Science made my fantasy world BETTER 

Clerics don't need a pantheon, they literally only need faith

I love this. I'm 6 years into the process of worldbuilding an entire crystal sphere, and having a basis in science has been a phenomenal tool during that process. For example, I wanted it to be possible to walk to every plane, and every planet is one of those planes, so there's lots of places where wormholes exist between the prime material plane and places like hell/heaven. The sun is what a normal person would call the elemental plane of fire, and a Dyson Sphere was built around it during the first age of this system when the Origins came to settle. The lore goes on and on, so I will try the World Weaver's Workbook and see if I can answer everything!

Wait till you see what a planetary ring would do. Super long hot summers that are extremely bright because the ring reflects light like a full moon that stretches all the way across the entire sky. Night time would be almost as bright as noon. Super long cold dark winters because the planet is basically wearing sunglasses, so even the daytime would only ever get about as bright as twilight. Meteors occasionally falling like a fiery rain from the ring. Most of them would be small, but not all of them...

Im doing something similar, its really interesting to consider how magic would effect evolution, what natural adaptations would allow a monster to use their magical abilities without conscious effort, but a wizard needs to use a medium, a priest needs faith, a warlock needs a patron.

I enjoy all of The Fantasy Forge videos

00:30 hello Tobias! Also LOVED this video! Really helped me start thinking more about my worldbuilding

0:29 Ahh, the perfect distraction, nice one Tobias, give us reason to look at you and not the notes! Love this one, definitely an interesting concept, and well worthwhile for making more unique worlds. I love messing around with more obscure concepts for worldbuilding every once in a while. It's lots of fun! Science just adds a little bit more interesting to the table.

I've been trying to look into different cultures worldwide to make my world seem less European. I'm really interested in getting inspired by the less known cultures as well.

I love science, and I love fantasy. A match made in heaven for me. Awesome video man 👍

0:30 hail Tobias The rabbit hole for me was how many farmers does a city need to feed an urban population. What infrastructure is needed for cities to bring food and water.

0.30 suprise kitty. I once used Astrosynth years ago for star system design.

Great video! For sure something to think about when worldbuilding!

I'm a huge fan of James Cameron's movies, his combination of real science with his sci-fi movies is one of the reasons I got interested in writing science fiction. I'm currently writing a DnD campaign with a subtle steampunk aesthetic where science fiction mixes with high fantasy

I think my favorite revelation recently when thinking about my underground setting is that the people that evolved there would have no concept of day/night cycles, so they'd literally create their own cycle of life that works for *them* and not the sun/moon/etc!

My world i dont think goes as deep with natural phenomenon as its a series of floating islands that all have their own climate due to ancient magic changing the terrain. But having real world science is a super cool concept

0:30 Tobias is the best little detail to keep track of.

I love this level of diving into world building. I find having a "scientific" basis on things, makes it easier to stay consistent in how things operate in the world. If there is a recognizable rule, then it's easier for the players to recognize when something is different ("Wait.. what do you mean the tides have not rolled back in the last 4 days?"). I already have the planets in the system, each offering potential impact on the story. I'm currently working on constellations, because.. those are important from cultural narrative standpoints. My nerding-out is figuring out which ones can be seen from what part of either hemisphere in any given part of the year. I might have a problem. Nerdwithastutter - Perhaps there is no pantheon, but clerics and divine operatives gain their power from acting in accordance with the values of their people, land, culture. Domains are those that are the ones that are most deeply ingrained in their society. Divine power is the collective believe in the way things *should* be and can be tapped into by people with the will and/or inclination.

Regarding Clerics without gods, a few possible routes depending on flavor/setting: Power of Belief/Will: Divine magic does not eminate from a diety, rather, it is the manifestation of collective belief or force of will. (American Gods esq, without the actual beings) Pretender Gods: There are no true gods, however, powerful beings deceive those weaker than them into worship and in return grant power (similar to warlock) Ancestor Magic: Rather than drawing on the power of the gods, draw on the spirits of Ancestors Sort-of-Paladin: The clerics power eminates from a vow, oath, sacrament, etc... in exchange for following strict adherence receive powers associated (kurapika from Hunter Hunter)

Family structures can impact how a society sees the world.

