@@VelociraptorsOfSkyrimFlavoring is a thing, sure, but flavoring can only go so far. dnd is kind of restrictive if you already have a strong idea for a character's abilities before looking at classes. (Which is strongly the case with trying to fit his magic system into the game)
@@VelociraptorsOfSkyrim...why are we trying to seperate them? i think his Tyrion example shows pretty well how d&d's mechanics enforce a specific set of character archetypes if you want playing within the system to feel like playing AS your character
@VelociraptorsOfSkyrim I think it is really dependent from player to player. A lot of people like the classes and see them as guidelines. I also have this, but sometimes, I also find them limiting. And so I think both systems are great for different kinds of plauers
re: extinct species, i think a like "here's where you can expect fossil deposits to be, and here's what kind of creatures (both like as far as anatomy goes and, like, habitat and population) are likely to fossilize" video could be interesting
1:36:00 I can understand the criticism of those who actively try to recreate aspects of real biota, but I would personally be equally critical of the active _avoidance_ of those. On the example of no malacoform fliers, unless I'm much mistaken, even the smallest fliers in this biosphere are larger, or perhaps X large as, the largest flying insects. It just doesn't seem like those niches for truly tiny fliers like gnats can be filled in this world unless fought is opened up to malacoforms.
"I've occasionally mucked around with it over the past... several decades." Several decades??? I feel like Eowyn talking to Aragorn: "You _cannot_ be fifty!"
I think it would make a lot of sense for the neotects to evolve sign languages, considering their crests and number of limbs. Even if its not their primary modality, and/or it's accompanied by "speech" or smell or other modes, I think signing is a pretty sensible development for them.
and please, for the love ah gawd, give them a third rod and cone. If humans can develop blue eyes, alien spiders who focus on the beauty of different colors can develop more colors.
@@jinxsterr_Dispenser3741 considering humans can have conditions like tetrachromacy, which results in a fourth type of cone cell within the retinas, i don't think its too much of a stretch to say that some tects could end up as trichromats, though they'd likely end up being only a small part of the overall tect population.
Wouldn't difference in perception like that be a disadvantage, since males would attempt to make things that are colorful for them but boring "beige" to others, while females would see what to others looks like perfectly good patterns, as splotchy messes?
I'm talking about fully fledged languages that are signed, like ASL, LSF, or Kata Kolok. These have their own grammars and linguistic universals (for example in English I'd say "There's a bathroom down the hall on your left," and in ASL I would say something like "Bathroom where? Hallway-INDEX, far-go-left INDX bathroom.")
@1:26:28 the Children of Time series goes into different types of communication modalities as something of a theme throughout the series - just a great spec-evo story
But you want to beat yourself up, no one is going to object to a Part 16. It would be cool to see how these people start domesticating other species, and yea...development a 3D culture.
Yeah, part 15 was my favorite in the series, and the last part especially was extremely touching, linking the human journey towards mastering our base drives with the neotects. And I never got the sense that he was advocating biological determinism or any of the horrible ideologies humans have made from that either.
For the Malachoforms, I think eusociality makes sense because they're small, not because they're insect-like in any other way. Being smaller means territory is easier to come by since you can fit into a lot of spaces other organisms can't reach. They'd be forced to interract with other species capable of occupying the same spaces that they do, i.e. other malachoforms. If malachoforms are the most diverse clade in your world, strictly saying there can be no eusociality is neglecting cool, potentially very alien concepts. For example. If the malachoforms are incredibly soft-bodied, you might imagine them transferring nutrients and environmental information through their skin to one another. I can imagine tens of thousands of little soft bodies cramming themselves into the nooks and crannies of a fallen tree's wood mass, consuming it and distributing the nutrients throughout the colony via diffusion through touch. Imagine prying open a piece of rotting alien wood and its initially held together by a fleshy mass of bodies that seems to be one, then they panic and scatter in multiple directions, seeking shelter independently like a little army of ameobas. As for flight the only malachoforms that COULD fly would be extremely small ones. There are very small wasps and fruit flies on Earth that are so tiny they interact with air as though it were a liquid, swimming through it. Such microscopic malachoforms might form the basis for an aeroplankton clade that can be filter-fed upon by the other flying creatures. Just some ideas of how you can bend your own rules but remain distinct from insects and arachnids.
Looking forward to more diegetic Refugium content. One of my favourite things about your How to Make a Conlang series is that, unlike most other conlanging beginner's guides, if you watch through the series, you have a (simple) conlang by the end. That 'recipe' rather than 'research' style is incredibly engaging to a beginner. Edit: Your mentioning "Walking with Dinosaurs" delighted me; I watched that series over and over as a kid, and rewatched it recently. It's an old love.
honestly an alien biosphere episode on alien culture and showing how it is affected by much more than environmental and evolutionary determinism. seeing how the societies of the aliens change, would be really interesting to watch and think about.
