by Christian Martinez
Hello everyone! This is my first post here on the blog and I hope to be making more on a fairly frequent basis. I’m a new face here – though I’ve been involved since July and am working on a few projects behind the scenes (i.e. the upcoming Hidden Kingdom 4E Adventure Setting, and The Dead Queens of Morvena). Hope you enjoy this first article and you can expect to see more from me in the future. Now on to the article…
When characters are travelling, it’s nice to have the world change around them even if it’s just as a marker to demonstrate that they’re somewhere other than where they started. One of our writers, John Payne, came up with a great way to do this in his recent article by changing the beasts of burden used in a society.
His article got me thinking of how I make worlds feel whole and textured in my games. My personal favorite technique to help your players feel like they’re somewhere foreign isn’t to simply to change what the races are called but to change the behavior and trappings of races and cultures.
One thing I dislike in fantasy settings are drastically different species of the same race (especially elves) themed to environments instead of new races altogether or different cultures of the same. As an alternative, I introduce three different examples cultures of elves, each having a distinctly different feel and behavior while remaining mechanically identical. The goal is to show one way a GM can make players feel like they’re truly travelling in a complete and textured world.
The Kingdom of Cielo
These elves don’t have any particular inclination for forests or magic, they are the dominant race in a kingdom they conquered by air. They excel in the construction of sky-ships, using them to patrol and maintain their lands.
On religion, they view gods as a frivolous waste of time, worshipping their ancestors instead. They have a flair for the melodramatic and a decided lack of subtlety including a very strong connection between appearance/behavior and one’s nature and profession. What you see is what you get in Cielo – the elves there don’t have a cultural basis for subtly, sarcasm, or double meanings. Villains and dastards wear black cloaks and skulk through alleys; heroes are dressed in white and gleaming gold and never speak a lie; sky-ship captains swing from ropes, wear brightly colored loose fitting clothes, and spend their time wooing women at every port they call on.
The Changed
In a great City sprawling across half a continent, engaged in an eternal war, Elves exist as magically altered members of humanity. Designed for war as scouts, snipers and long distance combatants they come from many walks of life.
Those that volunteer to become elves have to pay for the incredibly expensive process from their own pockets and those that are drafted into the military are often subjected to the change as a way to “pay their debts off” by providing a service to the city.
Scorned and treated with distrust by most humans in the City once elves retire from the military they often stick to the underbelly of society, if they don’t try to leave the City altogether in search for lonely wildernesses. Those that volunteered often work as thieves or operatives for various noble houses or powerful guilds, possessing a much better fate than their drafted cousins.
When exposed to elves from different continents or planes these elves react with shock and perhaps hope for something better. They yearn for leadership and examples to lead them from their mostly miserable lot.
The Wela’n Elves
In the depths of far jungles dwell these Elves, building temple-pyramids high enough to challenge mountains. Obsessed with time itself they build their pyramids up cycle by cycle, year by year, perhaps using John’s Ettl to do much of the work.
They worship time and its passage, chronicling it with a hundred different systems of calendar. They’ve evolved no monetary currency and instead use a complex system of trade and barter with value based upon the time spent upon an object. Older objects are worth much more than newer ones as a general rule.
At the tops of their pyramids lie sacred pools of water maintained from the beginnings of their obsession with time. Their priests stare into the pools reading the future in the ripples caused by rain and their own hands drawing patterns on the surface.
Behavior, government and even trade is ruled by time (of year, month, week and day) and outsiders will make little headway without knowledge of the calendar or a good guide.
What kinds of cultures have you created for your game? What are some of your favorite fantasy or rpg cultures? What ways do you flesh out your world; make it feel more textured and real?
Great ideas! I’ve got a region of dragon-worshipping dwarves in my gameworld. They’re divided on sort of tribal lines by the type of dragon they follow. Each dwarven “tribe” also has a symbiotic group of kobolds with whom they coexist. The kobolds really threw my players for a loop, as they debated why kobolds and dwarves would be hanging out together (before they found out about the dragons!)
Excellent examples of how to make stock fantasy races fresh and new. Cultures vary dramatically in the real world, so why not in game worlds? At its worst, stock fantasy presents a European-type culture supplemented by demi-humans. Interesting worlds–Paizo’s Golarion comes to mind–evoke other traditional cultures from the real world, such as ancient Egyptian, revolutionary France, and mix things up with the completely fantastical, like devil kingdoms and magic-dead areas. Variant demi-human cultures tend to be very rare, though.
In my Semnavoldt setting, I’ve done some tweaking, but not to the extent that you suggest. Elves and humans are on a par and share a culture in the city of Semnavoldt, although the humans are dominant. Being a dwarf, gnome, of halfling is rather risky, due to a standardized practice of slavery among the nobles. To the south, there are some dark elves that I’ve not developed in detail, but the idea is that they are dark-skinned (not “drow”), like Africans, with a distinctive culture separate from Semnavoldt.
I also really like to detail religions, calendars, and celestial bodies. Elven culture in Semnavoldt is time-obsessed in a way similar to the last race you described: the calendar is broken into blocks and ordered in an organic way, keyed to various lunar cycles. Semnavoldt is a protectorate of a greater human empire, so a lot of the roots of the elven culture have been obscured by colonization and the passage of time, although the longevity of the elves counters some of that loss. Ancient religions flourish among newer transplants and upstart revolutionary cults.
At any rate, I agree with you that there’s a great amount of detail that can be worked into developing cultures, and making the cultures of a game world come alive can bring a new richness and dimensionality to even the most tried-and-true fantasy tropes.
@ Charles your Semnavoldt setting sounds interesting. And I agree Religions, Calendars and Celestial bodies are fun to deal with and detail. Especially Celestial Bodies, I like the idea of using them as the different “planes” of existence in cosmology. I’ve never really fleshed out that idea though I’ve always thought on it.
One thing your talk of Ancient religions flourishing among newer transplants and upstart revolutionary cults made me think of something else. In RPG’s we tend to see or dictate religions by who they worship. While in reality there are myriad religions, cults and differing sects for every group of gods/goddesses. Having gods and goddesses granting power and speaking to their worshipers wouldn’t reduce this, if anything it would increase the number of cults.
@anarkeith Awesome! Dragon worshiping dwarves alongside kobolds? They had a right to be suspicious. I would be too. I love this idea.
Very good article. A lot of help in there.
Especially good idea to vary minor cultural differences between groups of the “standard” species (Elves, Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings, etc.) I remember back in AD&D having a tribe of orks, who’s alignment had been changed. The Paladin got quite a shock after attacking them and loosing favor with his diety. Set a whole campaign for him to regain favor.
I love drawing interesting cultural elements into the game for all the races. Sticking to just one culture per race is silly (and dull) while I think that dwarves and elves (for examples) should share cultural themes, their realms should not just be copies of each other with different names.