I love to integrate science with fantasy, but unfortunately I'm not that smart or research oriented so it ends up being... "Science lite" I do respect it though, I've got sci-fi as the ancient basis for my magic system, so it makes sense in the context of the world.

i love your voice

Honestly, my revelation was quite the opposite to yours. I tried multiple times to make really realistic maps and constantly got disheartened about how they looked. So I went the other way. Why is that mountain there? Because I need it to be. Why is that town there? Because it's better for the story. I know it irritates some people, but for me it makes my life easier and reminds me of the most important rule IMO; this is a game, and it is supposed to be fun.

My realization was finally figuring out how two huge things in my world are connected: the creator god, and when the elves created the weave. The elves in my world made the Weave, which is manifested as leylines, which are “held down” and interweaved (haha) between massive spikes that pierce deep within the planet. This also separated the gods (who are actually just angels) from the world, but the creator god was not worshipped, as he died as part of creation and was never known. I decided to put the corpse of the creator god on the inside of a hollow earth. so instead of a core, that similar iron-sphere sized area under the underdark and mantle, is a hollow earth like verdant paradise, where he sits floating at the center of the planet, glowing radiant energy onto the hollow earth, waiting to be found. Then the realization: The spikes holding the leylines pierce all the way through to the center of the planet, and end inside the corpse of the creator god. Thus explaining the fuel for the Weave which encompasses all arcane magic, is actually the corpse of the creator god, and that explains the connection to blocking out the influence of the Angels, as the elves were able to manipulate the weave to work as a sort of barrier between the spiritual planes.

One thing I wanted to note regarding your day/night cycle and I was hoping you would address it here: have you thought about wind? On any planet Wind is caused by the uneven heating between day and night combined with the rotation of the planet. Now given that your world rotates really slowly the main driving factor for winds on this moon would be the uneven heating, and boy would there be uneven heating! Unless your world has a very thick layer of CO2, then the night would loose so much heat, that every morning would be freezing, even in summer, and each day would be scorching hot. There would also be terrible storms during twilight due to the huge mass of air moving from the daylight and the night side. I think you could get around these issues with a CO2 rich atmosphere, but then the planet needs to be further away from the sun. And There would rarely be a true night. If you replace our moon with a gas Giant, that would be insanely bright in the night sky. Not only would it be bigger, but it would be much brighter: albeto a number between 0 and 1 is measuring of how much light an object reflects. Our moon has an albeto of 0.14. this means it only reflects back 14% of the sunlight that hits it. Jupiter and Saturn have an albeto of 0.54 and 0.50 respectively, which means they reflect half of the sunlight that hits them. Your host gas giant would not only be bigger in the sky, but also 3.5 times brighter than our moon, so depending on the phase of the gas giant, most of your night would be really bright. Think maybe 12-20 times brighter than a night with full moon on the Earth. And the geometry works out so that the brightest part of night would be around midnight, when the night side of your moon is opposite to the day side of the gas giant; while the hours just before dawn and just after dusk would be the darkest. An interesting aspect to think about is how this would effect the calendar. Our calendar measures a week as a quarter of a lunar orbit and a year as a full Earth orbit. You should consider how your moon's motion around the planet and the planet's motion around it's host star would affect the calendar on your world, and how the host planet and the other moons are integrated into your world's mythology. p.s. just finished The Pale Lands. It's such an amazing story. Can't wait to listen to the rest of it😊

Science and Fantasy? As a massive biology and fantasy nerd, this is fascinating.

My fantasy world is a Dyson sphere around a captured neutron star. Magic is solely radiation leaking out from the sphere. None of the players know this, and frankly I don't care if they EVER find out the sci-fi in this fantasy.