I'm looking forward to your revamp of "How to make a language" because I've been messing around with ideas for conlang adjacent things for years now, and with my own worldbuilding project ramping up I still don't think I'd be fully ready to dive headfirst into all the information required for conlangs
33:08 You may want to have a look at _The Dark Eye._ It's a TTRPG system without classes, where you don't level up your character as a whole. Instead you gain what's effectively skill points, which you can buy or level all sorts of skills or attributes with. Typically those either require you to have pre-exisiting or adjacent knowledge (several levels in "tailoring" could allow you to start leveling "leather work") or find a teacher who already knows these skills (and has levels in "teaching") and is willing to train you in them. That makes creating/growing your character pretty organic and allows you to build them however you want, with your adventure shaping what you have access to and think fits your current trajectory best. I also like that it's a rather low-magic system (even higher-tier magic users mostly rely on preparing spells well in advance) and has a pretty dynamic combat system with active parry/dodge reactions and where armor actually serves for damage reduction if you do get hit (as opposed to D&D's "I hit you, you hit me back" system). And power creep is rather low too, since base stats are very expensive and it's hard to raise your talents to ridiculous levels. With good decisions and a couple lucky rolls a starter character could hold their own against a veteran, at least for a little bit. Our main group ended up with a master blacksmith who was also an enchanter on the side, creating all our gear; one who is essentially a paladin (but by roundabout means), and also a master cook who opened his own restaurant chain; the shorty who's buff enough to wield two-handed swords in each of her hands and doesn't care about much more than combat (and food/drink); the alchemist who provides us with medicine and other useful trinkets, but mostly stays out of combat; the comic relief who is unlucky af, but still manages to provide great overall support; the death-metal elf, who even after being effectively "ruined" by our crew still doesn't understand human society; and me, trained in dodging to the point I survived most boss battles without any damage, and also running a lucrative trading business combining each member's talents. (Disclaimer: I only have experience in TDA 4/4.2, so can't say if the newest version holds up.)
45:37 - there is a somewhat middle ground "Developer Dairy" kinda way. You work a week/month/undefined time on the language, and after the video is not showing the thinking process but showing the result of thinking process during that interval
1:24:42 Hey that's me! :D I probably could have worded it better as I think I am repeating myself. I was kinda letting my thoughts type before I had it formulated correctly, but glad you got the point and answered.
I love Bills work. Diegetic storytelling is a great idea and a good middle ground between heavily character driven stuff and just a dry catalog of things you worldbuilt. I'm not too sure what the big deal is with male dispersal especially considering your feelings on biodeterminism. It's not like we never did it, whatever the usual primate model would be. Just look at a DNA map of Europe. (Oh no, I'm stuck in a neolithic farming community. Wha...what are you doing steppe-brother?) I would expect the neotects to practice either/both depending on their specific culture.
1:43:39 the closest niche i can think of is foxes that will dive through snow to get at the mice running under the snow - snow and dirt are very different, but one can see how they might be related
Your alien biospheres series is so amazing and inspiring. All the way back in 2019 when I started my work on my book series your discussion of body-plans inspired me in such a vivid way. My first book is going to come out next year (on a discord server) and the fantasy world I made is partly based on your series. I can't believe it's been 5 years.
2:01:48 I think a seed world would have a much better shot than even this hypothetical extinction event, especially considering how hardy tetrapods are. You'd still probably have lizards and mammals, maybe even birds, especially fossorial species. Sure, you could wipe out tuatara and crocodilians pretty easily, wiping out caecilians, salamanders and turtles is hard but not unreaasonably hard. But wiping out mammals, lizards, birds or frogs would be pretty much impossible, even if you go with the near-earth supernova idea, mammals and lizards stand out since there are many fossorial mammals and lizards.
see i have to disagree with his thesis overall. i think if a clade has the pre-requisites for more mega faunal size they will necessarily occasionally produce species of such size. Consider the earth coconut crab, despite not being well adapted for large size it was able to reach the very limits of it's body plan in only 4 million years of adaption. Any flying lofastomes that colonized an isolated island would i think be expected to reach at least coconut crab sizes after any significant adaptation.
@50:20 I don't choose a language in particular to make a language of, but I do choose about 10 to 18 which I draw various features from to create an amalgamation. My most "derivative" language is Old Paghade which is heavily influenced by Ancient Greek, especially in its syntax, but it has influence from a bunch of other languages like Irish, Icelandic and Hebrew
1:12:03 I am really glad this was clarified because ngl at first reading of it I thought you were arguing for a pro-eugenics view which seemed out of left field. And then I had to watch it again and was like "oh okay this is how we talk about early humans and their cultures which were lost to time and he's going to talk about the development of cultures and languages later"
I think your analysis is spot on! Thank you so much for your content. Just a suggestion here: in conlanging series, use one conlang for all levels, to give the viewer an idea of how going deeper can affect the basic language they already have. That way they can more easily determine how far they want to go.
Perhaps you could have a series of refugium videos that take a diegetic perspective and perhaps even briefly discuss the source of the story as well (such as describing the tome and its properties and perhaps where it was found as if it were a historical artifact) and also occasionally make refugium videos in your regular style, when its useful/important/interesting to have a more complete view of things
20:00 I like the idea of an acolyte trying to balance their essences so that they get a unique type of magic. What essences and how much of each to create a magic capable of bringing the dead back to life?
Aan sounds like the "essence of neurodivergence". Or at least most of the attributes you describe are things I and many others I know associate with our conditions. Might be a story opportunity to describe such conditions as "the Curse of Aan" or something - whether they're actually caused by influence from the essence or regular neurological issues. Maybe both are possible, but get lumped together because people don't know better...
I personally would love it if Season 2 of Conlang Case Study were done with an entirely new language. What I struggle with the most, and I imagine it is the same for other conlangers, is how to convert a nebulous concept into an actual fleshed-out language, and watching your process for the first episodes of Taqva-miir was incredibly helpful. Revamping your pre-existing conlangs would also be interesting to watch, but I think it would miss out on the "how did we even get here in the first place" aspect.
