Designing Fantasy Countries and Cultures

gnunn

In my "current campaign":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/the-westerlands/wikis/main-page I have largely been building the world from the inside out, fleshing out cities, countries and cultures as my players encounter them. While I greatly enjoy the organic feel of this style of world-building, it makes it difficult to create things like world maps... or cosmopolitan cities with many believable races and cultures.

This past weekend, I decided to sit down to try and flesh out a list of countries that will be included in my subcontinent of the Westerlands. I decided to use a technique often practiced by fantasy authors like David Eddings and Robert Jordan, which is to unashamedly base my fantasy cultures on actual ancient civilizations.

Unfortunately, I found myself running into a combination of issues... namely:
# My understanding of the variety of ancient cultures is mediocre at best.
# The realist voice in my head keeps asking, "How varied would these cultures actually be if they are so close together?" while my creative side keeps screaming back, "It's fantasy! Jerkface! I can do what I want!"
# I have described the region of the Westerlands as fairly settled in the past, but part of me really wants to make it more of a Tolkienesque realm where settlements are separated by large tracts of dangerous countryside... again, cue the realist vs. creative argument.

To help break me out of my block, I wound up writing down a list of real-world European cultures that I could use as models for my cultures and then created a list of things that each culture would be known for (e.g. They are a naval power, they are savvy merchants, they make excellent longbows, etc.)

This helped but I'm still feeling a bit blocked, so I pose the question:

What techniques do you find helpful for creating a variety of distinct/unique cultures to populate your campaign world?

twiggyleaf

I generally have a basic idea of the world, jot down a few basic concepts. I always envisage deities from an early stage and think of political relationships between major races and deities. Then I generally draw a map and start placing major land and sea features, place major points of civilization and think of the era (relative to earth) - usually somewhere between early classical and late medieval, with a possible scattering of stone age in very remote regions. I then start "connecting the dots" and making notes about each region/ kingdom as I go along. If something doesn't seem to fit, I either do not include it (e.g. steam, gunpowder, psionics) or make sure it has a remote locality (e.g. primitive, modern).

Morrinn

Stare at a piece of paper untill my head bleeds...
But seriously, I start of with a theme, then I shamelessly model it after a real culture making sure to salt with plenty of exaggerations. Then just cross out "Crusaders" with Paladins and "Bishops" with hierophants :)
Then take a nation (France for example) and say, "You are a nation of subterranean mole people now."

Yay Fantasy!
=)

By the way, The Westerlands look awesome.

gnunn

Oh, I also like to revert to puns and ridiculous pop-culture references as inspiration for my cultures. Here's my favorite "example":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/the-westerlands/wikis/catfolk

I have to tell myself to use this particular technique sparingly, or things just get ridiculous.

zalambar

I'm running my first campaign in many years and am in the middle of building out a larger world after the first couple of play sessions.

To define local cultures I try to mix and match traits from several real world cultures on top of whatever characteristics the players or source material have already provided. There's more than enough real world material to draw from here and it's much easier to have modern or historical references than to have to invent something from scratch. However to keep things interesting I try to make sure not to copy one entire culture, instead I try to imitate gnunn and pick several traits drawn from different sources. For example I might try to list the general religious practices, primary foods, major economic goods, names, and architecture from however many regions I can think up quickly or pull from wikipedia and try to pick an interesting combination.
I've found that this way when someone asks a question I'm totally unprepared for, or if it looks like the party is heading for an unplanned type of encounter, I can pull up a reference to get more detail, faster than I could invent something. Additionally this way my players don't walk in with too many preconceptions of how the world is structured.
I'm sure I could build up a couple of tables and randomize the entire process but I'd rather have some control of the combinations I get.