So a core idea of (world name pending) is that, due to my process for making random-ish cultures, there are so far 9 continents to be built with a need for there to have more later. How? I already wanted a non-euclidean sphere with infinite surface area as my prime material plane, but I also wanted it to make sense in a way that was able to be planned for, thus gameable. My solution? The forced implosion of 99% of the universe, caused by a poorly worded wish. Thus, my world is actually just select fragments of various worlds and limited chunks of their solar systems, shunted off and stitched together. The everything between has been compressed into the Seams, thin layers of compressed reality that constantly churn, and need a compass from your starting realm, a compass magnetised to your destination realm, and vessel at least as fast as viking longship oared at full speed to get through. Missing any one of those components, or failing to get through in 30 seconds, and you're lost. For good. At least in theory. Realms are "discovered" once someone manges to come back to the "known world" with the proper tools to make a return trip possible, a feat that has only happened nine times in the last 5000 years.

i totally stole the 8 days thing for my world too

I missed Tobias! Are you sure he didn't displace himself off the video? Though, honestly, it's probably that I need more sleep. Soo, it wasn't my world. I just sort of accidentally created extra stuff for a campaign my friend was running, that I was playing in - medieval-ish fantasy, but, with slightly more technology. Figure pre-Renaissance, but with some very early steam technology. But, for what *I* did to the world: uh, does regional language and culture count as science? Um, yeah, the rest of this long-winded mess is going to be "linguistic/cultural science," and barely so at that. Definitely not any physical/biological/geological/planetary science. If that disclaimer hasn't scared you off, feel free to read the following wall of text: I just happened to play a character akin to a DnD Rogue, and, well, he had reasons where he may not want certain people in certain regions to know who he *really* was. And, I just went with real planet Earth in terms of "Well, distance creates different languages, or, at the very least, different accents, and maybe some regional vocabulary if not entirely different languages. Right?" Though, I did slightly tweak some spelling/capitalization conventions to give it a bit of uniqueness to my GM's world. So, the party would start to approach a different settlement as we traveled, and my character would disguise himself differently, and make sure that the party knew that "While we're here, you don't call me John Archer. I am Otto von Gruben here," which explained to them why my hair was lightened a little, and I had a full moustache that John Archer most certainly didn't have an hour or so ago." GM's internal monologue: "Welp, I guess there's a place akin to Germany in my world now." Another point: my character suddenly is dressed in fine clothing, black oiled hair, with the bearing of a gentleman from warmer climes. "Here you will know me as Don Antonio Javier Christian Morado delaCadena Ysidro delTorres. Or, to keep it short, Don Antonio delTorres." GM: (sigh) "Ok, so, yep, Spain is somewhere in this world.." And this kind of kept happening until I'd created, just out of new aliases: Ireland, Spain, Germany, and a Persia/Arabian area. This ultimately led to a character backstory that developed mostly as the campaign progressed, rather than prior to the start. It also caused me to create not only real NPCs from my history, but several non-existent NPCs, just names of people my character would refer to as friends/family when within one of his aliases. ie: several NPCs who in the past had legitimately met Don Antonio, and ONLY knew me as Don Antonio, but then, also 3 completely fictitious family members for the alias Danel MacConnelly (father Padrig, mother Kaitelin, and an uncle, Braen). It even extended to the point where one or two of the aliases I'd set up wound up never being used just because the situation didn't require it. The good thing was, the GM was enthusiastic about his world being filled in by new regions. The only downsides were: 1 - The other PCs: "Ugh, who the hell is he supposed to be *today*??" 2 - Occasionally, I would accidentally speak in the wrong accent, or confuse myself as to which voice I was supposed to be using at the moment. Overall, though, a very fun experience. Or, as the GM said, "We've got a guy who's the tank, we've got a guy who's the provider and family man, and we've got a guy who is whoever you need him to be at any given time."

Scale. Literally having to judge scale as compared to the real world has been the BIGGEST challenge. On maps, in games, at the table. 🤦🏻‍♂️