The Atlas Loom

Apr 02 2024 11 ep. 71 mins 54
The Atlas Loom Podcast artwork

The Atlas Loom has concluded. You can now find our bonus content for free on YouTube!

An exploration of worldbuilding for tabletop and beyond.

Join Endeavorance and Diana Fay (DianaOfTheRose) as they discuss the finer points of weaving worlds for tabletop campaigns, narrative fiction, or even just for the fun of it. They may also discuss a few off topic issues. Only the most pressing stuff, of course.

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The Voice in our Heads

Apr 02 2024 93 mins  
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 j

Diana Hates Factions

Mar 19 2024 75 mins  
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, o

Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites

Mar 05 2024 87 mins  
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

Player Characters & Psychotherapy (ft. ohheyitsgina_)

Feb 20 2024 94 mins  
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.T

Necessary Evil

Feb 06 2024 94 mins  
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 episodeWe (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 st

Biblically Accurate Spooky

Jan 23 2024 77 mins  
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.

Tone, Vibes & Backpacks

Jan 09 2024 60 mins  
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 manip

Stealing For Fun (But Not Profit)

Dec 26 2023 74 mins  
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 whe

A World Full of Willies

Dec 12 2023 56 mins  
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 t

How to Attack and Dethrone Gods

Nov 28 2023 63 mins  
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