For the map itself I try to just make sure I have enough detail to cover the areas players are likely to be able to reach. If the party wants to totally ignore the plots I offer them and start hiking across the hills they know that I can't have too much prepared from them. I've ended up with a well detailed area where the party is currently exploring and enough of a sketch of the surrounding area to have a good sense what's out there for the next couple of levels.
I found the easiest place to start was to define the scale of the current arc of the campaign. Decide how many days worth of travel you want it to take to cross the region, multiply by the party's speed on whatever transportation you expect them to use, and you have an idea of the area you want to fill.
I wanted to start things off in a port city so I dropped a city near one edge of my map and started mapping out days' worth of travel from there. I wanted at least one other town within two days' travel and the first dungeon a similar distance in the same general direction. My second planned destination wasn't obviously related to the first dungeon so I figured that should be in a different direction and I had already declared that open water took up yet another. Those requirements started to give the map some structure pretty quickly. I thought one spot should be in the hills so I had those lead into a mountain range. I had mentioned a river through the starting city so that probably flows down from those mountains and pretty quickly I have a fair amount of detail. Certainly enough to give me ideas for where to add more locations and what might characterize them.

freyja3120

I have to agree with zalambar about being able to look things up when trying to world build on the fly if you base your world partially on real world sources. Personally, I enjoy taking the real world as the inspiration. I'm running a campaign in which I've based each of the racial kingdoms on a different culture: halflings are Egyptian, elves are Greek, humans are Celtic, dwarves are Norse, and the gnomes are a combination of the Precolombian cultures: Inca, Aztec, and Mayan. Their overall cultures are based on the original real world cultures, with twists added due to the fantasy nature of the world.

One thing that I like about this is that it helps give my players a basic idea of the culture types. This helps them to plan more easily cohesive characters, fitting into the world. Also, they know enough about the cultures around them to pick up cues from npcs. Naming conventions and architecture are easy to plan, and the world is more immersive. They know that the halfling lands will be hot and dry, while the gnomish kingdom is a mountainous jungle.

Within that framework, I can take liberties with individual places and people. I choose real world place names, and then look up the original site. From there, I can take what I like, sometimes exaggerating certain characteristics of the place, and develope it into it's own, individual place. As I said, the source is a jumping off, inspiration point.

If anyone wants to check out my campaign, it's "here":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/halcyon

Morrinn

The thought of Mayan Gnomes terrify me...
*Shuder*
Very cool campaign, Freyja. looking forward to reading more on 'Tawantinsuyu'.

Malruhn

1. My understanding of the variety of ancient cultures is mediocre at best.
--You'll have to fix this a bit and do at least a little research.
2. The realist voice in my head keeps asking,

TheImpossibleMan

"My campaign":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/ways-of-the-seven/wikis/main-page has been a big success for my group so far. If I could offer some advice:

1.) Don't worry if you're 'not getting it right' when basing your world off of real world cultures; the most important thing is that you and the players are happy. Having a world that does not exactly copy any real world culture can often lead to very fun campaigns as the party (and DM) discover the heart of the world.
2.) Work WITH the players when designing the world. Cooperative storytelling leads to better worlds because everyone brings new ideas, and everyone is happier with the world in the end. And hanging out and talking about DnD is fun. :-)

I find these to be the two most helpful things; they certainly helped when we designed all you find on my OP page.

gnunn

TheImpossibleMan:

I definitely agree that collaborative world-building is fantastic, and my players have definitely influenced my campaign world both directly, and indirectly, and even in ways that they cannot know... yet.

*Example of direct contribution.* The person playing the Paladin of Ehlonna in my group indicated that she would be interested in being a part of a holy order of knights. This prompted me to write up on the "Order of the Spiral Horn":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/the-westerlands/wikis/order-of-the-spiral-horn . (the name of the organization was something we discussed at character creation.)

*Example of indirect contribution.* The person playing the 1/2 orc monk decided to name him Santiago de Campostela, which inspired me to build the kingdom of Pais'Suria based largely on medieval Spain. It is located on a coastline across a narrow sea from lands populated by savage humanoids... hence lots of raids resulting in lots of 1/2 orcs. It is also located near the religiously important city of "Panthium":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/the-westerlands/wikis/panthium, and so has a strong monastic tradition.

