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slachance6
2015-10-30, 04:21 PM
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyCounterpartCulture

Every fantasy world has them. Nomadic horse raiders from the east that are totally not Mongols, ancient desert pyramid builders that are totally not Egyptians, a feudal society with pagodas and katanas ruled by a caste of warriors that is totally not Japan, you get the idea. What are your opinions on such blatant inspiration from the real world's history? Is there a way to do them right or wrong, either when creating a world or when playing a character from one of these cultures?

Ralanr
2015-10-30, 05:52 PM
Don't be lazy.

Aetol
2015-10-30, 06:18 PM
Don't be racist, even unintentionally.

Zrak
2015-10-30, 06:38 PM
I think it's always more interesting to make weird frankencultures than straight-out lift (or, more usually, attempt to lift) something wholecloth. It lets you keep recognizable elements of real-world cultures as a sort of touchstone players can understand, while also creating a more unique, alien feeling overall.

Also, if you're going to give Counterpart cultures to non-humans, being extra double careful about the whole "not being racist" thing. Also, for the love of all that is decent and good, no more Scottish dwarves.

Hawkstar
2015-10-30, 06:41 PM
I think it's always more interesting to make weird frankencultures than straight-out lift (or, more usually, attempt to lift) something wholecloth. It lets you keep recognizable elements of real-world cultures as a sort of touchstone players can understand, while also creating a more unique, alien feeling overall.

Also, if you're going to give Counterpart cultures to non-humans, being extra double careful about the whole "not being racist" thing. Also, for the love of all that is decent and good, no more Scottish dwarves.

Scottish dwarves are awesome. The problem is Native American Orcs.

PersonMan
2015-10-30, 07:05 PM
One thing I'd recommend is research and focus - instead of just grabbing the most obvious trappings thrown around in most media, find something not normally in the limelight and put it in the front while putting a spin on it. Mixing different cultures together can also be helpful in avoiding cardboard cutouts of stereotypical representations of real world cultures.

Totally Not Japan, for example, might have an extensive caste system that is defined not by birth but by the results of a ritual that takes place in late childhood. The results determine one's life, a mix of superstition, logically constructed but incorrect theories and truth let the priests determine each child's true calling. A complex social system that involves hundreds of rules that determine how to behave around every other caste, down to things like who is allowed to wield which weapons, whose name is spoken first in a list and similar is built up around this, intertwined with the teachings of a mixture of Confucianism and animism, which states that the adherence to the ancient social order and its carefully constructed rules is vital to not just society but the survival of humanity, lest it anger the powerful spirits of the world it relies on.

Cutting it short, there's a combination of various elements there, which you can mix with the most typical (curved blade wielding warrior class, specific architecture) to create something unique enough to not just be a lazy copy but based on the real world enough to not be impossible to relate to. Taking elements from several cultures, especially ones not present in typical fantasy counterparts, and mixing them with a properly researched understanding of one or more underlying elements of the "base" culture can create something similar to but unique from the real world version.

slachance6
2015-10-30, 07:20 PM
Scottish dwarves are awesome. The problem is Native American Orcs.

What's wrong with Native American Orcs? When they're not all evil, of course.

Agrippa
2015-10-30, 07:38 PM
Scottish dwarves are awesome. The problem is Native American Orcs.

Yeah, white South African, Industrial Age English or Pinkerton-style strike breaker orcs make much more sense.

Kitten Champion
2015-10-30, 07:50 PM
I've never seen actual attempts at Scottish Dwarves. The Tolkien-esque greedy miners with a huge stubborn streak and some deep prejudice that's usually played off as somewhat comedic - that I've seen a lot of - actual attempts to integrate Scottish historical elements into their civilization haven't come up.

Though, on the whole, I think it's important to remember that these are fantasy societies - insofar as the fantastical exists as a matter of course. So, look at the mythologies of the society you're wishing to mirror to give them distinct and larger-than-life presence.

For instance - and this is a simple example - pulling a sword from the stone to prove you're the destined king/queen of the land can be an actual thing, now you've moved into a literal virtue-based divine-right hierarchy. That emperor who sought immortality, achieves it, and has been in power and been steadily sinking into madness for over a century now. The royal consort who's been rumoured to have seduced and enchanted the lord actually is a capricious spirit bent on malevolence.

There are lots of these stories and you can mix, match, and subvert them in lots of ways. It's something you generally see in most official settings whenever they tackle some semi-exotic civilization as the locale of their campaign setting.

LudicSavant
2015-10-30, 07:59 PM
One thing I'd recommend is research and focus - instead of just grabbing the most obvious trappings thrown around in most media, find something not normally in the limelight and put it in the front while putting a spin on it.

Good call.

I cannot emphasize enough the value of research. If you've only had a public school education in "social studies," odds are you know rather little about history or anthropology... and also probably think that history is dry and boring and just a collection of names and dates. Many textbooks are written with the express purpose of pandering to as many school boards' pet biases as possible and scrubbing anything resembling controversy (read: historical content) to get as wide adoption as possible. If you go out and read books that have not been filtered through that system, you may be stunned by just how interesting you actually find history to be. And of course, there's an absolute treasure trove of inspiration to be found there.

Also, consider how the various cultures in your world might interact and influence each other, and how the cultures of your world have developed from their own history. Don't simply plop Japan into the world and change the name.

Deffers
2015-10-30, 08:03 PM
I would advise that you DON'T make one fantasy race directly equivalent to one culture at all. Usually, in fantasy worlds, races coexist so closely to each other that you can't really justify vast differences in cultural signifiers due to the distances involved.

For example: if the orc warband's hideout is a day's ride out from your quaint English-style village with maypoles and thatched roof cottages, it'd be really freaking weird to find Native-American or Mongol-inspired orcs if this is a recurrent threat the village faces.

"Oh, yeah, we constantly trash the town-- our fathers and grandfathers have done so to, and their fathers and grandfathers shared in this tradition."

"How is it you have zero cultural cross-pollination?"

"Eeeeeeennnhhhh."

Doesn't make much sense, does it? So, I mean, you wanna make it so that there's some amount of... not-insanity, *or* finely mince your counterpart cultures to the point where they're no longer recognizable by regional tells.

If your orcs have metal swords and armor and stuff, do things like make them have highly mobile smithies, maybe operating out of the back of a wagon that's been retrofitted to do the job. If your system's polytheistic, make sure there's some mythological cross-polination going on.

Maybe do some research on ethnic differences within a culture that interests you, and draw inspiration from there, instead of just making massively geographically diverse cultures coexist without pollination. However, the caveat of "don't be racist" becomes, like, a million times more important.

So for example, if you've got Native American orcs, have Native American Elves and Humans as well, and make it so that members from different races are welcomed into tribes where they're non-predominant like what actually happened with Native American tribes. If you want conflict between them, make reference to a previous allegiance of tribes that delineated sectarian issues between them in the past. Like what actually happened with Native American tribes. And you can find historical examples of similar cultural clashes from around the world. Enough that, with a little bit of creativity, you can probably adapt the situation of one continent to the aesthetic of another.

