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File: 1344663038072.jpg-(11 KB, 220x220, Terraformed Mars.jpg)
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Worldbuilding resources thread! Most of my stuff is science-fictiony, but fantasy resources are welcome too.

Planet Designer: A hard-science calculator for stars and planets. http://www.johnbray.org.uk/planetdesigner/

Astro: A calculator for various sciency things, designed for the hard-SF game of 2300 AD:
http://www.bumply.com/astro.html

Random generator for star systems:
http://fast-times.eldacur.com/StarGen/RunStarGen.html

A randomized generator aimed at Traveller:
http://www.trisen.com/sol/static/wg/wg.html

Plan a Planet orbiting a Main Sequence Star:
http://wayback.archive.org/web/jsp/Interstitial.jsp?seconds=5&date=1045572798000&url=http%3A
%2F%2Fwww.geocities.com%2FArea51%2FCorridor%2F8611%2Fmseqstar.htm&target=http%3A%2F%2Fweb.archiv
e.org%2Fweb%2F20030218125318%2Fwww.geocities.com%2FArea51%2FCorridor%2F8611%2Fmseqstar.htm

A bunch of Hard SF tools:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070823084250/http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/8611/hard-sf.htm
>>
Church of Climatology:
http://incatena.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=34650

Fundamentals of Physical Geography:
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/contents.html

Atlas of the Universe:
http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/

Fractal Worldmap Generator:
http://donjon.bin.sh/world/

Holly Isle's Maps Workshop:
http://hollylisle.com/maps-workshop-developing-the-fictional-world-through-mapping/

Star Data Pages:
http://www.alcyone.de/SIT/

Magical Worldbuilder's Guide:
http://www.web-writer.net/fantasy/

Realistic Fantasy Animals:
http://www.elfwood.com/farp/thewriting/animalash/animalash.html

Atomic Rockets: Insanely useful if you want to do space travel and space combat.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php
>>
A great mapmaking tutorial:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/content.php?116-Ascensions-atlas-style-in-Photoshop&s=d52f6d13
05f681b00b0acb468ca33f28

Assorted tips and tricks for mapmaking for dungeons and other such things:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/content.php?164-Assorted-tips-and-tricks&s=d52f6d1305f681b00b0
acb468ca33f28

Making coastlines look realistic:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?9056
>>
A whole shit-ton of other resources for mapmaking:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/forumdisplay.php?48-Tutorials-How-To

Including, of course, How To Make Rivers That Don't Suck:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?3822-How-to-get-your-rivers-in-the-right-place

A buttload of other collected fantasy worldbuilding resources:
http://www.squidoo.com/fantasyworldbuilding

Orbit simulator:
http://www.orbitsimulator.com/gravity/articles/what.html

A big cultural questionnaire, for fleshing out your cultures:
http://bethisad.com/conculture/questionnaire.htm
>>
Patricia C. Wrede's Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions:
http://www.sfwa.org/2009/08/fantasy-worldbuilding-questions/

Habitable Planets for Man:
http://www.rand.org/pubs/commercial_books/2007/RAND_CB179-1.pdf

NASA Planetary Fact Sheets:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/planetfact.html

The SETI Catalogue of Nearby Habitable Stellar Systems- a bunch of good places to stick aliens or human colony worlds that aren't too far from us.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0210675
http://iopscience.iop.org/0067-0049/149/2/423

A few useful resources from a guy named Geoff; his "Climate Cookbook" and "Creating an Earthlike Planet" pages are pretty useful.
http://jc.tech-galaxy.com/bricka/
>>
I've got a few more; I'll be back tomorrow because I just realized that it is absolutely fucking late in my time zone.
>>
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Sweet! I don't have time to poke through all of this right now, but I've saved it all for future use.
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Bump this shit up!
>>
this thread is a Traveller player's delight
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>>20272109

Same. Good work OP.
>>
Thanks alot OP, total bro.
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>>
I hereby revive this thread from page 10.

Stuff needs to be looked at a little longer before it dies.
>>
Excellent thread. Keep it going and get this shit archived!
>>
This is great! I don't know jack shit about real geology and climatology. Will give it a spin later.
>>
>>20271366
>Plan a Planet orbiting a Main Sequence Star:
Hooooly shite
>>
>>20280523
Ah, don't mind the e-mail field.
>>
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>>
Bumping for greatness.
>>
Bumping because this wins.
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Hey, I'm back! I'm sorry it took me so long, but I got tempbanned for posting links to referral sites. Any ideas on how not to trip the banfilter?
>>
Good job OP.
I'm a world builder of my own, and I used some of these resources.

These are the best links out there
>>
The Importance of Food: A culture-building resource aimed at RPGs, based around an often-neglected element of culture: http://ptgptb.org/0024/food.html

Introduction to the Biosphere:
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/chapter9.html

Major biomes of the world:
https://php.radford.edu/~swoodwar/biomes/
>>
>>20285497
MOAR
>>
Another solar-system builder:
http://janus.astro.umd.edu/cgi-bin/orbits/ssbuild.pl

Escape velocity calculator:
http://www.calctool.org/CALC/phys/astronomy/escape_velocity

Biological Factors in the Evolution of Intelligence:
http://www.molvray.com/sf/exobio/index.html

Meteor Impact Calculator: Throw shit at Earth and find out what happens, in exquisite detail! Comes in two varieties- one which gives lots of detail about the effects from a certain distance, and one which plots the effects in less detail on a Google Earth globe. Breaks down at ridiculously huge impacts (like the Moon), and although it will do relativistic impact calculations you won't get quite as many details.
http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/