Alien Biospheres has been such a huge inspiration and enjoyable thought experiment. In other worldbuilding projects, theyve felt kinda hollow, cause some creators said things like "this animal need to be good at digging and have a good, solid stance, so lets give it six legs." To my knowledge, no other project has the level of cohesion yours does
I had actually discussed the name mohayzu on r/biblaridion, hypothesizing that it was a proto oqolaawak word that hadn’t yet undergone harmony. I guessed the modern for was mowayzo, sad to see I wasn’t correct but happy to see I was on the right track 😂
I for one did understand what you were getting at with regards to the Neotechs. Like with humans, the Neotech's long term survival depends on overcoming instinctual lag.
Thank you for answering my question! It's always something I wondered about when I see spec evo projects online so it's always cool to get the creators opinion on the matter. When I design aliens or just creatures in general that aren't near the former end of the spectrum like in some of my projects I always try to marry the two ends of it. Making creatures that are goofy (Like a giant candy gummy sandworm) but giving them biological details that make sense within the rules of the world.
I’m looking forward to your new approach on the how to make a Conlang series. I found your videos on accident a few months ago and have been trying to understand linguistics since. Also, The Refugium is absolutely brilliant and if you ever release a campaign book on that for DnD that would be awesome and I’d buy it in a heartbeat.
I also grew up watching walking with dinosaurs and the other walking with series, it’s always fun to see how so many other people were inspired by the same documentary.
5:30 - I love the World Billing segment of the Artifexian podcast, so I'm definitely look forward to that, and if you feel more comfortable presenting a story in that format than prose, that might work around the discomfort you express if it's the sort of story that could work from diaries, letters, and the like. Something similar to Epistolary novels. But, obviously, not all stories can work that way. 24:40 - Fully agree with a preference on soft magic to hard magic. Hard magic rarely feels magical to me (Though certainly is needed for some specific things - Mystery stories in fantasy settings, if they have magic at all it needs to be hard; games where players get to access magic usually need hard magic, or at least there needs to be a subset of magic that's hard for players to interface with) - I'd go with 'a technology' rather than 'superpowers' as what hard magic often winds up feeling like to me, however. 1:46:00 - And the person making that very quick assessment doesn't even need to be particularly well versed on evolutionary biology to spot it, even as a "This feels... Off..." vibe which is a distracting blemish on something the person is enjoying, or a nitpick they will never let go of if it's something they're otherwise not enjoying, even if they know full well that's not what they actually disliked about the work.
With the whole class thing this is why I love the Wildsea's character creation because it's classes are restrictive in a way that I find really fun (but also optional, you can design your character outside of the class system, I just really love the class based character creation). In the Wildsea you get the same amount and types of abilities from your class as you do your bloodline (species/race) and origin (background). This mechanically means you essentially have 3 classes and you can pick any 3 and they won't overlap with each other unless you choose to have them with further customization. Part of this further customization is that each thing you choose you get 2 aspects from (which can be from the list provided but you and your GM can work out ones not on the list if you have an idea) each that relate to what they are. These aspects can include traits, things about your body that are different in some way (for example as an Ektus, a cactus person, might take a trait where their spines are more numerous and sharper and cause people who attack them in melee to take damage) or skills you've learned, gear, which includes weapons as well as any other 'item' that the game doesn't classify as salvage, or companions, essentially familiars. And every class, bloodline, and origin has access to all of these aspects (though maybe not all classes have access to companions though, can't remember). This allows there to be non combat oriented classes because you can pick up as many combat skills as you need (which might not be many) from your origin or bloodline instead. So you get fun classes like the Char, a ship's cook, Horizoneers, traveling scholars, Navigators, Surgeons, Wordbearers, couriers, or the Steep, people who steep tea that they use to connect to the spiritual world. This also means that even if you choose a combat oriented class like the Corsair, a close quarters expert who studies combat like an art, you might still not choose any aspects that directly relate to sword fighting, like a sword, because you chose a sword from your origin instead. You might then pick for example the trait "Scars that tell stories" which lets you get 'whispers' (living ideas that are a resource in the game, they can only exist in one mind at a time, passed from person to person via whispers) when you take damage, or a hooded crow companion. Both of these things might make more sense for your character and what being a corsair means to them. I also like the class system in the game because it's meant to be an explanation of what your character does on the ship which makes more sense to say "oh they're the navigator and they're the engineer" and so on.
I'd love for there to be an episode about potential culture shocks between neotects and humans. I agree it shouldn't be canon but I bet it would be a very interesting episode nonetheless.
scent-based communication doesnt feel very feasible to me tbh, along with the problems of non existent word order and consciously emitting scents, i just cant imagine such a language could be transmitted very quickly like spoken language, i think it makes much more sense for their languages to be spoken or signed, and scent based communication is more analogous to non verbal communication that humans do like facial expressions
Personally, I do believe that things like xenophobia is human instinct. However, I consider something as sapient as when it can go against it's instincts (in normal situations). And so humans can go against their xenophobic nature and therefore it should not be allowed and should actively be thrown away, which is not hard due to us being sapient
Sapience is not mastery of the mind, it's the ability to learn behaviors and to create new ones for yourself. Key word being learn, because you still have to endure the process of self-improvement, you don't get to just flip a switch via sheer willpower and suddenly throw out your instincts. The difficulty with xenophobia being standard within an entire culture is that you have to expect every individual to do this, often with no motivation for it. More often than not a xenophobe would rather create an excuse to justify his beliefs, which is the same as every other "you're good already, society is wrong if it tells you to change" movement, like "healthy at any size".
1:42:07 this made your comments about the series only representing a fraction of life on Mira finally sink in. A whole seperate phylum, outside the polypods and anthostoms? I am very very excited to learn more about them.