Another thing: DO be willing to mix aesthetics with different cultural values. Maybe your high-fantasy European-looking culture has a rigid caste system and strong belief in reincarnation. Maybe the desert-dwelling tribes who ride on camels have a robust democracy based on communal values. Maybe the Mayaincatec group du jour has a strong emphasis on filial piety and takes cues from philosophies of Chinese Legalism. Why not? It's your world-- it subverts expectations.

Strigon
2015-10-30, 08:03 PM
I've never seen actual attempts at Scottish Dwarves. The Tolkien-esque greedy miners with a huge stubborn streak and some deep prejudice that's usually played off as somewhat comedic - that I've seen a lot of - actual attempts to integrate Scottish historical elements into their civilization haven't come up.

That's because they normally only act "Scottish", what with their accents, beards, love of strong drink and clan/family-based camaraderie, while their actual history and culture is usually vastly different.

As for how to do it? Simple; take important values and ideals from each culture, not just what they're known for among laymen. I.E, the "Egypt" could simply be a highly religious folk who also enjoy sports and feats of engineering; no need for them to build pyramids or even live in a desert.

Ralanr
2015-10-30, 08:10 PM
That's because they normally only act "Scottish", what with their accents, beards, love of strong drink and clan/family-based camaraderie, while their actual history and culture is usually vastly different.

As for how to do it? Simple; take important values and ideals from each culture, not just what they're known for among laymen. I.E, the "Egypt" could simply be a highly religious folk who also enjoy sports and feats of engineering; no need for them to build pyramids or even live in a desert.

One Cracked article suggested dwarves were based on jewish culture. So...jewish scotsmen.


Yeah, white South African, Industrial Age English or Pinkerton-style strike breaker orcs make much more sense.

As do middle eastern, Russian, Haitian, and Hawaiian orcs. (Actually building off of some Haitian influences for an orcish character I'm making...it's mainly Baron Samedi skull face stuff mixed in with seasonal themes of non tropical forest biomes. Which are apparently called temperate deciduous forest biomes).

Mainly because I like fall and using spectral leaves and skull face paint sounds awesome.

Hawkstar
2015-10-30, 10:11 PM
I would advise that you DON'T make one fantasy race directly equivalent to one culture at all. Usually, in fantasy worlds, races coexist so closely to each other that you can't really justify vast differences in cultural signifiers due to the distances involved.

For example: if the orc warband's hideout is a day's ride out from your quaint English-style village with maypoles and thatched roof cottages, it'd be really freaking weird to find Native-American or Mongol-inspired orcs if this is a recurrent threat the village faces.

"Oh, yeah, we constantly trash the town-- our fathers and grandfathers have done so to, and their fathers and grandfathers shared in this tradition."

"How is it you have zero cultural cross-pollination?"Human answer: "The same reason we don't share the culture of our rats!"

Orc answer: "Their culture keeps getting them sacked. Why would we want any of that?"

Zrak
2015-10-30, 11:18 PM
Scottish dwarves are awesome. The problem is Native American Orcs.

Are those really that ubiquitous? I can't really think of a single example, even on a superficial level. If it is A Thing and I'm just blissfully ignorant of it, though, yeah, I imagine it's pretty terrible.


I've never seen actual attempts at Scottish Dwarves. The Tolkien-esque greedy miners with a huge stubborn streak and some deep prejudice that's usually played off as somewhat comedic - that I've seen a lot of - actual attempts to integrate Scottish historical elements into their civilization haven't come up.

You see Scots-esque clan structures and cultural trappings often enough; while the engagement isn't exactly deep, thoughtful, or based in historical fact, it is nonetheless pretty ubiquitous. I guess what I mean is Dwarves are often about as Scottish as not!Egypt is Egyptian.

Deffers
2015-10-31, 02:22 AM
Human answer: "The same reason we don't share the culture of our rats!"

Orc answer: "Their culture keeps getting them sacked. Why would we want any of that?"

Counterpoint: Kublai Khan didn't give a damn about how his granddad sacked things when he a stately pleasure dome did decree. Wealth and comfort put asses in seats. And you don't tend to sack the poor and uncomfortable. Waste of good men.

Ironically, the Genghis Khan example really show how those two lines of thought don't really matter all that much in real life. The invadees saw the Mongols as savages, and barbarians, and Mongols, in the traditional cultural style under Temujin, didn't much care-- if you kick ass, you're in. If you suck ass, you're out. Good, bad, they're the ones with the bows. Consequently, they killed boatloads of civilians. Two generations later, though... grandkid's ruling China.

Florian
2015-10-31, 05:58 AM
I think that using Counterpart Cultures is the same as using archetypes or commonly used cliches - its helpful at speeding up comunication and gives the option to build on preexisting knowledge that doesn't need to be explained at length during actual play.
"X is like Y" simply is a useful tool.

As for the Dos and Don'ts, I think that you still have to put some work in it and actually be knowledgeable in what the original subject matter is all about. This will get important the moment you notice that different people possess varying levels of knowledge and/or different preconceptions and you're faced with the situation that you still need to give a better explanation.
In addition, most of the time, a simple reskinning job just doesn't do it or is contrary to the stuff fantasy gaming is all about. Things that make sense in the real world tend to do have that kind of basis that is grounded in the real world and that does not translate well.
One thing I do think is important is looking at crosscultural polination and how that is not all too common (up to/beyond a certain degree). Strangely, it is a common critique that placement of certain cultures or the cultures themselves are "not logical", when we do/did have the same situation in real life.

nedz
2015-10-31, 11:45 PM
It is useful to ground your fantasy world in reality to a degree. The main advantage is free verisimilitude; but it also shows up the differences since your twists on the culture will jar with expectations and stand out more. If you go for a totally blue/orange kind of world then you run the risk of confusing the players; which can be a good or a bad thing.


Nomadic horse raiders from the east that are totally not Mongols,

There were many instances of nomadic horse raiders from the east in human history: Scythians, Cimmerians, Huns, Bulgars, Magyars, Mongols, Cossacks — and I've probably missed a few.

Chinese history also records many nomadic horse raiders from the west, which also included Mongols.

They are a consequence of Horses + Steppe: so if you have this terrain/fauna combo then this ought to have some consequence or you risk verisimilitude.

NovenFromTheSun
2015-11-01, 05:07 AM
DO have an understanding of the needs, mindset, and philosophies of the culture you're using and not just the outward expressions of such.

DON'T ignore the non-Earth elements that would clearly have an effect on the above.

Hybridartifacts
2015-11-02, 06:47 AM
Mash ups always strike me as more interesting than just relabelling a culture. They do take more thought but the results seem much more engaging and avoid that ah - you mean these are really Vikings moments.

