EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Hence why I favor:
- Determining what factors, if any, are naturally rooted in physiological differences, and how those factors would influence culture. Dragonborn mature swiftly and have elemental halitosis, which necessarily should influence their language (metaphors about the briefness of childhood are likely to be more strident than those of humans or longer-lived races) and their architecture (prisons need to be designed so they can't be broken out of by someone breathing fire on their cell several times a day.) Eladrin, by comparison, are somewhat more likely to wax poetic about the turning of the seasons (because they live much longer and mature more slowly), and would likely design their cities around the fact that everyone can perform short-distance teleports (again, prisons come to mind; you'd need countermeasures so eladrin wouldn't just teleport out of their cells.)
- Determining how these factors would interact with people who don't have the physiology to apply them. In the eladrin example, longer lifespans might matter somewhat, bit not on the scale at which the game is generally played (more a matter of slowing cultural change and increasing institutional encrustation around wealthy, powerful families.) The teleport thing, however, is liable to cause problems for any race that cannot casually teleport every few minutes. Now, because the teleport can't be used immediately back-to-back, it's unlikely that their architecture would be designed exclusively around its use, so there would still be stairs and the like to get around. But buildings are still liable to be much more accessible to those who can teleport than those who can't. This might encourage the use of (architectural, not personal) magic items to enhance regular eladrin teleports and permit teleports even to those who can't use them.
- Once both of those are worked out, determining how any given culture (whether monoracial or multiracial) would work in a given context. This requires answering several questions:
- How, and what, do they eat? Where do they get clean water?
- What natural resources do they rely on? Who uses them, and how do they get these resources and artisans?
- What is their economy structured like? How do they conduct business and such?
- How do their people learn trades or gain education?
- What is the class structure and labor force like?
- How is political power distributed? In what ways does this culture organize itself and coordinate its actions and materiel?
- How does this culture protect itself? What are its military capabilities, and how do these capabilities influence its priorities and social structure? In what ways do its natural resources and population affect these things?
- Does the culture have internal divisions (e.g. provinces of an empire, religious factions with a common heritage), and if so, how do they interact? Is it cohesive or divisive?
- How does this culture view outsiders? What are its diplomatic and political interactions with other cultures/polities?
- How do outsiders view this culture? What stereotypes do outsiders have of its members, and in what ways are these stereotypes both accurate and inaccurate? How do members of this culture feel about these stereotypes, especially if they are not perfectly archetypal for this culture?
This is, of course, a lot of stuff to answer, so some of the time I intentionally leave the answers blank, both because that's useful to me, and because it allows play to shape things, more than it being all my personal precious baby or all random chance or the like. "Draw Maps, Leave Blanks" is truly an excellent maxim to guide GMs.