I’m so glad you like After Man. The Dougal Dixon books are some of my favourites I own. I found After Man in my Grandads house and asked if I could take it home to have a look. I have never given it back (don’t worry l, I’m not a thief) and I have loved it ever since and have bought a few more. They are jolly expensive though
1:46:25 when you really break it down, a lot of Earth species look similar and adhere closely to body plans, especially vertebrates. As someone who works with birds, they pretty much all have the same basic shape! Also it would be cool to see you analyze the future is wild, as well as see you learn Blender!
The style and diversity of the Refugium actually reminds me of another worldbuilding project: Almea, by Mark Rosenfelder Have you seen it, and if so, was it an inspiration?
It would be fun if at the end of series, in early space age, planet and system got invaded by human, like one digital posthuman in relativistic bullet sized ship from Kardashev 2.3 civilization with matter assembler. Convening planetary system to matrioshka brain even with ultra advanced automation wouldn’t be fast process. In that case Neotectons would have opportunity for diplomacy or preemptive strike. :D
I really appreciate your discussions of your regrets vis. a vis. the explication of the biological roots of social structures. One thing that I would add to that is that you talk about evolutionary psychology as something that has historically been used to support dangerous pseudoscience. This is certainly true, though I think you overstate the case somewhat as modern evolutionary psychology is fairly distinct from classical social darwinism even it shares common origins, but I think its also important to note that the field is largely pseudoscientific in its basis rather than just in how it is "misused." It is not only effectively unfalsifiable, rendering its status as a science as opposed to just a series of just-so stories suspect, and almost completely detached from actual anthropoligical and paleoarchaeological research into the so-called EEA, being based more on victorian era fantasies about the "state of nature" than actual research into paleolithic societies or extant hunter gatherers (though the projection of the latter into the past has a lot of problems, most clearly in the fact that hunter gatherers today are forced onto marginal land that agriculturalists don't want to/can't use, rather than having access to the land that most suits non-agricultural human subsistence).
if you ever ever dever feel like it years down an aliens biosphere revise would be amazing, expecially if you let yourself be more creative with it, i would love to see you learn blender
On the diagetic vs accuracy debate, you could present it as a scholar fact checking an older work, like the main body is the past diary or book but someone has come in and corrected things
A refugium ttrpg sound super fun and really refreshing, but, I'm very curious as to how an alien biospheres ttrpg would look. If this idea is already in the video and I get to it 5 minutes after posting this I will scream.
Speaking of venomous retractable claws, the only example I can think of on Earth would be the platypus, since male platypi have venomous spurs on their back legs. Also, I too loved Walking with Dinosaurs (and The Future is Wild). That series, alongside Jurassic Park, were instrumental in the development of the clade we refer to as "dinosaur kids". I'm not nearly as into dinos as I used to be as a kid, but I still think they're neat, whether they're scaly gribblers or feathered beasties. I'm the same way about Shamblers from Quake, since I believe they're cool and freaky whether they're fuzzy, or leathery, or made of good cream cheese like Aiken Drum.
35:34 Akshually *pushes up nerd glasses* In Dragon Magazine 307 they actually stated a couple of SoIF characters including Tyrion. He's a human aristocrat (a npc class) 6 and fighter 5.
What you’re describing is pretty close to a new TTRPG that was just kickstarted called Utopia and it’s really customizable to the characters and setting
![40K - THE GREAT NACHMUND WAR [1]: VIGILUS | Warhammer 40,000 Lore/History](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tMUV3k-0eNg/mqdefault.jpg)
One of my greatest regrets is never drawing fan art for your alien biospheres, I’ve loved the journey so far- very inspiring
I’m surprised you’re not verified yet, your art is so cool.
Lol, yeah I just realized it's him when I looked at the pfp
I’m still impressed you mañaged to finish the Alien Biospheres series. It is an amazing body of work.
idk why but i find that eñe really funny :P i keep saying 'manyaged' in my head
but, agreed, it's really incredible
"Mañaged" bro is a neko にゃ
mañaged...
Biblaridion’s 10 minute rant about dnd is actually so relatable
_Kinda._ not really, if I'm gonna be honest.
It comes off more as someone who can not separate game mechanics from the narrative or lore of the game.
@@VelociraptorsOfSkyrimFlavoring is a thing, sure, but flavoring can only go so far. dnd is kind of restrictive if you already have a strong idea for a character's abilities before looking at classes. (Which is strongly the case with trying to fit his magic system into the game)
@@BryanLu0fr game mechanics should work to help flavour, not fight against it
@@VelociraptorsOfSkyrim...why are we trying to seperate them? i think his Tyrion example shows pretty well how d&d's mechanics enforce a specific set of character archetypes if you want playing within the system to feel like playing AS your character
@VelociraptorsOfSkyrim I think it is really dependent from player to player. A lot of people like the classes and see them as guidelines. I also have this, but sometimes, I also find them limiting. And so I think both systems are great for different kinds of plauers
re: extinct species, i think a like "here's where you can expect fossil deposits to be, and here's what kind of creatures (both like as far as anatomy goes and, like, habitat and population) are likely to fossilize" video could be interesting
That would be cool, but that's more of an Artifexian topic.
A video about the biospheres that exist in the refugium would be so interesting i’d love to see that
It's basically just prehistoric earth life
1:36:00 I can understand the criticism of those who actively try to recreate aspects of real biota, but I would personally be equally critical of the active _avoidance_ of those. On the example of no malacoform fliers, unless I'm much mistaken, even the smallest fliers in this biosphere are larger, or perhaps X large as, the largest flying insects. It just doesn't seem like those niches for truly tiny fliers like gnats can be filled in this world unless fought is opened up to malacoforms.
"I've occasionally mucked around with it over the past... several decades."
Several decades???