Still, both of the above are examples of players providing ideas leaving the actual creation to me. I really would like to encourage them to get in on the creative process more.

I find the biggest challenge with collaborative world building is convincing my players that it is actually encouraged. Oddly enough saying, "It's encouraged" or even, "Hey, why don't you do a writeup on x?" doesn't seem to work. I get a lot of excuses from "I'm not a good writer" to "I don't know want to make something that goes against your plan" to "I'm just not very creative"... all of which, I feel, are cop-out excuses. So far, I have managed to get a couple players to write recaps for a couple sessions and they are some of my favorite recaps to-date. I really wish I could get my players past the blocked mindset that the GM creates the world and they inhabit it. I have even offered and delivered bonus xp to people who contribute in this way, but would love advice on encouraging collaborative world building.

Falchen

Gnunn, sorry I am a bit late on this topic, but world building is one of my favorite parts of running a game, so here are some of my thoughts on this.
1. My understanding of the variety of ancient cultures is mediocre at best.
Good, I know way to many people, myself being one of them who have been sucked into trying to make real cultures fit, it can work, but often it does not. The better way is to look at a culture and see why it became what it did, then use this to help create cultures for your world. The reason cultures from history did what they did and became what they became is a complex recipe, things like climate, resources, natural disaster's and their timing ect. Without the exact same circumstances, that culture would not exist how it did. Once you do this you start to notice trends, like advanced metallurgy comes from cold climates, while monolithic stone works come from much more temperate climates. Or civilizations on the coast are always tied to it, but cold climate civilizations make much better ships because they have ready access to evergreen trees to make tar and pitch out of. I guess what I am trying to say is, create your civilizations by why they would be or do something, not by trying to fit an earth modeled one into your realm slot.

2. The realist voice in my head keeps asking,

paganartpirate

I think your best bet is to use what you know, combined with your ideas about what could be. Use your talents, you can't be an expert in everything. My world has grown out of my experiences; my love of creating maps, my time growing up in Florida, My interest in education, etc. Based on this, my world is big (a single map sketch on an 8x10 sheet of paper is now so big it won't fit on any wall in my home) it's made up of coastal cities with detailed trade route maps, and stradles the equator of my world, so that all the action happens in a tropical zone. I use world creation to learn about new subjects as questions arise based on what I've already done. Have fun with it.

jemmasmum

I find that when Im trying to build civilisations I also look at the surrounding environment, for example highly forested/tropical areas and I think what the resources are and how the people would respond to their surrounding world, much of culture is based on social and psychological adjustment of our surroundings and I tend to think it through this way... though that may or may not be very helpful to you :/

arsheesh

I see that I am a bit late to this conversation as well, but I thought I'd throw in my own two sense. First, as paganartpirate has noted, you have to begin somewhere, and so start with what you know, and begin building a world based upon your own experience. Second, that said, one of the best ways to begin this process, is to be able to visualize your world on a map. Hence, I think the first thing to do would be to design a map. In doing so, it is helpful to learn a little bit about things such as climate, biomes, and other earth sciences. As Falchen and Jemmasmum have pointed out, understanding the environment in which your cultures have emerged will go a long way to helping you figure out how and why those cultures have evolved. Two excellent resources for this are as follows:

*Mapping Resources*:

1. "The Cartographers Guild":http://forum.cartographersguild.com/index.php?referrerid=15127, a site dedicated to supporting those who enjoy making maps, whether you are a complete novice, an amateur, or a professional RPG cartographer (and there are several of these within the Guild). Not only are there great tutorials for map making, but there are also very instructive discussions on related topics that bear on our conversation here.