Sredni Vashtar
2015-11-02, 07:15 AM
DO remember that any non-human races should still be recognizably non-human even if you're drawing from historical (human) cultures. (Even if your elves are based off of Israeli culture, they should still recognizably be elves.)

DO look into real life non-human social structures for ideas for cultures. (Mapping gnoll culture off of hyena behavior is an obvious one.)

DON'T steal whole cloth. (It helps mask your idea's origins. Maybe our Israeli elves also have a caste system similar to India.)

DON'T rely on clichés. (Clichés are instantly recognizable and can be very useful, but over-reliance on them can make things feel stale.)

goto124
2015-11-02, 08:10 AM
DO have a culture based on penguins.

Hmm, I wonder what that one will look like...

Joe the Rat
2015-11-02, 09:53 AM
Remarkably egalitarian balance of work, and a strong communal nature (sharing of resources), particularly during the time of cold and darkness. May or may not be rather taciturn at the tragedy of others.

And nobody else likes their music.


DO: mix and match. The broad aesthetics and technology is as much about resources as values. Buckskins and Bushido.

DO: Avoid monoculture races.
DO: remember that borrowing from others is a thing. If you use "Common" as a language, you are buying into the whole "language of commerce" idea. So expect ideas and products to be making inroads.
DO: make choices beyond aesthetic reasons. Elves may look graceful and be into the whole silk robes and curved blades thing, but a focus on the community, clan and teamwork, and the importance of face and honor are more at home with "traditional" dwarves.

DON'T: Make too big a point of it. Counterpart cultures give you easy touchstones for style and themes. If your players don't ask, don't explain how their technology relates to the poor quality and availability of iron, which is why they've developed such advanced alchemy to extend or replace those resources, and why most their high-quality weapons and armor have a dwarven aesthetic (though maintaining the iconography of the culture), which is also related to why they are shifting away from their highly tonal formal language into something easier for their dealings with other races, though the High Tongue is still used in academic and religious practice.

I give Hobgoblins a complex martial co-operative rule style, based on the dealings of the triumvirate period of the roman empire with a dash of coalition government (and goblins make for great plebeians). I get back "So, like Klingons." "...Sure."

RossN
2015-11-02, 09:58 AM
Are those really that ubiquitous? I can't really think of a single example, even on a superficial level. If it is A Thing and I'm just blissfully ignorant of it, though, yeah, I imagine it's pretty terrible.

I think it might because of the more modern tendency to portray Orcs as heroic Noble Savage types.

Classic (ie. evil and unintelligent) Orcs tend to portrayed as European style barbarians mostly - Goths or Vandals, though I have seen Mongol/Hunnic Orcs too.

Sredni Vashtar
2015-11-02, 07:59 PM
DO have a culture based on penguins.

Hmm, I wonder what that one will look like...

A mostly monogamous, almost communist society lead by whoever happens to do something influential at the moment, that is mostly male and open to homosexual relationships (pairing up is encouraged strongly, regardless of the genders of those involved). Child rearing is highly emphasized, as are stones (used for building homes). Could work well for dwarves, I'd say.

Honest Tiefling
2015-11-02, 09:05 PM
DO: mix and match. The broad aesthetics and technology is as much about resources as values. Buckskins and Bushido.

I agree with this, especially for those without interest or time to study history. You tend to sidestep a lot of stereotypes because not a lot of people have stereotypes about Japanese Roman Native Americans oddly enough. If you lack information on one aspect of life you can quickly substitute in information about other people and call it a day.

And DO research. Actual research. If another player comes to me with a 'gypsy' character that does a sexy dance, I swear I am going to smack them repeatedly.

VoxRationis
2015-11-02, 09:50 PM
Fantasy counterpart cultures are lazy, but they can be a useful tool. Sometimes you just want to adventure in a particular culture, or to DM a particular culture, in a fantasy setting, and changing it would be exactly the opposite of what you're trying to get across.
For example: Imperial Rome is a fantastic (no pun intended) setting to put an adventure in. Lots of frontiers, but also lots of populated cities. Lots of cultural interchange, lots of conflict (of all kinds), just perfect. Therefore, I cribbed one of my settings nearly straight from Imperial Rome.
Therefore:
DO: Use fantasy counterpart cultures to fulfill the desires of your group to play in those cultures.
DON'T: Try to pass them off as original. They're not. They're never going to be, no matter how you carefully change the names of all the gods, cities, and emperors. When someone asks you about your fantasy counterpart culture, say "They're basically Egyptians." "They're basically Sumerians." No point in walking them to that point by explaining them in-depth for 15 minutes before your player clues in.

goto124
2015-11-02, 10:33 PM
Running off the 'use non-human species' line:


A mostly monogamous, almost communist society lead by whoever happens to do something influential at the moment, that is mostly male and open to homosexual relationships (pairing up is encouraged strongly, regardless of the genders of those involved). Child rearing is highly emphasized, as are stones (used for building homes). Could work well for dwarves, I'd say.

🐧🐧 If I'm not wrong (http://seaworld.org/en/animal-info/animal-infobooks/penguin/reproduction/), male penguins typically set up nest sites (homes), then attempt to attract the females. Funnily enough, that website also states that "mate selection is up to the female, and it is the females that compete for the males".

I was thinking about how the males and females take turns to take care of the children (although that may be due to how the children are fed, which requires the adult to be fed first).

Also:

Members of the society have a language that involves honking and squawking sounds.

They are rather curious (http://img.burrard-lucas.com/falklands/normal/curious_penguins.jpg), especially the children.

Males and females are virtually indistinguishable from each other. (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a6/e7/60/a6e760a8ae57ed85b4465a29c87e885c.jpg)

Both adults and children must be absurdly cute :smallbiggrin:

Honest Tiefling
2015-11-02, 10:37 PM
Males and females are virtually indistinguishable from each other.

Mammals tend not to have this problem, due to the presence (or lack thereof) of dangly bits.

I really cannot advise a culture based on vomiting. I don't care how common it is in nature, I have limits. Therefore, DON'T make a culture on vomiting unless you are certain all of your players can handle it.

Also, that's like, several different species there! Pick one! One!

Aedilred
2015-11-02, 11:31 PM
I think a lot of the issues which apply to counterpart cultures apply to everything else as well. Counterparts done well will broadly follow the same rules as variant races done well. But to address things specifically:

DO consider the specific history, geography and politics of the region in which you're placing your culture. This goes both ways: in a world that's partially defined it can help you identify the best place to put a culture you have in mind, or it can help you decide what culture will fit best in a given space. This applies to things like linguistics and nomenclature as well as culture more generally: countries near each other will tend to use related languages.

DO recognise interrelationships with neighbours and how cross-pollination of cultures will have worked. Particularly when it comes to things like the military: are the two at a roughly similar stage of development? If not why not, and why hasn't one conquered the other by now if so?

DO do some research.

DO mix and match elements from real-world cultures judiciously.

