Artemis Games - Worldbuilding - That's as Good a Theory as Any
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Artemis Games - Worldbuilding - That's as Good a Theory as Any
@artemisgamesuk.bsky.social
Queer Disabled Game Designers and Worldbuilders from Manchester, UK | Ste: He/Him | Amy: She/Her | Ali: They/Them | Loz: He/Him

Current Channel Manager: Ste

https://castbox.fm/channel/That's-as-Good-a-Theory-as-Any-id6223524?
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New episode of That's as Good a Theory as Any #worldbuilding podcast - about how to make Magic feel more Magical, which may help you with #magicbuilding for your own writing or gming.

With special guest Paolo of the Lost Pages, who regularly writes weird magic.

#ttrpg #writing #fantasy #self-promo
Chilli Blossoms are Explosive - Making Magic Magical
That's as Good a Theory as Any · Episode
open.spotify.com
#JanuaryWorldbuilders
Gender Roles aren't really a thing in Matlaktlome. Gender exists, because the Kyma are a mostly-human fantasy race and there are some humans too, but it isn't considered to decide or limit your social role.
Except for the Tetocani, where the genders: Queen, Prince and Myrmidon🧵
Good day, #JanuaryWorldbuilders. This week I'm asking q's about the fictional societies in our fantasy/sci-fi worlds. If you write about many societies, pick one you think has an interesting answer, or the MC's society. How are gender roles handled in this world?
January 10, 2026 at 8:43 PM
#FreeFantasyArt day 17
Another Saturday means another example of modifying art released into the creative commons. But first, lets get to the artist on whose work I have attempted to build. This time, it's an artist named Deadpoolrus who created a sci-fi Kaiju setting - with some very fantasy art.🧵
January 10, 2026 at 8:19 PM
#JanuaryWorldbuilders
We have four mains at the moment - One very used to high society, having been a sacrifice to a war god and therefore held in honor, another from low society, the third a rainforest dweller with no social status, and the fourth an explorer from afar still finding their place.
#JanuaryWorldbuilders, tell me about your MC's (or another important character if you don't do MCs) role in society. Are they upper or lower class? What job/tasks do they do as part of this society? Are they even a member of a society?
January 10, 2026 at 12:32 AM
#FreeFantasyArt
While browsing Itch.io, I came across another collection that points to some of the best available free resources on the site.
ratgrrrl-games.itch.io/human-creati...
RatGrrrl has put a lot of effort into collecting a huge number of creative works, for which I thank them.
Human Creations for Creative Humans by RatGrrrl Games
A Curated Resource for Creative Humans
ratgrrrl-games.itch.io
January 10, 2026 at 12:08 AM
#JanuaryWorldbuilders
Social classes in Matlaktlome vary a lot, depending on what culture you're looking at.
Many in the region don't even think of them - within the rainforest itself there are many groups that just live their lives as equals, with no private property or non-descriptive titles.🧵
Welcome to the second week of #JanuaryWorldbuilders! The theme of this one is SOCIETY. Again, relatively broad for now. We'll delve into more weeds later in the year. Today's Q: Talk about social classes. How are they handled? Do they have hierarchies? Nobles and commoners? Or is it classless?
January 9, 2026 at 1:34 PM
#FreeFantasyArt
Today I'm drawing on another Itch.io source, and as is common over there it has a unique license. So I'd like to clarify my rules are for what's sufficiently free to mention here. You must be:
1) Free to edit the images.
2) Able to use them in your own commercial writing/games🧵
Download the latest indie games
itch.io is a simple way to find, download and distribute indie games online. Whether you're a developer looking to upload your game or just someone looking for something new to play itch.io has you co...
Itch.io
January 8, 2026 at 11:25 PM
#JanuaryWorldbuilders
Matlaktlome is the product of two pushes - Firstly, a fascination with the culture and mythology of the south american continent, and secondly playing in 13th Age's Dragon Empire setting and wondering just what was off the edges of the map - and deciding to expand it southward
Good morning #JanuaryWorldbuilders! A very broad question that I have no doubt is difficult to answer: What was YOUR beginning of worldbuilding? What was your inspiration? Your initial spark? Another work of fiction? Boredom? A powerful imagination seeking an outlet?
January 7, 2026 at 11:51 PM
#FreeFantasyArt Day 14
Two weeks into this and I'm reaching towards stranger pastures, because I want to put up repeating myself as much as possible. This one is particularly strange, but equally striking. Made for the #CreativeCommons horror project, the SCP Foundation Wiki scp-wiki.wikidot.com
SunnyClockwork's Artwork Hub - SCP Foundation
The SCP Foundation's 'top-secret' archives, declassified for your enjoyment.
scp-wiki.wikidot.com
January 7, 2026 at 11:31 PM
#FreeFantasyArt
Today it's a type of fantasy monster that I like, but I know isn't to everyone's tastes: Artistic interpretations of ancient animals!