2. "A Magical Society: Guide to Mapping":http://paizo.com/store/downloads/free/v5748btpy82tc, is a free 37 page pdf that covers everything from the axial spin of the planet, to its climate and ecology, to the cultures that inhabit it. This is an extraordinarily useful little manual, especially given that it is absolutely free! (Grunn you may even find it to be an ideal candidate for the mapping section of your "Frugal DM" wiki page).

Related to environmental factors is the issue of the population and economy of your various civilizations, each of which is depends heavily upon agriculture (this is especially the case in a medieval manorial economic system). I have found a number of useful resources pertaining to this issue:

*Economics and Demographics*:

1. "Medieval Demographics Made Easy":http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm is a short online, researched article aimed at explaining to the average DM how things such as population density and spread, agriculture, and economic goods and services function within a Medieval setting.

2. "The Doomsday Book":http://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/ is a supplemental aid to the article on Medieval Demographics. This site offers a sort of "Settlements Calculator"; you plug in inputs such as the climate and geographical spread of one of your civilizations, and the calculator generates outputs such as a break down of population (and its spread), specific details relating to the villages and settlements of your civilization, number of castles and fortifications, and even a breakdown of what kinds of goods and services are likely available in those villages (including how many butcher, bakers, thatchers etc. the village would likely support).

All of these are great resources so I hope that some of you guys will get some millage out of them, if you haven't already.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

gnunn

@ Arsheesh

I downloaded the Magical Society: Guide to Mapping. That book is dangerous! I can already tell that it is going to prey upon my obsession for detail. I think I need to keep uttering my mantra "Will this affect my players. Will this affect the next session" which is what I use to resist tempting sidetracks. Nevertheless, I will likely add it to the Frugal GM page when I get a chance.

As to the Doomsday Book... I have used the Medieval Demographics site, but had not seen the supplemental aid. I will likely make use of this in the future, as it will both satisfy some of my obsession for detail, as well as making it easier to quickly generate national and citywide populations. Thanks for the link!

@ Everyone

Just a bit about my own methodology: I definitely look at real-world cultures, environments and other social considerations when forming my countries, though I do like to vary things from the real world.

For example... My players are currently adventuring in a country called Cydon. My initial inspiration was for a defensive military powerhouse, similar to Russia but in a mountainous region rather than on open plains. The kingdom occupies a wooded mountain plateau along an important cross-continent trade route. Alpine forests grow along glacier-fed rivers and the eastern plateau has been largely deforested to build cities and mines, and then converted to farmland.

The abundance of metal ores in the mountains and the religious leanings of the civilization (Heironeous) cause the military to favor ornate platemail and large, metal weapons. Because it is difficult to hike up and down mountainsides in full-plate, they favor defensive warfare and utilize dire rams as mounts, as surefootedness is more important than running speed in the rough terrain.

The denizens use terraced fields to similar to those in China to grow crops on the mountainsides, but also have many herdsmen (again goats) which can provide food on land that is unsuitable for agriculture.

JimTriche

It's important to pay attention to geographical features in modern games too. Clever applied archaeology always adds a bit of depth to a campaign. If there was a big war there, what were the effects on the culture, what's noticeable in the modern culture in that area that would tie them to their ancestors? What kind of weaponry would have evolved in that location. Mountainous geography probably favors shorter weaponry, due to narrow areas and the need to keep balance - for instance.

FiendishLineage

I have found that cooperative world building is particularly powerful. If people are like me (and I suspect like a lot of you) then most people can enter a map crafting rage that might last a few days, but usually ends with an uncompleted project in a folder somewhere. I recently dug through my old folders as well as some of my friends' and pulled together all the old pieces of maps that I had made.

I discovered that at any given time when making a map for a short lived campaign, the names of people and places had a distinct taste. I had discovered all the "cultures" that I had inadvertently created over the years as individual worlds and I combined them into one super world that has very distinct looks depending on where you are. This also helped me develop a history for my world when certain areas didn't mesh well with what was already there, I would just put it 500 years in the past and see if it fit there.