DON'T mix and match elements from real-world cultures recklessly or without thinking about how they will interact with each other.

DON'T just lift lazily from some cool or half-remembered pop cultural source, at least without researching how things actually worked first.

DON'T assume that everyone in your counterpart culture shares modern sensibilities unless you've lifted a modern culture or made adjustments to account for them. If they did, their culture probably wouldn't look like that.

nrg89
2015-11-03, 03:26 AM
It basically boils down to "don't be lazy, don't be racist" and counterpart cultures would be acceptable.
I mean, Tolkien did mix English, high middle ages society with Norse mythology. It can be done well.

My main advices are:

DO show conflicting ideas within the culture to make it more real. Avatar: the Last Airbender did a great job in season three when they showed that in spite of the personality cult the Fire Lord had, the kids were still kids, the festivals were still fun and the military was just one aspect of the nation. The people also had their own, private opinions and ambitions.
Is every American in favor of high military spending? Then why would members of your fantasy culture all agree with each other? (Not putting in the effort to show a variety of opinions is lazy and can be very unintentionally racist, all it takes are two NPCs from the same culture who don't agree and there you go, you've done more than most. Unless you try to turn it into "sub cultures don't agree" instead of "individuals don't agree", because then you've probably not done enough)

DON'T hide the textures in long back stories, music, dances and stuff the players often don't remember. The players want to interact with people to get to their loot most of the time so maybe make the streets empty and shops closed on a sabbath when the players would expect them to be open (to give them a problem to work around, or maybe make them appreciate the other culture counterpart enclave nearby who just happens to always be up for a trade).

DON'T, please just don't, make the culture itself the big baddy or without any redeeming qualities. If you go with the "every person of this culture is evil"-route or "Every person within this culture would really be much happier if they'd just scrap their culture"-route you're being extremely unfair and this is what I really mean with "don't be racist". Most suffering within a country comes from economics, not from the cultural values, because economically weak areas can be exploited by few, powerful individuals. Sure, sometimes it really is culture, but this is such a cliche done a million times and everyone is sick and tired of someone who drops their national clothing in disgust and live happily ever after.
I understand that organizations make great recurring villains, and I use them all the time for that too, but understand that an organization is most often not representative of an entire culture. Do you really think every American believes in whatever war the American military is fighting at all times? Or even every soldier?

goto124
2015-11-03, 03:40 AM
DON'T hide the textures in long back stories, music, dances and stuff the players often don't remember. The players want to interact with people to get to their loot most of the time so maybe make the streets empty and shops closed on a sabbath when the players would expect them to be open

DO recognise the difference between 'roleplaying', 'fun difficulties', and 'too much unfun difficulties'.

Firstly, I assume the players know that culture etc will be a huge part of the game. Secondly, even if I knew the first pointer, I would expect the culture bit to come in during the adventuring itself. Not when I'm trying to sell my loot and retire for the night (which is often handwaved for the Rule of Fun).

Kami2awa
2015-11-03, 03:44 AM
DON'T be hyper-constrained by the culture you've picked. If your chosen civilisation didn't use metal armour but you want your fantasy counterpart to do so, let them! It's your world...

DO draw on myths from that culture as well as reality. Let the faux-Egyptians use sphinxes to guard their tombs, or the pseudo-Romans ride to war on griffins.

Florian
2015-11-03, 05:14 AM
Hm... This one will be hard to formulate, so bear with me.

DO:
Make it real, make it be part of reality.
If "Honor is a force stronger than steel", make it so. If "After valiant death in battle, the valkyres carry you to valhalla and you dine endlessly in the halls of odin", make that the literal truth.

This leads to:

DON'T:
Don't forget that there is actual Magic in a fantasy world. Don't overrate differences in technology when this option is availlable.
Fur-clad tribals vs. Knights in full plate armor? Doesn't make a difference when the fireballs start to explode...

Kami2awa
2015-11-03, 07:09 AM
DO quote "What is this 'Japan' of which you speak?" when someone at the table tries to correct you.

Hawkstar
2015-11-03, 08:33 AM
DON'T: Make Fantasy Japan inferior to Fantasy Europe just because you're sick of the inverse. Just because you don't want Katanas to be strong enough to slice through MBTs doesn't mean they should shatter on impact with a Cockney Accent.


Hm... This one will be hard to formulate, so bear with me.

DO:
Make it real, make it be part of reality.
If "Honor is a force stronger than steel", make it so. If "After valiant death in battle, the valkyres carry you to valhalla and you dine endlessly in the halls of odin", make that the literal truth.

This leads to:

DON'T:
Don't forget that there is actual Magic in a fantasy world. Don't overrate differences in technology when this option is availlable.
Fur-clad tribals vs. Knights in full plate armor? Doesn't make a difference when the fireballs start to explode...

This is very fun:
DO: Allow 20th Century America to stand in the same setting as 1300's Arabia and Europe and Imperial China AND Kublai or Genghis Khan's Mongols AND ancient Egyptians AND Hellenistic Greece AND Norse Raiders AND 41st Millenium Space Marines AND...

DO: Let magic (Overt and covert) and fantastic beasts make up for differences in technology.

Aircraft Carriers with Harrier Jets vs. Triremes with Gryphons are a go!

charcoalninja
2015-11-03, 08:42 AM
DO have a culture based on penguins.

Hmm, I wonder what that one will look like...

A culture so pacifist that they travel deliberately to the harshest, most terrifying climate on the planet to raise their young resulting in generations of people that truely treasure and value everything they have because they grew up in literally the worst place in the world...

Forging children with phenominal will to survive and resourcefulness without ever placing anyone in combat or interfearing with anyone else... That's pretty intriguing.

Dienekes
2015-11-03, 08:56 AM
I would advise that you DON'T make one fantasy race directly equivalent to one culture at all. Usually, in fantasy worlds, races coexist so closely to each other that you can't really justify vast differences in cultural signifiers due to the distances involved.

For example: if the orc warband's hideout is a day's ride out from your quaint English-style village with maypoles and thatched roof cottages, it'd be really freaking weird to find Native-American or Mongol-inspired orcs if this is a recurrent threat the village faces.

"Oh, yeah, we constantly trash the town-- our fathers and grandfathers have done so to, and their fathers and grandfathers shared in this tradition."

"How is it you have zero cultural cross-pollination?"

"Eeeeeeennnhhhh."

Doesn't make much sense, does it? So, I mean, you wanna make it so that there's some amount of... not-insanity, *or* finely mince your counterpart cultures to the point where they're no longer recognizable by regional tells.

If your orcs have metal swords and armor and stuff, do things like make them have highly mobile smithies, maybe operating out of the back of a wagon that's been retrofitted to do the job. If your system's polytheistic, make sure there's some mythological cross-polination going on.

