Contributor Guidelines

From Roses, Tulips, & Liberty

Please do familiarize yourself with our contributor guidelines below.

RTL Worldbuilding Philosophy

In RTL, we have certain approaches and principles when it comes to lore-building.

  1. History is not predetermined. With a point of divergence in the mid-17th century, there would have been an uncountable number of factors that changed in this alternate timeline. RTL aims to create a wholly new timeline with its own set of events, figures, and history. This means:
    • People born past the point of divergence might not even exist.
    • Some country borders from OTL may not even appear in TTL, as some were created out of certain circumstances specific to OTL.
    • Analogues from OTL events are generally fine, but not exact replicas.
    • Flags are generally changed from OTL as they are the result of specific ideas from specific OTL people. Inspiration from OTL flags are fine, though.
  2. Worldbuilding must be holistic. Lore must fit in with the larger world-narrative. It must not be thought of as independent of other pieces of lore.
  3. Have fun, and no rush! RTL lore building is centered on friendly discussion, and isn't something that is rushed. The RTL Contributor team has members from different time zones and schedules, and several have busy jobs, so we generally work and chat at one's own pace.

Worldbuilding Format

Contributing new ideas

Ideas get discussed on a dedicated Discord server for RTL. We discuss about it's points, what value they may add to the whole timeline, and what the implications of these new ideas would be on the rest of the lore (see Worldbuilding Philosophy #2). Once there is a consensus, and/or the timeline creator explicitly accepts the idea, it will be considered canon and can be put on the wiki.

Chronological worldbuilding and minimizing inconsistencies

To minimize inconsistencies, we work chronologically. We don't get a single region too far ahead into the timeline than the others. This ensures that each piece of the lore fits in with the rest of the parts. In RTL, it's not unusual for the timeline to progress slowly because of this. Quality and consistency of the worldbuilding is more important than the rate of maps being release.

Work in "checkpoints"

We break the timeline into "checkpoint years," where we develop the lore up to that point in time. Our last checkpoint was 1965, as you may have observed from our last World Map set in that year. The next milestone year is 1985.

On memes

To maintain the quality of the subreddit, we chose not to allow low-effort memes on the main Reddit page. We have an rtl-meme channel on the Discord that serves this purpose.

Worldbuilding Discord Rules

  1. No romanticizing of colonialism, slavery, and adjacent controversial topics unless within context.
  2. No contemporary politics chat.

Wiki Format Resources