My friends, excited to see their work have a direct influence on my world, were inspired to make more and I use OP to facilitate this since they can edit their own pages and add on to my existing ones. Have your friends DM a game and encourage them to make a map, when their game is over tack it on to your map altering it only as much as is necessary to get it to fit.

When trying to define cultures, I give each one a trait that helps me think of how it interacts with the others and use that as jumping off point. For example: "Alliance of Aiwa, magocratic cities better the world with the leadership of the Overmage" or "Cycruss Empire, Power hungry humans led by the merciless Tremlord"

@gnunn, nine one with the lolcatfolk

gnunn

@Fiendish

I love that you combined all your previous partial worlds into one big one! Sadly, I haven't done a whole lot of world-building since I was a kid, so if I tried that at this time things might get a little overly ridiculous.

Also, I agree that collaborative world building is best. One of my players emailed me today to say that he intends to do some writing on the history of the Dwarves in my campaign world tonight. I'm looking forward to it, if it happens. We're taking a slight diversion from the standard scottish/norse dwarf archetype so prevalent in fantasy and making them more akin to axe-wielding samurai. I have a vision of their god, Moradin as an earth-bound analogue to "Amaterasu":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaterasu from the Japanese "Kojiki.":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kojiki

FemmeLegion

...I will be quietly counting the days until my players figure out that Vidria is climatically, and almost geographically, identical to the United States of America. Environmental details are what spook me the most (I really want to get them "right"), so I pulled up the wiki page and started researching ecotypes. =)

Dyluth

I certainly agree with JimTriche about the effect geography has on a culture/civilization. It goes without saying I suppose that the nature of their topography can easily dictate the style of warfare they favour the most (ie. slow rugged mountain warfare or open mobile plains warfare). The same can be said for effecting how the culture interacts with outsiders. A fertile valley can make for easy passage and one could say trade and communication is open between cities and villages creating an open and welcoming society to outsiders. The opposite could be said for mountainous or dessert regions which impede passage and trade, and could make for hostile and isolated settlements which are hostile to change and outsiders.

I try to take in factors similar to these when I make up worlds and cultures from scratch for my Star Wars game, but more often than not I go with the fantasy voice in my head too Gnunn and pull ideas together from real history, video games, television and any number of sources into a crazy concept that's fun for everybody. After all, I'm sure some would say some cultures and civilizations from real history more resemble what you'd read out of fantasy.

Hardhead

I also think its' important to decide "where's the conflict?" when you make a country. This is D&D, after all, and you always want to figure out some way for each area to have conflict that will bring the players in, whether that's a viper's nest of political intrigue, a country of lawless adventure, or what have you.

GamingMegaverse

I know this is an old thread, but I thought it was worthwhile resurrecting with all of the new folks on the forums.
There is some great info here that I have used myself in fleshing out my world.
killervp
"A God...Rebuilt":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/a-god-rebuilt
"Duskreign's First Ever COTM":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/wyrmshadow/wiki_pages/112011

arsheesh

Yeah, the thread is a bit old, but I've seen this same topic discussed repeatedly at several other RPG sites and figured it's just one of those perennially relevant topics; that's why I added it to the Hot topics list. But yes, there are some great insights here and I hope to see more people contributing to this topic in the future.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

wbcundiff

Wow, this is old. Oh well, here goes.