Maybe do some research on ethnic differences within a culture that interests you, and draw inspiration from there, instead of just making massively geographically diverse cultures coexist without pollination. However, the caveat of "don't be racist" becomes, like, a million times more important.

So for example, if you've got Native American orcs, have Native American Elves and Humans as well, and make it so that members from different races are welcomed into tribes where they're non-predominant like what actually happened with Native American tribes. If you want conflict between them, make reference to a previous allegiance of tribes that delineated sectarian issues between them in the past. Like what actually happened with Native American tribes. And you can find historical examples of similar cultural clashes from around the world. Enough that, with a little bit of creativity, you can probably adapt the situation of one continent to the aesthetic of another.

Another thing: DO be willing to mix aesthetics with different cultural values. Maybe your high-fantasy European-looking culture has a rigid caste system and strong belief in reincarnation. Maybe the desert-dwelling tribes who ride on camels have a robust democracy based on communal values. Maybe the Mayaincatec group du jour has a strong emphasis on filial piety and takes cues from philosophies of Chinese Legalism. Why not? It's your world-- it subverts expectations.

This is not really all that weird in real life, within reason. For years the Vikings raided everything nearby every year and they remained distinct from the nearby cultures.

Or the various steppe groups which remained distinct from their nearest neighbors the Chinese, until they finally got around to conquering them.

Hell, books have been written by how vastly different the various Ancient Greek and Indian city states could be from each other and they were often less than a days ride away from each other.

Which isn't to say there's no cross culturization but they can remain distinct enough in a pinch.

Anyway, in a game my advice is just do what you want for your group. Don't worry about what random people on the internet have to say about your game so long as your players are having fun. You want to make your orcs Mongols? Go for it, honestly if you do that right you'll make the most disturbing and brutal depiction of orcs that your players have ever seen.

Just, if your players care about this sort of thing, try to add some depth to them all. No culture was defined by only one thing.

Strigon
2015-11-03, 08:59 AM
DO: Let magic (Overt and covert) and fantastic beasts make up for differences in technology.

Aircraft Carriers with Harrier Jets vs. Triremes with Gryphons are a go!

Magical beasts can only make up for so much discrepancy in technology - griffins wouldn't even get within a kilometer of the enemy in this case without being turned into pulp. In order for this to be a fair fight, they'd have to be dragons - and even then, it depends highly on the type of dragon; your bog-standard flying, fire-breathing lizards wouldn't stand a chance, for example, while magic-wielding ones could very well put up a huge fight, or even win.

Maybe a mithril-reinforced magical warship, loaded with dwarven-crafted siege weapons and air elementals, with something like a kraken for undersea backup?

Florian
2015-11-03, 09:13 AM
Magical beasts can only make up for so much discrepancy in technology - griffins wouldn't even get within a kilometer of the enemy in this case without being turned into pulp. In order for this to be a fair fight, they'd have to be dragons - and even then, it depends highly on the type of dragon; your bog-standard flying, fire-breathing lizards wouldn't stand a chance, for example, while magic-wielding ones could very well put up a huge fight, or even win.

Maybe a mithril-reinforced magical warship, loaded with dwarven-crafted siege weapons and air elementals, with something like a kraken for undersea backup?

Pretty much: No.
That is the misconception I talked about earlier. Setting expectations should always trump real world experience and expactations based on that. We do talk about a magical fantasy world there and we actually do not possess any kind of experience kn that rehard, so screw preconceptions.

VoxRationis
2015-11-03, 11:16 AM
Pretty much: No.
That is the misconception I talked about earlier. Setting expectations should always trump real world experience and expactations based on that. We do talk about a magical fantasy world there and we actually do not possess any kind of experience kn that rehard, so screw preconceptions.

Setting expectations are based on nothing. If a real-world experience is applicable to a situation within the setting, it is not automatically trumped by virtue of being inconveniently real. A griffon, unless it is ludicrously resistant (read: immune) to kinetic force and burns, or can fly at supersonic speeds, or can cast powerful and accurate destructive magics*, will not be able to compete with a fighter jet. At best it could dodge missile fire until the jet has expended its payload and/or fuel and has to go back to base, or splatter itself over the front of the jet and take the jet down with it.




*And while I'm sure that there are griffons in some work that exhibit these qualities, none of them are the assumed defaults.

Florian
2015-11-03, 12:22 PM
Setting expectations are based on nothing.

As creators, we are gods and define laws and physics.
If that goes against your personal SOD, go cry me a river but don't make your personal limitations my problems.

VoxRationis
2015-11-03, 12:53 PM
As creators, we are gods and define laws and physics.
If that goes against your personal SOD, go cry me a river but don't make your personal limitations my problems.

Ignoring your inflammatory wording, this isn't about laws and physics. It's about self-consistency within the setting. If you have both griffons and fighter jets in your setting, one or both of those two will have to work significantly differently from how they do normally (or in the case of griffons, how they are normally conceptualized, which is something you are of course free to change) in order for a head-to-head matchup between them to be remotely even. The griffon will not be able to do anything against a fighter jet unless it has one of the characteristics I noted in my earlier post*. And if it does have those characteristics on account of your creative choice regarding griffons in your settings, it has to consistently have those characteristics in order for your setting to be based on anything other than plot-demanded fiat. The griffon has to consistently be able to fly at several hundred miles per hour, or consistently be immune to fire (so fireball-tossing mages are going to have a rough time of it) and kinetic force (so good luck using many weapons, including things like catapult stones), or regularly use powerful and accurate destructive magics with ranges of many miles.

(*Conversely, you could say that for some reason, fighter jets don't have their normal speed, don't have target tracking at well beyond visual range, and don't have building-leveling weapons as their basic payload. In either case, one of the combatants is so different from their normal state that they strain the practical definitions of the words used to describe them.)

LudicSavant
2015-11-03, 12:56 PM
This is not really all that weird in real life, within reason. For years the Vikings raided everything nearby every year and they remained distinct from the nearby cultures.

The Greenland Norse seemed to have been so intent on not absorbing Inuit culture that they seem to have all starved to death because of it, according to Jared Diamond's "Collapse."

VoxRationis
2015-11-03, 01:00 PM
The Greenland Norse seemed to have been so intent on not absorbing Inuit culture that they seem to have all starved to death because of it, according to Jared Diamond's "Collapse."

And in Europe, they were absorbed into other cultures, at least partially. It wasn't too long before the Vikings who attacked the north coast of France started getting snooty about speaking French and gave up longship raiding for armored cavalry and castle building.

Dienekes
2015-11-03, 01:07 PM
The Greenland Norse seemed to have been so intent on not absorbing Inuit culture that they seem to have all starved to death because of it, according to Jared Diamond's "Collapse."

You can even go within the same city in late antiquity/early medieval period.

When the Goths established themselves as the kings of Rome they proudly remained separate in many ways from their Roman subjects, even the laws were designed to treat Gothic and Roman subjects differently, and the material wealth, religion, clothing, hairstyles, occupation, grave burials, and education all point to the two groups remaining separate but living peacefully together until the Byzantine invaded in the Gothic Wars.