A load of calculators Atomic Rockets collected:
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/calculators.php

(But seriously, if you're doing realistic SF, you should just read the whole site. It's useful as /hell/. Also, check out the Boom Table they've got.)
>>
The ZBB:
One of the big forums for constructed languages and constructed worlds. They've got tons of good stuff. Useful as fuck if you want to make a language.
http://incatena.org/

And the Language Construction Kit- how to make a language.
http://www.zompist.com/kit.html
>>
Seventh Sanctum: More random generators for anything and everything than you could possibly need.
http://seventhsanctum.com/

Thoughts On Creating Magic Systems: A published author gives tips on how do do magic.
http://www.sfnovelists.com/2011/07/21/thoughts-on-creating-magic-systems/

This one's useful for fantasy worlds. It's a huge amount of information on alchemy, and at the very least will provide you with some nice imagery and thematic ideas if you want to use an alchemy-themed magic system.
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/
>>
Unfortunately, my ban ran out just when it was time for me to sleep again. If anybody else has anything they'd like to share, they're welcome to post it. Mapmaking resources, fantasy resources, tips and tricks, more advanced SF resources if you've got them...
>>
Oh, and two books that I've found useful- I don't know how hard they are to track down, but I found these to be excellent.

World-Building: A writer's guide to constructing star systems and life-supporting planets, by Stephen L. Gillett.

Aliens and Alien Societies: A writer's guide to creating extraterrestrial life-forms, by Stanley Schmidt.
>>
Oh, and one last link. I am almost certain that this is the link that got me tempbanned for referral sites. It's a bulletin board all about worldbuilding and constructed worlds. You can find it at:
http:// /~conworld/cwbb/index.php

And in that space goes this IP:
168.144.87.33
>>
Oh wow. This is more world building info than I'll probably ever need, but this is some nice stuff.
>>
Bumping for all my brothers
>>
File: 1344779749268.jpg-(571 KB, 1268x2158, Timeline of Avernum.jpg)
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This is the first draught of my first world, still got a loooong way to go and probably many revisions, thoughts?

There are probably a couple plot wholes/ overall cheesy parts so excuse those, it's basically just getting the idea onto paper first.
>>
These are handy!
>>
bumping for glorious worldbuilding stuffs.
>>
Wow thats a lot of stuff. Is there a good program in there to make maps of towns and castles?
>>
OP, if you ever need a cock sucking, let us know.
>>
>>20289439

If you're looking for a program to randomly generate towns, castles, or cities, I'm afraid not. I'm sure there's one out there somewhere, but I don't have the link.

The Cartographer's Guild website I posted, however, will be able to give you many tips and tutorials on drawing your own.
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>>20289972
Okay. And ya I'm looking to draw my own, just thought something might be out there to keep me from having to make every texture and draw every tree by hand.
>>
>>20289439

Hang on, I just found a program to make random maps of cities and towns.
http://www.inkwellideas.com/roleplaying_tools/random_city/v2.jsp?

Combine that starting point with the map tips you'll get at Cartographer's Guild and you should be good.
>>
>>20289999

If you don't want to make every texture and draw every tree, it should be pretty easy. Just draw a /few/ trees, make them into a Photoshop brush that will randomly alternate them, adjust the settings so that it looks good, and that should do it.

[Full disclosure: I haven't actually tried this method and in fact thought of it just now.]

For textures, you don't need that much detail if you're making a large city map. However, drawing cities and towns is always a pretty tedious process, but these should make it a bit easier.
>>
>>20290017
>>20290037
Cool thanks. Think I may just do it in photoshop always loved board game maps like Hero Quest. I want to make something pretty nice.
>>
I'm designing a tabletop game and I'm looking for a program that will let me make a hex grid of the size I choose.

I have been unable to find such a thing so far. :(
>>
>>20290138

I'd also be very interested in making a vassal mod for it but I have zero fucking clue how to do that. :<
>>
>>20290138
pattern brush in photoshop will do that pretty quickly
>>
>>20290138

I just posted a program for making custom hex grids! Literally, like one or two posts above you!

Here it is:
http://www.nomic.net/~uckelman/mkhexgrid/
"Hex grids can be created as PNG or SVG images, and as PostScript. Virtually every aspect of the output can be be adjusted—from grid line thickness and color, to style and size of hex centers, to the style and position of hex coordinates. "

There's also this:
http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/hexagonal/
Which I've found to be pretty useful.
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>>20290206

You're a god.
>>
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Archived for great justice!

>Cosmology ruaryoa
Captcha thinks its great too!
>>
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/20271366/
up vote it!
>>
My first archived thread. I'm so proud.
>>
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>>20290596
OP, for once, was not a faggot. He was, in truth, a very Excellen/tg/entleman. Enjoy glory.
>>
>>20290596
You should be, OP. You have done us all a service.
>>
I'm just about out. Does anybody else have material they found useful?
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>>20290826
This might be good for making NPCs and such:
http://io9.com/5896488/10-secrets-to-creating-unforgettable-supporting-characters
>>
And wouldn't ya know it, I was just thinking about asking for programs involved in galaxy/planet building. Many thanks, OP!
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Holy fuck, bump
>>
Can we PLEASE archive this? Just to...you know...have it?
>>
Now I fee bad. When I go to upvote it, I don't see how :(
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>>20295961

Go to this page:
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html

and click the "vote" button next to "world building resources." It's right under the OMH thread.
>>
>>20296692

Archive n00b here. Voted! Was #16, no idea what it's at now.


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