[post in this thread] one-sentence setting/world/culture idea bank

[Lmns Crn]

[ooc]Just a few sparse phrases to get inspiration juices flowing. Feel free to add your own! (No more than one brief sentence or phrase, please.)[/ooc]

Mystics split souls to become immortal.

Desert wanderers rely on water-magic to survive.

After death of human inhabitants, station run by robots controlled by station's AI.

Badlands bandits on motorbikes raid cool valley villages.

Enchanted forest's secret dojo trains golems in spiritual combat.

A tower of bone atop a cliff of glass.

World's inhabitants have no physical forms; sentient electricity.

Snakes draped on jungle trees all share the same genius hive-mind.

[LordVreeg]

Ancient Magic has a wildly differnt source than moden magic, unknown to the current inhabitants.

A disaster melted the icecaps, covering 90% of the land, leaving scattered settlements

[Mason]

Time traveling AI moves space/time around its self rather than its self through space time.

Super powerful wizard dies taking all magic in existence with him.

The river Styx overflows into the mortal realm.
 
The world is cylindrical in shape.

Cicada like creatures travel through the astral planes by shedding skin

Humans share a common ancestor with reptiles instead of teh monkey

Ancient ritual magic site is marked by two enormous stone hands sticking out of the ground in supplication

Windmill city abandoned due to lack of wind

A persons soul escapes through the mouth at time of death, immortal-mages sew their mouths shut

Dragons win.

[Ghostman]

A ritual transforms all man-made buildings into living beings capable of slow but reliable locomotion.

Goblin gadgeteer gangsters guarding glittering golden globules.

A mystical bazaar where people gather to barter and swap their memories.

Come summer, the men rule the land; come winter, the women rule.

[Hibou]

I like a bunch of these. Mind if I adopt some?

[Seraph]

Dragon hearts continue to pulse with magical power after death, allowing mages to use them to power arcane devices.

A world where there are no humans, only elves.

A city ruled by priestesses of the eternal flame who tend a web of fire that links the hearth of every house to their temple at the center of the city.

Seafaring nomads link up their ships into a moving waterborne city.

[Hibou]

In a world where mages require foci for particular kinds of spells, they gradually take on the physical characteristics of the foci they wield.

Dragons that are smaller, faster creatures that can effectively hunt in packs through more arcane and ancient forests.

Violent storms (possibly augmented by magic) that cause the realms of the dead and the living to merge for a certain period.

The sun can be and has previously been extinguished by the actions of great warriors and wizards, which brings on a demonic and/or undead apocalypse as great rifts in reality open up in the lost and unknown parts of the world.

A culture where basic magic is known by many people, and it is considered an act of friendship and allegiance to cast a protection- or utility-type spell on those you interact with.

A floating city overcome by giant clockwork golems that were made too intelligent by their creators, and now hunt the scattered and weakened people who are trapped on the island with them.

EDIT: Sorry if some are a bit long. I'm tempted to shorten them.

[Steerpike]

A mysterious virus transforms all pre-pubescent children into ravening cannibals but spares adults.

A mysterious virus transforms all adults into ravening cannibals but spares children (who become susceptible at adolescence).

A mysterious virus transforms all animals into ravening man-eaters but spares humans.

A mysterious virus causes incurable, global insomnia.

A mysterious virus causes incurable, global muteness.

A mysterious virus causes incurable, global euphoria.

A panacea is developed that cures all known diseases overnight, with potentially disastrous consequences for the world population.

A city of elementals is organized according to a brutal caste structure.

Lucifer wins the War in Heaven.

Kingdom ruled by sentient carnivorous plants.

Fascist werewolves fight vampire communists (or reverse to taste)

Interplanetary freak-show tours the galactic frontier.

Orc/goblin warlords rule known world; all other races extinct, enslaved, or driven underground.

North America pulls an Atlantis and sinks into the sea, but the rest of the world remains high and dry.

Condemned souls in Hell revolt against demonic overlords, establishing a Republic of the Damned (this one might be my favourite...).

Mummified pharaoh accidentally resurrected by European grave-robbers establishes a new empire at the beginning of the nineteenth-century.

Alternate history in which the Commonwealth of England endured.

Long-extinct human race is revivified in alien theme park/zoo/nature preserve.

Alien amazons kidnap all male humans.

[Seraph]

Fascist werewolves fight vampire communists.

Given the whole "wolves operate in packs" thing, I'd have expected these roles to be reversed.

Condemned souls in Hell revolt against demonic overlords, establishing a Republic of the Damned (this one might be my favourite...).

That is indeed pretty awesome.

[Weave]

After death of human inhabitants, station run by robots controlled by station's AI.

Ever played Machinarium?

Magic, reliant on the mysticism and myth that powers it, is disappearing as scientific knowledge tries to explain it.

Dwarfs, elves, gnomes, orcs, etc., are all the result of a galactic object slamming into the planet and mutating the human gene.

The world lacks a moon; winds rip across the land, tides are infrequent but immense, and only the massive forests of sky-scraper tall trees rooted to the earth shelter civilization from the elements.

Everyone is capable of magic, though magic corrupts both physically and mentally with each use - those few who are born incapable of magic are deemed the most pure and revered beings.

The world is contained within the leviathan proportions of a great, galactic being of immeasurable size.

Fishermen leave the waters to fish for the stars in great, airborne ships.

Magic is given by bargaining with an otherworldly being; many barter in immaterial currencies, such as years, luck, faith, and memory.

[Ghostman]

Magic, reliant on the mysticism and myth that powers it, is disappearing as scientific knowledge tries to explain it.

This is pretty close to the premise of Mage: the Ascension.


Summoning magics summon people rather than monsters - anyone may at any moment be randomly selected by a spell to be spirited away and forced to fight on behalf of some sorcerer.

[Weave]

The world is a post apocalyptic waste where magicians wield staffs reminiscent of radio antennae to siphon off what little "broadcasted" magic is left from the world.

[Seraph]

Halflings with monstrous spider mounts are at war with a bugbear Philosopher King.

Sewage and filth spill into the streets when the golems made to keep the sewers clean acquire intelligence, and have an existential crisis.

A man calling himself "The Lord of the Dance" comes into town, and several people find themselves compelled to dance, forever, and not even death can stop them.

[Nomadic]

Sentient foodstuffs long to return to their roots, masquerade as the plants and animals of their origin

Man who believes he is a tree presses discrimination charges against local druid for refusing to protect him from invisible lumberjacks

The bear knows all

The war of the sides plagues the duchy, causing the left side of things to fight with the right side of things.

[Seraph]

The mage guild, which regulates arcane power by forcing wizards to come and pay a fee to "fill up" on magic resent the idealistic spellcaster who builds a Tesla Coil-like device that broadcasts magical power to all casters in a 20 mile radius free-of-charge.

A land that determines status by who has the biggest and strongest castle, occupying its population with constant building, destroying, conquering, and rebuilding, as everyone literally tries to steal each other's homes.

A land where status is determined by generosity, such that the poorest of the poor are chosen to rule, only for them to abdicate their rule to somebody else immediately, to prove how fit they are to rule.

A land elects its rulers based on who least wants to rule.

The people of a small kingdom riot when the king announces he is relinquishing his right to the "first night" with their wives.