I feel like Eowyn talking to Aragorn: "You _cannot_ be fifty!"
I think it would make a lot of sense for the neotects to evolve sign languages, considering their crests and number of limbs. Even if its not their primary modality, and/or it's accompanied by "speech" or smell or other modes, I think signing is a pretty sensible development for them.
and please, for the love ah gawd, give them a third rod and cone. If humans can develop blue eyes, alien spiders who focus on the beauty of different colors can develop more colors.
@@jinxsterr_Dispenser3741 considering humans can have conditions like tetrachromacy, which results in a fourth type of cone cell within the retinas, i don't think its too much of a stretch to say that some tects could end up as trichromats, though they'd likely end up being only a small part of the overall tect population.
Wouldn't difference in perception like that be a disadvantage, since males would attempt to make things that are colorful for them but boring "beige" to others, while females would see what to others looks like perfectly good patterns, as splotchy messes?
Well humans communicate a lot through “sign language” too. We just call it body language.
I'm talking about fully fledged languages that are signed, like ASL, LSF, or Kata Kolok. These have their own grammars and linguistic universals (for example in English I'd say "There's a bathroom down the hall on your left," and in ASL I would say something like "Bathroom where? Hallway-INDEX, far-go-left INDX bathroom.")
@1:26:28 the Children of Time series goes into different types of communication modalities as something of a theme throughout the series - just a great spec-evo story
You're being to hard on yourself re: bio determinism. We all kind of got that we were looking at this species's pre-history. It was a good episode.
But you want to beat yourself up, no one is going to object to a Part 16. It would be cool to see how these people start domesticating other species, and yea...development a 3D culture.
Yeah, part 15 was my favorite in the series, and the last part especially was extremely touching, linking the human journey towards mastering our base drives with the neotects. And I never got the sense that he was advocating biological determinism or any of the horrible ideologies humans have made from that either.
For the Malachoforms, I think eusociality makes sense because they're small, not because they're insect-like in any other way. Being smaller means territory is easier to come by since you can fit into a lot of spaces other organisms can't reach. They'd be forced to interract with other species capable of occupying the same spaces that they do, i.e. other malachoforms. If malachoforms are the most diverse clade in your world, strictly saying there can be no eusociality is neglecting cool, potentially very alien concepts.
For example. If the malachoforms are incredibly soft-bodied, you might imagine them transferring nutrients and environmental information through their skin to one another. I can imagine tens of thousands of little soft bodies cramming themselves into the nooks and crannies of a fallen tree's wood mass, consuming it and distributing the nutrients throughout the colony via diffusion through touch. Imagine prying open a piece of rotting alien wood and its initially held together by a fleshy mass of bodies that seems to be one, then they panic and scatter in multiple directions, seeking shelter independently like a little army of ameobas.
As for flight the only malachoforms that COULD fly would be extremely small ones. There are very small wasps and fruit flies on Earth that are so tiny they interact with air as though it were a liquid, swimming through it. Such microscopic malachoforms might form the basis for an aeroplankton clade that can be filter-fed upon by the other flying creatures.
Just some ideas of how you can bend your own rules but remain distinct from insects and arachnids.
I don't know about anyone else but I have always been itching to see a detailed overview of Oqolaawak history and culture
Lets go!!! Happy that you included me at 1:31:36
Looking forward to more diegetic Refugium content. One of my favourite things about your How to Make a Conlang series is that, unlike most other conlanging beginner's guides, if you watch through the series, you have a (simple) conlang by the end. That 'recipe' rather than 'research' style is incredibly engaging to a beginner. Edit: Your mentioning "Walking with Dinosaurs" delighted me; I watched that series over and over as a kid, and rewatched it recently. It's an old love.
honestly an alien biosphere episode on alien culture and showing how it is affected by much more than environmental and evolutionary determinism. seeing how the societies of the aliens change, would be really interesting to watch and think about.
Imagine how cool it would be an episode about "coral reefs"!!
I'm looking forward to your revamp of "How to make a language" because I've been messing around with ideas for conlang adjacent things for years now, and with my own worldbuilding project ramping up I still don't think I'd be fully ready to dive headfirst into all the information required for conlangs
33:08 You may want to have a look at _The Dark Eye._
It's a TTRPG system without classes, where you don't level up your character as a whole. Instead you gain what's effectively skill points, which you can buy or level all sorts of skills or attributes with. Typically those either require you to have pre-exisiting or adjacent knowledge (several levels in "tailoring" could allow you to start leveling "leather work") or find a teacher who already knows these skills (and has levels in "teaching") and is willing to train you in them. That makes creating/growing your character pretty organic and allows you to build them however you want, with your adventure shaping what you have access to and think fits your current trajectory best.
I also like that it's a rather low-magic system (even higher-tier magic users mostly rely on preparing spells well in advance) and has a pretty dynamic combat system with active parry/dodge reactions and where armor actually serves for damage reduction if you do get hit (as opposed to D&D's "I hit you, you hit me back" system). And power creep is rather low too, since base stats are very expensive and it's hard to raise your talents to ridiculous levels. With good decisions and a couple lucky rolls a starter character could hold their own against a veteran, at least for a little bit.
Our main group ended up with a master blacksmith who was also an enchanter on the side, creating all our gear; one who is essentially a paladin (but by roundabout means), and also a master cook who opened his own restaurant chain; the shorty who's buff enough to wield two-handed swords in each of her hands and doesn't care about much more than combat (and food/drink); the alchemist who provides us with medicine and other useful trinkets, but mostly stays out of combat; the comic relief who is unlucky af, but still manages to provide great overall support; the death-metal elf, who even after being effectively "ruined" by our crew still doesn't understand human society; and me, trained in dodging to the point I survived most boss battles without any damage, and also running a lucrative trading business combining each member's talents.
