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General Tabletop Discussion
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Your opinion on basing fantasy countries on real world ones
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<blockquote data-quote="TheAlkaizer" data-source="post: 8462878" data-attributes="member: 7024893"><p>I really enjoy looking up translations, etymology and playing with words and word roots in other language to make up names. I also enjoy taking the geographical concept of a real world country or region and exploring it; greek archipelago, italian coast with city states, french farmlands and vineyards, etc. They're all a bit of a stereotype, but I inject a health dose of fantasy ideas in it. In my experience and the feedback I've gotten, I most often hit the right balance of <em>it feels familiar</em> and <em>it's different enough</em>.</p><p></p><p>For example, I've been working on a small setting inspired by the idea of an italian coast with city states with some snowy mountainish highlands. Mostly based around the Genoan coast and the mountains to its north. I thought of a city with a large gatehouse of redbricks and toyed with some italian words for <em>red</em>,<em> door</em>, <em>gate</em>, <em>castle</em> and came up with a name. I also use older italian names from the 1500s for many characters. But after that I think of stuff like "oh does this race fits into this setting, how does this fantasy pantheon works in this setting, etc"<em>.</em></p><p></p><p>As a white westerner, there's areas I wouldn't feel comfortable building that way. If I did something like that off a country in South America, I would surely be basing myself off stuff that I saw in movies with no real understanding of its real geography, history and language. In these case, I limit myself to geography and natural formations and oddities without touching to culture or language.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="TheAlkaizer, post: 8462878, member: 7024893"] I really enjoy looking up translations, etymology and playing with words and word roots in other language to make up names. I also enjoy taking the geographical concept of a real world country or region and exploring it; greek archipelago, italian coast with city states, french farmlands and vineyards, etc. They're all a bit of a stereotype, but I inject a health dose of fantasy ideas in it. In my experience and the feedback I've gotten, I most often hit the right balance of [I]it feels familiar[/I] and [I]it's different enough[/I]. For example, I've been working on a small setting inspired by the idea of an italian coast with city states with some snowy mountainish highlands. Mostly based around the Genoan coast and the mountains to its north. I thought of a city with a large gatehouse of redbricks and toyed with some italian words for [I]red[/I],[I] door[/I], [I]gate[/I], [I]castle[/I] and came up with a name. I also use older italian names from the 1500s for many characters. But after that I think of stuff like "oh does this race fits into this setting, how does this fantasy pantheon works in this setting, etc"[I].[/I] As a white westerner, there's areas I wouldn't feel comfortable building that way. If I did something like that off a country in South America, I would surely be basing myself off stuff that I saw in movies with no real understanding of its real geography, history and language. In these case, I limit myself to geography and natural formations and oddities without touching to culture or language. [/QUOTE]
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