Strigon
2015-11-03, 01:33 PM
As creators, we are gods and define laws and physics.
If that goes against your personal SOD, go cry me a river but don't make your personal limitations my problems.

What you're saying is you can make anything arbitrarily powerful. Which isn't necessarily wrong, but you don't just get to say "well, you're wrong because that's not how it works in my world because I don't have your personal limitations."
When discussing this, there are certain conventions we have to take for granted; griffins are generally no more magical than simply being a result of a handful of creatures magically bred into one. As such they generally aren't much more tough than a lion that can fly.
When we talk about this, we're taking the "average" fantasy universe, and in the "average" fantasy universe, they can be taken down by a skilled or lucky longbowman. The fact that you don't want that to be true is irrelevant. Now it gets different if you're talking about what a griffin could have that would make them up to the challenge, but you've already shot that down for some reason.

Finally, there's no reason to be so abrasive; this is a (somewhat) intellectual space.

Florian
2015-11-03, 01:51 PM
@Vox Rationes:

No, this is about the source material and how you handle it. What you propose is building "physics" from the ground up and see where we end with it.
What I propose is that we declare something as true and model the physics to fit to it.

So while I can understand that you look at, say, a vulcan chaingun and what it does and declare a griffon unfit to evade it, that is based on _our_ physics, something that doesn't need to be true in a purely fictional fantasy world.

@Strigon:

We're talking about world building here, and that includes shaping how things work and how rules should a) work to interact with it and b) should possibly work to model it.

There is no arbitrary part to that.

That has nothing to do woth making something more or less powerful than another thing. It has to do with placing how things work in relation to each other and how possible plausal chains could evolve if these things interact. It is just stating "This is how it is, no need to question the current state of things" and then finding out how to model that.

We could go deeper into that topic by focusing how genre would also tend to work into this.

BRC
2015-11-03, 02:06 PM
What you're saying is you can make anything arbitrarily powerful. Which isn't necessarily wrong, but you don't just get to say "well, you're wrong because that's not how it works in my world because I don't have your personal limitations."
When discussing this, there are certain conventions we have to take for granted; griffins are generally no more magical than simply being a result of a handful of creatures magically bred into one. As such they generally aren't much more tough than a lion that can fly.
When we talk about this, we're taking the "average" fantasy universe, and in the "average" fantasy universe, they can be taken down by a skilled or lucky longbowman. The fact that you don't want that to be true is irrelevant. Now it gets different if you're talking about what a griffin could have that would make them up to the challenge, but you've already shot that down for some reason.

Finally, there's no reason to be so abrasive; this is a (somewhat) intellectual space.
I must agree.

Even in a fantasy setting, suspension of disbelief is still a thing. You can stretch it farther and farther by making the setting more fantastical, but players (Your audience,here) are going to assume that the world functions on some approximation of the laws of physics as we know them.

If you say " A Griffon", your players are going to imagine an eagle-lion things, it can fly, bite things, and claw things. If you do something to one that would kill a lion, it dies.
If you say "A fighter Jet", your players are going to imagine a fighter jet.

Now, you can certainly have a Griffon defeat a Fighter Jet, but you will need to redefine either "Griffon" or "Fighter Jet".

For example, perhaps in your setting Griffons are avatars of elemental Air, capable of commanding thunderstorms and cyclones. A fighter jet would get battered out of the sky by magically conjured tornado-force winds, or struck by magically guided lightning. Meanwhile, those same winds carry the Griffon aloft at incredible speeds, making it almost impossible to hit.

That works, but that involves redefining "Griffon" past what people will assume you're talking about.


But, the more you redefine, the harder it will be for your audience (Players) to keep track of your setting. This is why preconceived expectations are useful, they make it easier to process the setting. Everything you redefine make the setting more and more complicated.

For example, you tell the players that "Obviously, the citizens elected the Swordmaster to be their leader"

The players are confused. No matter how good he is with a sword, that does not necessarily mean he would be a good leader. Then you say "Oh, sorry, in this setting, "Swordmaster" is a title given to somebody who controls one of twelve very powerful sentient Artifact swords. The swords share their centuries of widsom and experience with their wielder, and only allow themselves to be wielded by somebody who is virtuous and wise."

The more things you redefine, the harder it is to keep everything straight. Eventually, you find yourself saying things like "The Paladin (King's Champion, NOT a holy warrior with divine powers), riding a Griffon (Ancient and powerful avatar of Air, NOT just a lion-eagle hybrid) flew to the Citadel to ask the Archmage (The official title of the Royal Court's magical advisor, not a powerful Mage ) how best to handle a Swordmaster (Virtuous and Wise person chosen by a powerful sentient artifact sword, NOT just an expert in wielding a sword)"

Cluedrew
2015-11-03, 02:28 PM
I was going to say some things about redefining things but BRC beat me to it. But I have one more.

I will say in particular you should be able to define thing work on the "common" scale. That is to say on the scale that people live and act on as well as the one that gives them most of their observations. You can black box things on different scales because we can get through the day without understanding celestial mechanics or quantum physics but if we don't understand how to open doors there will be issues. So we, and the people in any fictional setting you create and the non-fictional people trying to interact with that world (as players or just as observers) understand how the world operates on a practical level.

Basically what this means is if someone with a machine gun and a someone with brass knuckles have a 50/50 shot at victory you might want a better explanation than "their attack stats are the same". Which works in card games but when you are down there trying to interact with those things you might want something like "the knuckles fighters is inhumanly fast/tough".

As for the main topic... I think it has all been said.

Florian
2015-11-03, 02:39 PM
Sorry, but we're porting things over and then we put them in relation to each other, right?

I use the "Griffin" as a generic example. Feel free to replace it with anything else.

These things are true: "Nothing could ever touch or harm the griffin". "The heroes accomplished to slay the griffin".

So, to stay with the extreme examples, we have hero > griffin > iowa class battleship > hero.

I'm just saying that when we work with "these things are true", then we can't consider SOD as a basis, as we need to model stuff so that the "true" part will hold.

So, said griffing should have "Immuniy: Battleship" and "Vulnerability: Hero" to model this, instead of going the usual 3.5 way to upgrade HD and CR to absurd amounts.

Let us loop back at that point to the start of this argument, beginning with "make it so": that is not really about SOD, but about making a statement be "true".

Cluedrew
2015-11-03, 02:53 PM
So, said griffing should have "Immuniy: Battleship" and "Vulnerability: Hero"I follow you but I would like to ask: Where does the griffin get its immunises and vulnerabilities? We can say that a battleship is in an ineffective weapon against griffins but what makes that so? A ent may have "Vulnerability: Fire" but that makes sense because ents are flammable. In fact usually vulnerabilities and the like seem to be invented to model these intuitive aspects.