(Disclaimer: I only have experience in TDA 4/4.2, so can't say if the newest version holds up.)
Omg I am watching this when I get home later, I have been anticipating this
45:37 - there is a somewhat middle ground "Developer Dairy" kinda way. You work a week/month/undefined time on the language, and after the video is not showing the thinking process but showing the result of thinking process during that interval
1:24:42 Hey that's me! :D
I probably could have worded it better as I think I am repeating myself. I was kinda letting my thoughts type before I had it formulated correctly, but glad you got the point and answered.
bloody pigeon spotted in the wild ?? Haven't seen you in a while
WOAH, I wasn't expecting a 2-hour-long Q&A XD
1:44:15 some mustelids are close, like the least weasel and other small weasels.
Hip hip hooray for the next refugium video!!! Im excited for it
Thank you! Thank you for introducing me to Artifexian too!!!! :D
Same!
I love Bills work. Diegetic storytelling is a great idea and a good middle ground between heavily character driven stuff and just a dry catalog of things you worldbuilt.
I'm not too sure what the big deal is with male dispersal especially considering your feelings on biodeterminism. It's not like we never did it, whatever the usual primate model would be. Just look at a DNA map of Europe. (Oh no, I'm stuck in a neolithic farming community. Wha...what are you doing steppe-brother?)
I would expect the neotects to practice either/both depending on their specific culture.
This might just be because of the camera but great heavens that is a manly jaw
1:43:39 the closest niche i can think of is foxes that will dive through snow to get at the mice running under the snow - snow and dirt are very different, but one can see how they might be related
Your alien biospheres series is so amazing and inspiring. All the way back in 2019 when I started my work on my book series your discussion of body-plans inspired me in such a vivid way. My first book is going to come out next year (on a discord server) and the fantasy world I made is partly based on your series. I can't believe it's been 5 years.
The magic system of the refugium is so interesting
It's almost like the fears from the Magnus Archives!
2:01:48 I think a seed world would have a much better shot than even this hypothetical extinction event, especially considering how hardy tetrapods are. You'd still probably have lizards and mammals, maybe even birds, especially fossorial species. Sure, you could wipe out tuatara and crocodilians pretty easily, wiping out caecilians, salamanders and turtles is hard but not unreaasonably hard. But wiping out mammals, lizards, birds or frogs would be pretty much impossible, even if you go with the near-earth supernova idea, mammals and lizards stand out since there are many fossorial mammals and lizards.
see i have to disagree with his thesis overall. i think if a clade has the pre-requisites for more mega faunal size they will necessarily occasionally produce species of such size. Consider the earth coconut crab, despite not being well adapted for large size it was able to reach the very limits of it's body plan in only 4 million years of adaption. Any flying lofastomes that colonized an isolated island would i think be expected to reach at least coconut crab sizes after any significant adaptation.
@50:20 I don't choose a language in particular to make a language of, but I do choose about 10 to 18 which I draw various features from to create an amalgamation. My most "derivative" language is Old Paghade which is heavily influenced by Ancient Greek, especially in its syntax, but it has influence from a bunch of other languages like Irish, Icelandic and Hebrew
How did you comment seven days ago xd
1:42:10 aaaaah the tension is killing meeee!!!
Primeiro fan Brasileiro se apresentando!🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷
Segundo aqui
1:12:03 I am really glad this was clarified because ngl at first reading of it I thought you were arguing for a pro-eugenics view which seemed out of left field. And then I had to watch it again and was like "oh okay this is how we talk about early humans and their cultures which were lost to time and he's going to talk about the development of cultures and languages later"
I think your analysis is spot on! Thank you so much for your content. Just a suggestion here: in conlanging series, use one conlang for all levels, to give the viewer an idea of how going deeper can affect the basic language they already have. That way they can more easily determine how far they want to go.
Perhaps you could have a series of refugium videos that take a diegetic perspective and perhaps even briefly discuss the source of the story as well (such as describing the tome and its properties and perhaps where it was found as if it were a historical artifact) and also occasionally make refugium videos in your regular style, when its useful/important/interesting to have a more complete view of things
20:00 I like the idea of an acolyte trying to balance their essences so that they get a unique type of magic.
What essences and how much of each to create a magic capable of bringing the dead back to life?
I would LOVE to watch you learn blender
The alien biosphere series is nerdgasmic 😁🎉
I'd personally be much more interested in seeing your process over the finished showcase, but that's just me
nice pfp
Aan sounds like the "essence of neurodivergence". Or at least most of the attributes you describe are things I and many others I know associate with our conditions.
Might be a story opportunity to describe such conditions as "the Curse of Aan" or something - whether they're actually caused by influence from the essence or regular neurological issues. Maybe both are possible, but get lumped together because people don't know better...
So glad to hear optimism for the future, and to here of talks with Artifexian!
I personally would love it if Season 2 of Conlang Case Study were done with an entirely new language. What I struggle with the most, and I imagine it is the same for other conlangers, is how to convert a nebulous concept into an actual fleshed-out language, and watching your process for the first episodes of Taqva-miir was incredibly helpful.
Revamping your pre-existing conlangs would also be interesting to watch, but I think it would miss out on the "how did we even get here in the first place" aspect.