Accurate or inaccurate, they're definitely not things people will have actually encountered, and that's enough for me to count T-Rex as fantasy.🧵
January 6, 2026 at 11:07 PM
#JanuaryWorldbuilders
The player characters have several links to The Bloodstained Priest, and therefore access to the powers of the gods - as long as they are prepared to make the proper sacrifice to allow the gods into the world.
#JanuaryWorldbuilders Opposite of yesterday's prompt! What's something in your worldbuilding that helps your MC (or another important character)? Do they have useful magic? A helpful critter companion? Are their clothes or weapons useful for getting around in their world?
January 6, 2026 at 2:48 PM
#JanuaryWorldbuilders
The biggest problem for the current group in Matlaktlome is the long arms of The Rat King, a psychic gestalt entity composed of tailed Kyma (aka Shifters, Nagual or Beastfolk) who tie their tails together to link their minds.🧵
Hey there, #JanuaryWorldbuilders! We're introducing our worlds this week. Tell me about some aspect of your worldbuilding which is a problem for your characters. Is their world infested with monsters? A dystopian government? Or maybe you created a bug that bites them in their sleep?
January 6, 2026 at 2:44 PM
#FreeFantasyArt day 12
This is one of those cases where one source contains a huge variety of potential - 208 images, all commissioned by Chamomile Has Games for their game Dark Lord.

chamomilehasgames.itch.io/chamomile-ha...
www.drivethrurpg.com/product/3479...
Dark Lord - ChamomileHasAdventures | Dark Lord | DriveThruRPG
In Dark Lord, you play as the Big Bad Evil Guy, leading your minions into battle against the forces of light, and stopping at nothing to conquer the world! Players in Dark Lord each play an evil overl...
www.drivethrurpg.com
January 6, 2026 at 12:15 AM
#FreeFantasyArt
My computer crashed halfway through writing this one, so - here, have some NPCs from a Deviantart Pokémon project.
First a Blacksmith
Category: Portrait (full body)
Artist: Anarlarendil
Site: www.amrasanarion.com
Source: www.deviantart.com/anarlaurendi...
License: CC-BY-SA 3.0
January 4, 2026 at 11:58 PM
#JanuaryWorldbuilders Everything west of the Mountain Wall is terrifying. The setting of Matlaktlome exists around the river and in the vast forest between the mountains and the sea to the east.
Beyond the mountains is a great desert - inhospitable, and therefore unguarded against outside powers.🧵
#JanuaryWorldbuilders, good morning! In the same vein as yesterday's question, what's something terrifying or scary in your world? Do you have any haunted places? Desolate, lonely places? Any site where something dreadful happened?
January 4, 2026 at 10:56 PM
#FreeFantasyArt Today we're going to be going to a source that I've actually messed up with a few years - there may be a couple of pieces of mind that I need to release under GPL v2 because I used something that I didn't realise was under that license: Battle for Wesnoth. 🧵 www.wesnoth.org
Making sure you're not a bot!
www.wesnoth.org
January 4, 2026 at 12:08 AM
#JanuaryWorldbuilders

