The Atlas Loom

You know how they look, you know who they are, but how do they sound?

In today's episode of The Atlas Loom, Dev and Diana are joined by the wonderful Sebastian Humphreys (aka HowToDoVoices) to discuss, well, how to do voices.

But also so much more! How to approach doing a voice if you're nervous, or even how to better represent your character nonverbally.

A huge thank-you to Seb for joining us on this episode. It is mandatory that you follow his incredible work on his TikTok account, @HowToDoVoices.

Factions! Those pesky organizations that kinda sorta usually exist. Be them governments, cults, shadowy groups, religions, a gang of goobers or just the local sports fans, factions are a way to add rivalries, history and more to your world.

Unless you are Diana, in which case, factions suck, apparently.

Join Dev in excitedly discussing the joys of designing factions for your world, or join Diana in begrudgingly doing the same.

Check out our brand new merch store!

Do you know what worlds tend to have in them? Creatures. Critters. Lil' guys. Loads of 'em.

Today, Dev and Diana talk about how you can design animals and monsters that fit into the ecosystems of your world, influence the culture of the people around them, or maybe cause some chaos by merely existing.

Diana has a literal degree in this field. Dev has a very good dog. That put's both of our hosts on pretty equal footing for this episode.

Send us a wish! If you have a question you'd like us to feature on the podcast, send an email to [email protected]

Atlas Loom merch available now! Check out the Atlas Loom collection on Dev's new merch store! Snag a cozy blanket to help cozy up while worldweaving!

So you have a world and a story and that's all well and good. Time to sit down at the table and...

Uh. Wait, we're missing something. Oh! The players. And their characters. That does seem important, huh?

On today's episode of The Atlas Loom, the incredible Gina (@ohheyitsgina_) joins Dev and Diana to talk about how to make incredible player characters to explore the worlds we build.

To see more of Gina's work, check out her stuff here: https://beacons.ai/ohheyitsgina_

The biggest. The baddest. The evilest guys. Today, Endeavorance and Diana dive into Big Bad Evil Guys (BBEGs): how to design them, how to portray them, how to hype them up, and how to handle their downfall.

Spoiler warnings for this episode

We (read: Dev) also talk a lot about some examples of good and bad BBEGs in popular media. So. To that end, spoiler warnings for the following stuff:

• Undertale
• Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul
• Avatar: The Last Airbender / Legend of Korra
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
• ...Starfox 64? Can that be spoiled?

Really though, if you've not consumed the above media by now, for shame (but also go play/watch them so we can get hype about stuff together, okay thanks)

The time has finally come to breach Diana's favorite subject: Horror. How can you crank the spooky factor to 11 in your world, story, or campaign? How can you depict something innately terrifying, or leave your heroes to navigate mind-bending horrors?

In today's episode, Diana answers all of your questions. And Dev... well, Dev tries his best. We love him for that.

When building your world, you often need to walk a difficult line of maintaining a given tone, especially when weaving stories that seek to elicit emotional responses from the player, reader or whoever you may be trying to pull at the heartstrings of.

In today's episode, Dev and Diana talk through selecting, designing and conveying the tone and vibes of your world, how you can manipulate them over time, and how you can work within and outside of the bounds set by your world's tone.

Sometimes you just need to take some inspiration from another place and bring it into your world. And sometimes, you just like something so much that you take it and jam it into your world. Now, generally it's cool and good to take inspiration and run with it, but in today's episode, Dev and Diana walk through the best ways to take inspiration, make it your own, and give credit where credit is due.

"Yoink" stuff for fun. But don't plagiarize. Please. Like for realsies. Okay cool.

Having NPCs in your world is pretty unavoidable. And, in most cases, you'll need to have a lot of them. Luckily, we're here to help. In this episode of the Atlas Loom, Dev and Diana walk you through how to flesh out powerfully memorable NPCs that make the world feel real. And, on the flip side, how to convincingly make up some random dude on the spot and make it seem like you had them perfectly prepared the whole time. Which we've all had to do way more times than we'd like.

Worldbuilding is a daunting task, but we find it easiest to start all the way at the top. Join Endeavorance and Diana for the first-ever episode of the Atlas Loom, where we'll break down all the ways in which you can best build out a pantheon of deities and define exactly what role they have in your games. How are the gods born? How are they killed? And most of all, what influence do they have on the world? Plus, we learn the term "apotheosis". Excellent vocab word.