Nice episode
Fascinating
8:32 CAT SPOTTED WE MUST SEE THE CAT
I think that was just his finger
@@mromega335cat named finger:
Oh fuck you're actually right! 😅@@mromega335
Alien Biospheres has been such a huge inspiration and enjoyable thought experiment. In other worldbuilding projects, theyve felt kinda hollow, cause some creators said things like "this animal need to be good at digging and have a good, solid stance, so lets give it six legs." To my knowledge, no other project has the level of cohesion yours does
Here in 1 minute, so excited to watch!
I am super hyped for a review of "the future is wild", I love that serie as a kind and even bought the book.
I love the conlang showcase videos! I would love that for other languages.
Tibetan wolfes do almost live exclusively on pika which are underground prey!
I had actually discussed the name mohayzu on r/biblaridion, hypothesizing that it was a proto oqolaawak word that hadn’t yet undergone harmony. I guessed the modern for was mowayzo, sad to see I wasn’t correct but happy to see I was on the right track 😂
I for one did understand what you were getting at with regards to the Neotechs. Like with humans, the Neotech's long term survival depends on overcoming instinctual lag.
Thank you for answering my question! It's always something I wondered about when I see spec evo projects online so it's always cool to get the creators opinion on the matter. When I design aliens or just creatures in general that aren't near the former end of the spectrum like in some of my projects I always try to marry the two ends of it. Making creatures that are goofy (Like a giant candy gummy sandworm) but giving them biological details that make sense within the rules of the world.
I’m looking forward to your new approach on the how to make a Conlang series. I found your videos on accident a few months ago and have been trying to understand linguistics since.
Also, The Refugium is absolutely brilliant and if you ever release a campaign book on that for DnD that would be awesome and I’d buy it in a heartbeat.
I also grew up watching walking with dinosaurs and the other walking with series, it’s always fun to see how so many other people were inspired by the same documentary.
If a 2 hour Q&A is the result of being selective, then i think describing it even as a "deluge" of questions might be underselling it
5:30 - I love the World Billing segment of the Artifexian podcast, so I'm definitely look forward to that, and if you feel more comfortable presenting a story in that format than prose, that might work around the discomfort you express if it's the sort of story that could work from diaries, letters, and the like. Something similar to Epistolary novels. But, obviously, not all stories can work that way.
24:40 - Fully agree with a preference on soft magic to hard magic. Hard magic rarely feels magical to me (Though certainly is needed for some specific things - Mystery stories in fantasy settings, if they have magic at all it needs to be hard; games where players get to access magic usually need hard magic, or at least there needs to be a subset of magic that's hard for players to interface with) - I'd go with 'a technology' rather than 'superpowers' as what hard magic often winds up feeling like to me, however.
1:46:00 - And the person making that very quick assessment doesn't even need to be particularly well versed on evolutionary biology to spot it, even as a "This feels... Off..." vibe which is a distracting blemish on something the person is enjoying, or a nitpick they will never let go of if it's something they're otherwise not enjoying, even if they know full well that's not what they actually disliked about the work.
Awesome news Bib!
The refugium is what inspired me to make a weirder fantasy world where blood magic is often used in healing and other such stuff.
i was not expecting david tennant with matt mercers chin would be the greatest world builder on youtube (two very handsome men btw)
1:09:00 Right on to call out evolutionary psychological babble!
Thousand yard stare moment
With the whole class thing this is why I love the Wildsea's character creation because it's classes are restrictive in a way that I find really fun (but also optional, you can design your character outside of the class system, I just really love the class based character creation).
In the Wildsea you get the same amount and types of abilities from your class as you do your bloodline (species/race) and origin (background). This mechanically means you essentially have 3 classes and you can pick any 3 and they won't overlap with each other unless you choose to have them with further customization.
Part of this further customization is that each thing you choose you get 2 aspects from (which can be from the list provided but you and your GM can work out ones not on the list if you have an idea) each that relate to what they are. These aspects can include traits, things about your body that are different in some way (for example as an Ektus, a cactus person, might take a trait where their spines are more numerous and sharper and cause people who attack them in melee to take damage) or skills you've learned, gear, which includes weapons as well as any other 'item' that the game doesn't classify as salvage, or companions, essentially familiars. And every class, bloodline, and origin has access to all of these aspects (though maybe not all classes have access to companions though, can't remember).
This allows there to be non combat oriented classes because you can pick up as many combat skills as you need (which might not be many) from your origin or bloodline instead. So you get fun classes like the Char, a ship's cook, Horizoneers, traveling scholars, Navigators, Surgeons, Wordbearers, couriers, or the Steep, people who steep tea that they use to connect to the spiritual world.
This also means that even if you choose a combat oriented class like the Corsair, a close quarters expert who studies combat like an art, you might still not choose any aspects that directly relate to sword fighting, like a sword, because you chose a sword from your origin instead. You might then pick for example the trait "Scars that tell stories" which lets you get 'whispers' (living ideas that are a resource in the game, they can only exist in one mind at a time, passed from person to person via whispers) when you take damage, or a hooded crow companion. Both of these things might make more sense for your character and what being a corsair means to them. I also like the class system in the game because it's meant to be an explanation of what your character does on the ship which makes more sense to say "oh they're the navigator and they're the engineer" and so on.
As another world builder I would find a lot of utility in a video on your process and productivity tips/guide/discussion.
I would LOVE a "learn along with me" for Blendr!
Man now I wanna watch the alien biospheres all over again…
And refugium, too, while I’m at it.
I guess I have my entire next week planned
please more conlang case studies they help me so much
I would ADORE review content of spec bio history like after man. Definitely not because after man was my introduction to spec evo
So any chance we could get our hands on your homebrew system before you spent another decade years refining it?
Heyyy my question was featured! Nice!