The City/Altepetl is a wonder of the world, an artificial mountain of onyx and granite that sits in the middle of the great river. While living within makes it easy to forget the wonder, those who live around it, or fish in its waters, are constantly reminded of its grandeur.
#JanuaryWorldbuilders For me, one of the most enjoyable things about worldbuilding is coming up with grand ideas: scenery, a building, a tree, a planet, anything you consider big, beautiful, imposing, grand, majestic... pick your synonym. Tell me about it
January 3, 2026 at 9:04 PM
#JanuaryWorldbuilders

The Tetocani, the insectoid race invading Matlaktlome, just arrived one day on an island off the coast. No-one knows why or how, though there is speculation. Several theories will be presented - travel from a distant land, hibernation, a reality fragment from a past world.🧵
#JanuaryWorldbuilders, good day! In worldbuilding, sometimes we get deep into figuring out how things work because we want to explain it to the reader. Today, I ask you for the opposite: what is something that you intend to leave mysterious? What doesn't get explained?
January 2, 2026 at 10:40 PM
Today's #FreeFantasyArt is a new find for me, so I'm gonna talk a lot about how I found it in the third of this thread. First though the #art:
Category: Creature
Artist: Juan Romera
Artist's Site: juanromera.com/en/portfolio...
Source: www.flickr.com/photos/15646...
License: CC-BY 2.0
January 2, 2026 at 10:28 PM
This is the second half of my original #freefantasyart christmas post. Unfortunately I made an attribution error on one of the images in the middle of it (right project, wrong artist name) so had to take that down, and that broke the thread - so reposting it so people can follow.
Category: Character Art [Full Body]
Artist: Markeus1989 AKA IronThunder
Source: opengameart.org/content/egyp...
License: CC-BY 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/...
Artist's Site: N/A
Can't find any further information on the artist - they seem to no longer use either name.
January 2, 2026 at 7:11 PM
#FreeFantasyArt
So today I've been at this for a week, and have finally reached the day I intended to start on - and I want to announce something. From now on, every saturday will include something that I am adding to the corpus of free art. This will be an edit, as I still can't draw.🧵
January 1, 2026 at 8:48 PM
#JanuaryWorldbuilders
I'm Ste, part of Artemis Games, and I'm currently undergoing treatment for my ADHD that will hopefully help me focus on one project for a while.
With that in mind, I'm working on Matlaktlome, a South and Meso-american themed region for use in TTRPGs, especially #13thAge.🧵
Welcome to a new year of worldbuilding! Let's kick off this year with Day 1 of #JanuaryWorldbuilders in which I ask you: tell me about yourself and the world(s) you're building. Just a general overviews. We'll get into the weeds throughout the year
January 1, 2026 at 3:45 PM
I'm starting to run low on places I know to look for #FreeFantasyArt - but I have at least a couple of days worth left. Technically this is the second source I'm linking from GitHub, but I don't think it's fair to count "GitHub" as a whole as a source - I don't know of any way to search it usefully🧵
December 31, 2025 at 10:44 PM
As I indicated yesterday, today's #FreeFantasyArt batch is coming via DriveThruRPG.
Before I get into the actual drop for today though, I'd like to talk about the different types of Free you'll find on there.

DriveThruRPG has a huge amount of Stock Art that's got unique, non-standard, licenses🧵
December 30, 2025 at 10:08 PM
@lluisabadias.bsky.social A couple of years back you shared an art pack for TTRPGs over on Twitter - I came across it through someone who'd used the art. The link is now dead - did you take it down intentionally or is that an error?

Either way, thanks for making cool art :-)
December 30, 2025 at 10:59 AM
#FreeFantasyArt
Today's links come from a treasure trove of #art that I found for the first time... today.

See, I intended to post something from DriveThruRPG - it's a good source, and I'll get around to talking about it - but one of the things there drew on a source I didn't know: Sketchfab.🧵
December 29, 2025 at 11:31 PM