Describing a Culture

[Stalker0]

If your working with different races, one of the first things to consider is the impact of their different ability mods on their culture.

Take a race that has a +2 to wisdom lets say. That means the average joe shmoe guy has a 12 wisdom. That means on average the entire race is better at sniffing out lies than normal humans...so there culture will probably value honesty. They are very perceptive people, they can see things farther than other people...but they also pick up on emotions better (sense motive).

They are mentally resilient, able to take mental stresses better than normal. Add all that up and you have the beginnings of a culture.

 

[The_Magician]

Not really what you are asking, but whenever I try to create a new culture, I remember what I learned in my anthropology classes. Basically speaking, a culture is shaped by the way people 'work' the nature around them. By nature, I dont mean only plants and animals, but the whole environment. Take that community, place them somewhere, then visualise how it all started, what they had to do to prosper and so on, and soon enough you will see the social structure, religious beliefs, etc building up infront of you.

 

[MaxKaladin]

There's a lot of cool stuff here, but I'm not looking to go as in-depth as some of these examples. I'm trying to keep things brief so it won't be a big burden on the players to read. I may well do this sort of in-depth workup for myself later, but right now I'm going for brief.

It is a good point that has been made about attitudes as these are some of the biggest differences between kingdoms that are otherwise very similar culturally. Many of the people in the area I'm working with are descendants of a single root culture and still have a lot of things in common, but you have the "middle kingdoms" that have been on the front line of constant invasions by another culture for most of the last 250 years while you have another kingdom that's been shielded by these kingdoms and by geography for most of that time and has developed differently. They still share many similarities but have important differences in attitude. For instance, the former is more egalitarian and their nobility are definately fighting nobles who are rough around the edges while the latter tend to be more foppish and "parade knight" types presiding over an increasingly stratified society where peasants are expected to "know their place". The former prepares for war while the latter prepares for elaborate balls and other functions. There is a lot of similarity between the two cultures, but some important differences in attitude.

One thing I'm finding a bit of a conundrum is how to subdivide things. I don't know if I should detail each culture seperately and duplicate significant amounts of information or if I should try to describe one culture with regional variations noted in each section. I tend to think the former would be too redundant but the latter too wordy.

 

[Steverooo]

One thing I'm finding a bit of a conundrum is how to subdivide things. I don't know if I should detail each culture seperately and duplicate significant amounts of information or if I should try to describe one culture with regional variations noted in each section. I tend to think the former would be too redundant but the latter too wordy.

Do a write-up on the middle kingdom, first, then on the others, instead of repeating, say (for instance, if the "Middle Kingdom" is "Frisian"), "As Frisian".