I really do think that alien biospheres has been the best spec evo project yet
I'd love for there to be an episode about potential culture shocks between neotects and humans. I agree it shouldn't be canon but I bet it would be a very interesting episode nonetheless.
scent-based communication doesnt feel very feasible to me tbh, along with the problems of non existent word order and consciously emitting scents, i just cant imagine such a language could be transmitted very quickly like spoken language, i think it makes much more sense for their languages to be spoken or signed, and scent based communication is more analogous to non verbal communication that humans do like facial expressions
Personally, I do believe that things like xenophobia is human instinct. However, I consider something as sapient as when it can go against it's instincts (in normal situations). And so humans can go against their xenophobic nature and therefore it should not be allowed and should actively be thrown away, which is not hard due to us being sapient
Sapience is not mastery of the mind, it's the ability to learn behaviors and to create new ones for yourself. Key word being learn, because you still have to endure the process of self-improvement, you don't get to just flip a switch via sheer willpower and suddenly throw out your instincts.
The difficulty with xenophobia being standard within an entire culture is that you have to expect every individual to do this, often with no motivation for it.
More often than not a xenophobe would rather create an excuse to justify his beliefs, which is the same as every other "you're good already, society is wrong if it tells you to change" movement, like "healthy at any size".
a two-hour video? oh we'll be SAT
Ready to binge, aw yeah i see refugium in the timestamps too
2 hour biblaridion yap I'm so down ❤️
1:48:00 I would definitely be interested in a watch me learn Blender series
1:42:07 this made your comments about the series only representing a fraction of life on Mira finally sink in. A whole seperate phylum, outside the polypods and anthostoms? I am very very excited to learn more about them.
The comment on middle-earth clones is so relatable haha
I’m so glad you like After Man. The Dougal Dixon books are some of my favourites I own. I found After Man in my Grandads house and asked if I could take it home to have a look. I have never given it back (don’t worry l, I’m not a thief) and I have loved it ever since and have bought a few more. They are jolly expensive though
1:46:25 when you really break it down, a lot of Earth species look similar and adhere closely to body plans, especially vertebrates. As someone who works with birds, they pretty much all have the same basic shape!
Also it would be cool to see you analyze the future is wild, as well as see you learn Blender!
Your system sounds very similar to GURPS, if you've never read up on it could provide some very interesting ideas to you
broke: Malacoformes are insects
woke: Malacoformes are fruibt gumi
I so agree with your gripes with dnd and I also made my own system which I built specifically for my friend group
Look, mom! I'm in a Biblaridion video!!! 46:43
8:44 man I said that to my psychiatrist and as a result I'm typing this from within a looney bin
The style and diversity of the Refugium actually reminds me of another worldbuilding project: Almea, by Mark Rosenfelder
Have you seen it, and if so, was it an inspiration?
It would be fun if at the end of series, in early space age, planet and system got invaded by human, like one digital posthuman in relativistic bullet sized ship from Kardashev 2.3 civilization with matter assembler.
Convening planetary system to matrioshka brain even with ultra advanced automation wouldn’t be fast process. In that case Neotectons would have opportunity for diplomacy or preemptive strike.
:D
I really appreciate your discussions of your regrets vis. a vis. the explication of the biological roots of social structures. One thing that I would add to that is that you talk about evolutionary psychology as something that has historically been used to support dangerous pseudoscience. This is certainly true, though I think you overstate the case somewhat as modern evolutionary psychology is fairly distinct from classical social darwinism even it shares common origins, but I think its also important to note that the field is largely pseudoscientific in its basis rather than just in how it is "misused." It is not only effectively unfalsifiable, rendering its status as a science as opposed to just a series of just-so stories suspect, and almost completely detached from actual anthropoligical and paleoarchaeological research into the so-called EEA, being based more on victorian era fantasies about the "state of nature" than actual research into paleolithic societies or extant hunter gatherers (though the projection of the latter into the past has a lot of problems, most clearly in the fact that hunter gatherers today are forced onto marginal land that agriculturalists don't want to/can't use, rather than having access to the land that most suits non-agricultural human subsistence).
if you ever ever dever feel like it years down an aliens biosphere revise would be amazing, expecially if you let yourself be more creative with it, i would love to see you learn blender
On the diagetic vs accuracy debate, you could present it as a scholar fact checking an older work, like the main body is the past diary or book but someone has come in and corrected things
A refugium ttrpg sound super fun and really refreshing, but, I'm very curious as to how an alien biospheres ttrpg would look.
If this idea is already in the video and I get to it 5 minutes after posting this I will scream.
Echoing the interest others have expressed in more Refugium content--that setting really captured my imagination and I'd love to see more of it.
Speaking of venomous retractable claws, the only example I can think of on Earth would be the platypus, since male platypi have venomous spurs on their back legs.
Also, I too loved Walking with Dinosaurs (and The Future is Wild). That series, alongside Jurassic Park, were instrumental in the development of the clade we refer to as "dinosaur kids". I'm not nearly as into dinos as I used to be as a kid, but I still think they're neat, whether they're scaly gribblers or feathered beasties. I'm the same way about Shamblers from Quake, since I believe they're cool and freaky whether they're fuzzy, or leathery, or made of good cream cheese like Aiken Drum.
I would love to see a review of other spec bio projects like The Future is Wild
12:32 sounds very Foundationesque, nice
35:34 Akshually *pushes up nerd glasses* In Dragon Magazine 307 they actually stated a couple of SoIF characters including Tyrion. He's a human aristocrat (a npc class) 6 and fighter 5.
What you’re describing is pretty close to a new TTRPG that was just kickstarted called Utopia and it’s really customizable to the characters and setting