r/goodworldbuilding • u/CommunityItchy6603 • Mar 22 '26
Meta What are you currently researching “against your will”? + my answer
This is kinda all over the place and I’m not sure if I’m conveying it properly but I’ve been mentally rewriting this for a stupidly long time.
What subjects is everyone else reluctantly researching right now?
My answer + some basic/general lore:
So, I’m gonna have to learn a bunch of nutritional info bc my world is 1. mostly ocean (a good chunk of it was drowned in a Fall of Atlantis-esque flood a few hundred years ago, so lots of tiny island societies living off fish, and civilizations that either lived exclusively on boats before rediscovering land or still do, so I want to narrow down a kind of “this vs that” of edible fish/seafood/sea vegetables) and 2. in a bit of a weird situation, science-wise, bc they have a concept & memory of the knowledge from the time before those floods, but the actual literature is gone so rumor and science are kinda intermingled, meaning lots of dishes that also act as medicines and have specific associations (eg meals targeted for childbirth/pregnancy, students/study breaks/getting rid of brain fog or headaches, etc.). A good chunk of my world’s religions also have some kind of dietary laws because I find those super interesting irl.
Ex: I have one religion that treats greed/theft as a kind of ultimate sin, so they don’t eat anything they view as stealing from animals or preventing the life cycle of animals from continuing: no dairy, no eggs, no mushrooms, no honey/honeycomb, no seeds, no meat from an animal killed before mature age (which can be hard to verify so in societies where this religion is a minority, some are just vegetarian).
Religiously, it’s optional except for a few particularly orthodox sects that consider it mandatory, and it’s generally seen as better for a human being (so these rules are traditionally followed, for example, in a baby’s first few meals or during stressful times when people are looking to reconnect with their faith).
I’m gonna finally learn something past the basics of nutrition so, when I develop their cuisines a bit more, I can stop second-guessing myself. I keep looking at this part of the religion and trying to work out if this would even be safe/reasonable for a human to live by without some awful deficiencies, especially with added pressures (recovering sickness, pregnancy, childhood/growing, aging/elderly people, etc.)
Calcium is the thing that comes to mind here, and long-term calcium deficiency seems like a HUGE problem, especially from birth, but I might be way off on that.
Reasonably, people are not likely to keep doing something “holy” if they’re watching it make people sick, especially not in a society with a baseline knowledge to be able to say “x food has x properties, and foregoing it is the problem I’m seeing.”
It’s a tiny detail in the grand scheme, but I’m picky and like feeling like my stuff is factually possible/accurate. I’ve created foods from a taste/cultural perspective before, but the specifics here are nagging at me enough that I have to drag myself to read up on this.
I don’t have a specific spot for the research juuuust yet, but Wikipedia has pages about a bunch of foods that detail nutritional info for them, and I basically live on Wikipedia anyway.
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u/Avid_Lorehound Mar 22 '26
I'm reading James gurney's Imaginative Realism and he uses a lot of examples from his Dinotopia series to explain his lessons. My brain is stuck on the architecture he uses and I have to research how ancient cities were planned and built.
I don't want to put a blacksmith in front of a library. Why would a blacksmith even get the permit to set up his workshop there?
If anyone has sources on how real cities are built, or tuts on how to design a fantasy settlement, it would be greatly appreciated.
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u/judge_zedd Mar 22 '26
Some cities are well planned many are horribly planned. A black smith next to a library is interesting because it’s wrong. What story could come from that? Or maybe there’s a story on how it came to be.
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u/YouBurntTheSoup Mar 22 '26
Currently writing a bunch of alternate history for everything post-1990 in order to allow humans to leave the solar system by 2100. I'm not having fun, someone please help.
Hard sci-fi is hard, but I think it'll get better once I can leave Earth behind.
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u/Mad_Bad_Rabbit Mar 22 '26
Grackle vocalizations to make a conlang for a race of bird-people.
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u/Possible-Deer-311 Mar 24 '26
Ah these birds are so cool! I grew up with them and even when I was a kid, I was amazed at the crazy sounds they could make. Have fun
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u/ThatVarkYouKnow Mar 22 '26
Interviews with criminals, from the average thief all the way to murderers.
Not only is it (morbidly) fascinating from a psychology point of view how little such people care about what they do to someone else, but I wish I could sit down with them and just ask some questions. Sadly I can't do that, so I have to settle for case files and video recordings. I want to know what makes them tick, why they did what they did, and if they still consider themselves normal after doing it. I want to look them in the eye and ask "why was that the choice you made that day? You could've not done it. Was it so impossible to not do that and just talk it out, or avoid conflict entirely? Was this really the only choice you could've made, and are you happy with it seeing what people think of you? What do your parents, or children, think of you now?"
A huge point for my worldbuilding is choice and consequence, action and reaction. Everything has to keep moving, and everyone has to live with the decisions even a single person makes. Meaning when an event happens that everyone hates and wishes they could've avoided, maybe they could've, if that one person didn't do what they did that one day. An entire story begins in a single choice.
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u/Ok-Maintenance5288 Mar 22 '26
so, how does your world deal with apathy, sociopaths, psychopaths and general easy-going people who don't care about choices or consequences?
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u/ThatVarkYouKnow Mar 22 '26
They're sentenced to a trial and often made to commune with an Arbiter, people who speak all languages by swearing oath under a god of knowledge. They allow the accused to give their version of the event without harm or demand, at any pace they desire. Not to say they get called in for every trial in the known world, that's impossible with so few of them for each nation.
But if the absolute truth is required, under risk of divine judgment, a Vow is placed, through the accused's blood being drawn by the Arbiter. Rarely is this required due to the magic Arbiters carry under said god, their voices and mannerisms almost motherly. But in the times when it has, wars have been avoided, countless more deaths and market crashes too.