Florian
2015-11-03, 03:07 PM
I follow you but I would like to ask: Where does the griffin get its immunises and vulnerabilities? We can say that a battleship is in an ineffective weapon against griffins but what makes that so? A ent may have "Vulnerability: Fire" but that makes sense because ents are flammable. In fact usually vulnerabilities and the like seem to be invented to model these intuitive aspects.

So, that was a somewhat rough example.
It's all about context and keeping that context relevant. See, with the Savage Worlds system, there is a proverb: Convert the setting, not the rules.
Ok, personally, I can't stand SaWo, but there's certainly truth in that proverb.

Let us stick to the topic and say: Spartans look fun. Let's import them into the setting. Well, the spartans were the greatest warriors alive, so they should hold up to that claim.

Now, if we don't play in the Iron Age and the Phalanx isn't the greatest military invention, we need to think how we can import this "truth" into our intended setting, without sacrifizing the flavour of the Spartans for the intended rules, right?

Strigon
2015-11-03, 03:09 PM
Sorry, but we're porting things over and then we put them in relation to each other, right?

More or less, yes.


I use the "Griffin" as a generic example. Feel free to replace it with anything else.

These things are true: "Nothing could ever touch or harm the griffin". "The heroes accomplished to slay the griffin".

In what reality? With what exceptions? As you've mentioned, mythology can have any number of rules. This could be true in your fantasy world, but in mine a griffin might be threatened by a stiff breeze - neither is wrong, but neither is particularly right, either.



So, to stay with the extreme examples, we have hero > griffin > iowa class battleship > hero.

Um... okay. I'm not sure where you got this or where you were going with this, honestly.



I'm just saying that when we work with "these things are true", then we can't consider SOD as a basis, as we need to model stuff so that the "true" part will hold.

So, said griffing should have "Immuniy: Battleship" and "Vulnerability: Hero" to model this, instead of going the usual 3.5 way to upgrade HD and CR to absurd amounts.

But then you need a reasonable explanation; why can the heroes hurt a griffin, but cannons from a battleship can't? There are explanations, but they involve taking what people know to be a griffin and changing the rules. Griffins are considered to be relatively mundane beings - not inherently magical, just existing as a byproduct of magic. You need to change that to make them immune to battleships. It's not like, for example, a unicorn, which often has the potential to wield magic, it's just big and strong.



Let us loop back at that point to the start of this argument, beginning with "make it so": that is not really about SOD, but about making a statement be "true".

But you must take a look at the context. You could say that, in certain worlds, a griffin would win, and you might be right. But it was never about specific worlds, and as such we can only work within a set framework of what a griffin can be and do.

Allow me to make an analogy; imagine you cannot eat meat. Now imagine I offered to make you a pie. It would be very peculiar of you to refuse my pie on the basis that you cannot eat meat; granted, there are many types of pies, some of which will contain meat, but the "standard pie" - what people think about when you say "pie" without any qualifications - is a crust filled with fruit or berries. You can, in theory, have a pie with anything inside, but unless you qualify that from the start, misunderstandings are sure to happen.

BRC
2015-11-03, 03:30 PM
So, that was a somewhat rough example.
It's all about context and keeping that context relevant. See, with the Savage Worlds system, there is a proverb: Convert the setting, not the rules.
Ok, personally, I can't stand SaWo, but there's certainly truth in that proverb.

Let us stick to the topic and say: Spartans look fun. Let's import them into the setting. Well, the spartans were the greatest warriors alive, so they should hold up to that claim.

Now, if we don't play in the Iron Age and the Phalanx isn't the greatest military invention, we need to think how we can import this "truth" into our intended setting, without sacrifizing the flavour of the Spartans for the intended rules, right?
It sounds like you're talking about warping a setting around a few absolute statements, like "Spartans are the greatest warriors in the world".
Which is a premise I find deeply flawed, because Absolutes, especially forced absolutes, make for a poor setting.

There is a big difference between the following statements. "Spartans are Great warriors" and "Spartans are the greatest warriors in the world". One is a statement, the other is an absolute.
A solitary Spartan warrior vs a mongolian horse archer is going to lose. Even if you give the Spartan a horse, the Mongolian's greater skill at fighting on horseback will let him ride circles around his foe.


Now, on to the more practical questions. How do you keep what makes Spartans cool without making your setting iron-age greece. Lets put Spartans into a more traditional Medival-fantasy setting, but keep them as "The Greatest Warriors on the planet".

Well, first of all, we're not picking up the Spartans and dropping them into our setting, we're making a culture BASED on Spartans. We don't care about intense historical accuracy so much as the combination of the whole Classical Greece aesthetic combined with a culture focused on producing skilled warriors.

Well, the Aesthetic: Armor, Shield, Spear, Sword, can be consistent in a world with an otherwise medieval aesthetic. Swords are still sharp, helmets still protect the head, and while I'm sure there are some serious advantages to medieval armor design over ancient greek, for the purposes of an RPG setting we can say that a breastplate is a breastplate and a helmet is a helmet. Same goes with the rest of their kit, a spear is a spear, a sword is a sword, a shield is a shield whether it is round or kite-shaped.

Now, they're the "Strongest Warriors in the World". They can still have this reputation, even if they would lose to, say, horse-archers in an open plain. Sparta was fairly mountainous, making the Phalanx an excellent tactic for their territory. People can acknowledge, the world over, that Spartans are great warriors honed by a lifetime of battle, without it necessarily being true that a Spartan will win any one-on-one engagement.

This is especially easy in Heroic fantasy, where large-scale battles are focused on less than the actions of a few individuals. You can take an individual Spartan warrior out of the Phalanx and have them be really good with a sword and shield. Swords and Shields stayed on the battlefield long after Sparta was at it's height after all.

The result is that you get what you care about: A city-state noted for it's skilled warriors that looks like what everybody imagines when they think of ancient Greece, without warping your setting around the Truth that "Spartans are the Greatest Warriors in the World".

Florian
2015-11-03, 03:35 PM
@Strigon:

We're talking about Counterpart Cultures here, and porting them to the "now" of a fantasy world. This may or may include real or mythical parts of "our" shared history.

Now we do know how things worked out in history and we do tend to think in the same terms when we port things over.
(Yeah, some poor indigs vs. conquistadores? No chance!)
We do base our SOD on that.

Now, I posid that "porting things over" doesn't mean what our knowledge of history and personal SOD tells us, at least if we want to stay true to the spirit of what we port over.
We must disregard our knowledge and look at the mysterie of the thing, the legend, of the intend what we aim it to be and work with that.

So, if we go shopping and pick arthurian knights of the round table, late medieval gothic knights, early mayan culture, Neil Gaimans Neverwhere and throw it all togetjer to be a setting where everything is "true", we must compromize on our SOD by acting to even things out based on how they should be as imGines, not based on what we do know happened.

@BRC:

Ah, no.