@Gnunn,
concerning #2. It might be helpful to consider deeper roots of culture to find ways to keep some similarity between adjacent cultures while introducing differences at the same time.
a) The people known as Indo-Europeans are considered to be the ancestors of cultures which spread from somewhere in the vicinity of Finland to western Europe and to India. Indo-European languages have words with common roots and their pantheons are structured around similar ideas. If cultures diverged from one another far in the past they may have a few similar words and similar god-concepts whereas if they diverged relatively recently they may share things like weapon and fortress design or common fashions.
b) Using your Order of the Sprial Horn as a spring-board the spiral provides an example of a culture idea that can easily spread far and wide. There is a tomb in Newgrange Ireland that is ornamented with spiral designs. You can go as far as the isle of Malta in the Mediterranean and find tombs which not only are ornamented with spiral designs, but are nearly identical in their layout. These were built around 2500 BC if memory serves. Symbols like this often spread across cultural barriers because they are connected to a technological idea. In the case of the spiral it is believed that the symbol was tied to the early development of the calendar. If you picture the arc that the sun makes across the sky in a given day in late summer, it will make a smaller arc on the next day. Then next day is shorter, so a still smaller arc is traced by the sun and so on. If you picture the sun traveling below the horizon and then coming back up again to trace a smaller arc, the path it takes is spiral in shape. The spiral motif tombs were oriented toward the sun such that on the dawn of the winter solstice the sun illuminates a chamber deep within the tomb. The technological importance of this is that cultures who could mark the solstices could plan their agricultural activities for greater success. To bring this back more directly to the question, even cultures that have huge differences or disagreements will often share general cultural concepts based on natural phenomenon. In a fantasy setting this could have to do with magical or extraplanar events in addition to natural cycles.

Concerning #3. If you haven't set down the population density specifically I would say that "fairly settled" gives you plenty of leeway. Unless the countryside is completely dominated by fortresses there are bound to be wilderness areas in between.

bluesguy

So I will be honest my last two fantasy campaigns have been based on bought campaign material. My first campaign was a hodge podge of crazy ideas that never really hung together very well (it was college what can I say). The first bought campaign world was "Harn":http://www.columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/cfg/allharnitems.cfg . This has to be the most extensive campaign world available for purchase. The level of detail for each country (history, politics, economics, relationships with other countries, NPC, cities, towns, villages, castles, etc) is beyond amazing. And the part that is also flabbergasting is how it all fits together on a landmass about the size of the UK (Britain, Ireland, & Scotland) and all makes sense. Foolishly I sold or tossed all that material almost 15 or 20 years ago when I gave up gaming - yes I was stupid.

Now I am using the "Valdorian Age":http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/63201-The-Valdorian-Age (description + a few reviews) for a couple of reasons. The company that sells it is the same company that sells the game system we use, Hero Games. The setting is Sword & Sorcery background. And finally the fact that the bulk of the book focuses on one city and provides simple background material for the rest of the world That allows me to have an area where the players can adventure and all I need to do is come up with adventures. I don't need to spend a lot of time on background material. That is done for me in the city of Elweir.

And since the rest of the world is essentially an outline I can flesh it out as much as I want as I need to. I have also allowed the players to flesh out areas as well. One of the players loves to write songs and legends so I have turned her loose with some basic pointers and info and she has gone 'wild'.

So that is my solution. Again it is kind of lazy but it works for me.

dlaporte7271

I'm In the Process of building a campaign world, entirely on OP. This is definitely going to be built from the inside out as my player encounters things...though I've got lots of ideas swimming around. I'm finding the OP an effective tool for creating outlines and making notes. Being able to create new wikis for new topics/areas/plot ideas etc helps me structure things. Anyway...I love allowing the players to contribute their inspiration to the world. I'm running a solo campaign with a friend who is also the DM of his own campaign. If you're into organically grown material then your players can become a great resource...assuming they are invested enough. I find that the players become more involved when their background ideas are directly reflected in the larger campaign.

As for cultures I'm probably like many in that i scavenge from historical culture for ideas but you could break down cultures into types that help you frame the general feel of the country. I look to Sid Mieres Civ series for some inspiration here:

Cultural types:
commercial
militaristic
scientific
Industrious
religious
expansionist

Of course we could come up with more general "types" but I find that using one or more of the types,as a framework for hanging the details, is useful. If you haven't played any of the CIV games you might find them useful for helping build culture. I actually palyed partway through a game and then turned the CIV game world into a campaign world.

Dave
"Violent Skies":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/violent-skies