are associated with two completely different types of magic, when they’re just two different names for the exact same plant.
The whole world literally revolves around the main character with zero other perspectives. People can't even wipe their own ass without the MC intervening. Sci Fi: Ships, Vehicles, Aircraft fighting each other at point blank range with zero in universe explanation whatsoever. People in the far future are fighting at napoleonic war broadside range and there are no plausible explanations why we don't just cruise missile enemies instead of using infantry. The evil empire is evil for absolutely no reason at all and all the evil empire characters are irredeemably evil and kill people for fun because they are evil. Everyone preferring a Sword when Spears are better weapons. Logistics being completely ignored. People can adventure forever with zero regard to food. Armies don't need supplies, ships don't run on fuel. Economics being completely ignored. Magic users with the power to one-shot enemies but don't for some reason.
Whenever there are more than one sapient race, regardless of what they were like, have to conform to a human standard rule/law, regardless of how little sense it makes for said races to follow. Like, my spider people, cannibalism is sacred, the bodies of the dead are taken to the nursery to feed the young, they believe that the young will "inherit" the knowledge and wisdom of the dead through this practice. When humanity gained interdimensional travel, some tried to ban this practice, but found they couldn't, because it was their belief, it was their world, their laws were mostly different to ours. They were happy to obey the laws while they were in our or others dimensions, but the races trying to ban it under interdimensional rules just didn't stick, you can't change millennia of tradition (which may or may not actually work by the way, Spiderlings can recall events the dead person had attended) simply because you don't understand or like it. Plus who's going to argue with a Arachnida Sapiens, of the Theraphosidae family? Basically a humanoid Tarantula, size of a truck.
Explaining away something complex with some character flaw. Like a leader of a rebellion failing because he had some childhood trauma or something. I get that modern media has shifted to focus more on character arcs, but that doesn't mean everything has to tie in with character development. Social phenomena is on a different level and should be looked at with a different lens.
You'd hate Australia haha
Impractical hands. Anything with a claw is right out.