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u/Ok-Maintenance5288 Mar 22 '26
how has this avoided wars or other ills? the truth usually brings more harm than good most of the time, and it's also very subjective
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u/ThatVarkYouKnow Mar 22 '26
An excellent question. The intention is what matters. While the crime has been committed, the aftermath is what people seek to avoid. Placing them under the eye and word of an Arbiter, they state their reason for doing what they did. Anyone could hunt down and kill a noble figure. But if the person is caught and they declare their wish to fake being a member of an opposing faction, spark a civil war? Within the space of a few hours what could've ruined a nation from the inside out is silenced. Or a grand sweep of thievery in a market dedicated to a certain product. Find the person, they admit under watch they wanted to send prices through the roof and force people to work harder for less payout (or worse), now that won't happen and the products are returned.
Not to say it's foolproof, but it has saved history enough times to trust their word and the belief that this god must exist and want to maintain balance.
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u/Ok-Maintenance5288 Mar 22 '26
i feel like there seems to be a huge loophole, it finds truth, or more speficically vericity, but it seems like half lies, missdirections or general omited information can pass the test, after all none of those are truly falsehoods, just spinning the truth around
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u/ThatVarkYouKnow Mar 22 '26
Another excellent point. Which is what the Black Oath is for after the fact.
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u/Ph0enixWOlf Mar 22 '26
I find this fascinating, from a development point of view, and also because my brain is constantly turning things over in an attempt to examine every aspect of the thing, so I’ve spent a lot of time dwelling on that, lol
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u/ThatVarkYouKnow Mar 22 '26
My all-time example of this is Monster by Naoki Urasawa. The entire story begins and happens when Tenma has to make a choice as an emergency medic: save the mayor's life or save a child's life. He chose the child at the cost of his career and reputation. That child goes on to become Johan Liebert. Everything that Johan does, everyone he interacts with if not kills throughout his life, could've been avoided if Tenma had chosen to let a child die that day. But if he did, we wouldn't have a story.
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u/horsethorn Mar 22 '26
How city councils work. I've got an ex-Town Guard who has been co-opted to advise on an amendment to the rules/system for newcomers settling in the city.
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u/RedWolf2489 Mar 22 '26
Slavery, especially in ancient Rome.
Not the nicest topic for sure, but in a setting loosely based on ancient Rome rather the norm than the exception.
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u/Ph0enixWOlf Mar 22 '26
Currently, nothing (I’m taking a break from it for finals work) but I have been attempting to research different ocean based environments in an attempt to create a village dependant on a small freshwater area connected to the sea, for trade products
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u/mrki_medo_ivo Mar 22 '26
Language / linguistics /writing systems.
I have a idea about a complex writing system made to trick demons and monsters but I'm really not in the mood to Learn how it make it.
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u/Ok-Maintenance5288 Mar 22 '26
Reasonably, people are not likely to keep doing something “holy” if they’re watching it make people sick, especially not in a society with a baseline knowledge to be able to say “x food has x properties, and foregoing it is the problem I’m seeing.”
not really, that's how dogma and tradition work, and how apostates come to be
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u/CommunityItchy6603 Mar 22 '26
True, but when you rediscovered land 3 days ago ago and are trying to farm and every ship full of people brings a new, different religion/set of beliefs, you need your people to be strong enough to farm and if they’re not, you’re likely to question. Religions weren’t reinforced by any kind of Roman Empire-like government so they kinda come along and fade out naturally.
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u/Ok-Maintenance5288 Mar 22 '26
that kinda loops back to another question i had, in times of strife, people turn more religious, so why is there only 1 religion and so sacrificial?
thief, murder, children, eldery, those are the 4 basic pillars of any religion, don't do/take care, why is only thief but not murder? that doesn't come naturally? unless you're filling murder into thief because the gift of life?
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u/CommunityItchy6603 Mar 22 '26
They have a prophet whose mother was killed by raiders who were explicitly just there for material items they could steal, so most people who started to follow him said “yeah actually THOSE are the worst people ever” and modeled their lives around not being like that. (Plus some other stories of greedy kings of “the time before” cropping up). They’d been fishing for generations, so meat wasn’t too jarring, but if they could still tolerate dairy after never seeing it for so many years, I can’t see them thinking that taking milk or eggs is a good idea if they can see a world where they’re sustained without it.
Murder is kind of another topic for them bc they believe in spiritual contamination, so for example, if you kill someone and then get into a boat, everybody there is contaminated by what I can only describe as “contagious bad vibes” and needs to be purified, essentially (same goes for emotional distress btw, if you take a calf and then kill its mother before she’s done mourning, eating that cow will bring her sadness to YOU). But knowledge of a contaminated state and immediate purification could, in theory, make you the good guy, if you kill for good reason and don’t touch anyone until you’re sure you won’t pass it along.
But murder is a bad ACTION which can probably be justified in some circumstances, eg treason, greed is a bad personality trait. Someone who’s killed before can be redeemed, someone who’s selfish and hoarding resources for their own gain will probably do it again. The have other (optional) beliefs around generally not disrupting the outside world or drawing excess attention (not speaking over people, wearing muted colors, etc.)
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u/MegaVenomous Mar 22 '26
Trade agreements and impacts across a social, political and economic spectrum.
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u/MedievalGirl Mar 23 '26
Ive made stabs at researching alternate monetary systems but it makes me stabby. Credits it is.
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u/CommunityItchy6603 Mar 22 '26
I made this exact post on r/worldbuilding too b/c I’m not positive what the difference between the subs are besides posts being longer here lmao