What I do is taking a Counterpart Coulture and lift it into a setting, keeping it alive because I think it should be there, disregarding what history did to said culture. And yeah, simply becUse I do want to phave them in.

Else, we can only emulate/simulate stuff we know from our history, which would be a shame.

BRC
2015-11-03, 03:51 PM
@BRC:

Ah, no.

What I do is taking a Counterpart Coulture and lift it into a setting, keeping it alive because I think it should be there, disregarding what history did to said culture. And yeah, simply becUse I do want to phave them in.

Else, we can only emulate/simulate stuff we know from our history, which would be a shame.

Wait, what do you mean by a Counterpart Culture?

"Fantasy Counterpart Culture", as it is commonly used, refers to a fantasy culture based to some degree on an existing real world culture. For example, in The Elder Scrolls series, the Imperials are a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of the Roman Empire.

Although I suppose there is no reason you cannot create a counterpart culture for a culture from another fictional setting.

But yeah, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "Lift it into a setting". You can put whatever you want into your settings, things just need to be consistent enough that your players can suspend their disbelief.

nrg89
2015-11-03, 04:11 PM
DO recognise the difference between 'roleplaying', 'fun difficulties', and 'too much unfun difficulties.

If you read my entire post and don't chop it off mid-paragraph, you would see that remark is uncalled for. I said that you should do it embracing a work-around or with an equal, unusual but apparent alternative accessible to your players as close as I could get to explicitly spell it out.

Lvl 2 Expert
2015-11-03, 06:06 PM
Yeah, white South African, Industrial Age English or Pinkerton-style strike breaker orcs make much more sense.

White trash punk orcs! Whole neighborhoods of them in the bad parts of town. Generally hard working, mildly irritable and either honest or just too stupid to con someone.

No, you really don't want to hear my ideas for ghetto ogres or the inhabitants of gobbotown.

Ralanr
2015-11-03, 08:12 PM
White trash punk orcs! Whole neighborhoods of them in the bad parts of town. Generally hard working, mildly irritable and either honest or just too stupid to con someone.

No, you really don't want to hear my ideas for ghetto ogres or the inhabitants of gobbotown.

Yes, I do.

Florian
2015-11-04, 03:12 AM
@BRC

The difference between giving something a simple paint job or reskinning it or trying to capture the essence of the thing you want to transport.

So, for example, someone seems to have had similiar thoughts by adding the paladin and ranger as subclasses to the fighter to better play some knight of the round table or aragorn styled character, as the fighter seems not to support that enough.

Now, lets take a look at the samurai and focus on the whole honor and bushido thing that seems to be associated with it.
To pick up on the fighter example, a samurai class has been branched off of the cavalier main class, moving more into the traditional weapons and discarding the lance. So far, so good.

What is missing, though, is the whole thing about honor and bushido. It's simply not there, therefore not having the effects atteibuted to it, meaning "not true" for the game world.

Sure, you can and should roleplay that. I think this is a recommended requirement that only gets discarded in a heavy optimization enviroment when the fluff and meening is peeled from the pure mechnaics, but still, you didn't manage to "lift" the whole thing into your setting, only reskinned something alteady existing.

(Paizo went the usual road of simply creating two deities associated with bushido in its good/evil incarnation. At least they manahed to mention that besides that, there is a warrior philosophy around...)

Now, I think we had a little bit of misscommunication along the line. I don't propose arbitrarily empowering an option, what I do want is parity between the options. So yes, that can mean deliberatelly breaking the SoD out of necessity.
Let me explain and please note that I don't focus on SimWorld but using that stuff in actual play, inzended to be used by players:
If we pick stuff from our history, based on different cultures, time periods or technology levels and we base our fantasy countercultures on it (i.e. Orcs on pictish tribes, Hobgoblins on mongols, Bugbears on aztecs, Humans on late medieval germany, Elves on early rennaisance spain, and so on) and we don't gake steps to mitigate the actual differences that naturally come along with the base material, parity will never be reached.

For example, take a look at the armour options that come along with the base material. This ranges from a naked guy with blue war paint to gothic full plate. I think it's fair to say that the player who wants tho play the pictish orc is in it for the war paint and doesn't want his character to wear full plate because the war paint doesn't cut it, right? No parity in there. With parity, I don't imply automatic equality of the thing itself, but thinking about finding ways to make both options equally viable. For example, they tried to do that with the Monk Wis to AC mechanics and the Barbarian with his DR.

Tying both parts together: When I pick the sengoku period and place my counterculture on it, incorporating samurai and all the notions and mystical stuff that comes along with it, then I should strife to make "Honor is a force more powerfull than steel" to be "true" in the setting, by acknowledging that it is there and working out a mechanic like addition honor points to AC for an umarmoured samurai or some such.

PersonMan
2015-11-04, 03:57 AM
I'd say that depends a lot on the setting you want to make.

A world where honor is something some people strive for and idealists believe in while those theoretically bound by it regularly place life and limb over the honorable thing to do is going to be a very different one from a place where honor is literally the thing that makes you a strong enough warrior to keep your high place in society. A political intrigue game will likely shy away from making someone's honor something that can be tested or seen by having them fight, for example, to avoid 'you are accused of dishonorable things? Well, cut this pillar in two with your Honor Slash to prove your innocence'.

LudicSavant
2015-11-04, 06:19 AM
And in Europe, they were absorbed into other cultures, at least partially. It wasn't too long before the Vikings who attacked the north coast of France started getting snooty about speaking French and gave up longship raiding for armored cavalry and castle building.

Yeah they totally acculturated with Christian Europe.

Florian
2015-11-04, 06:47 AM
@PersonMan:

Let's expand that topic a bit. I totally agree with you that there's a world of difference between style and substance, with a lot of shades inbetween.
If you dig a look and want to have that in the game without a hassle, do that!
The point I keep stressing is how to approach things if you want to have these things be more than skin deep, be relevant and possibly even influence how the game is played and what you have to keep in mind for that.

You actually made me laugh out loud with your example.
I gm'ed a rather long-running L5R campaign based on political intrigue and the acquisition of power. So, as is usual for me, I took all that stuff that is implied by the setting and set it up as being metaphysically true. The first couple of session were conducted with "training wheels on", as I know that people can have a difficult time adapting to that. Even then, though, we lost two players early on, who couldn't cope with that or felt incomfortable with the needed POV.
One of them had problems coming to terms that you hold your position by divine mandate. Mind, not with the notion that you can rise or fall by your own power, but that divinity and fate accept your deeds and all is as it should be.
The other player had a problem coming to terms with the concept behind dueling. By divine mandate, whoever wins a duel is right. Not right in the sense that the other participant has to shut up and stop argueing, but right in the sense that something has been proven to be true and it would be delusional to think otherwise.

FlumphPaladin
2015-11-04, 07:45 AM
White trash punk orcs! Whole neighborhoods of them in the bad parts of town. Generally hard working, mildly irritable and either honest or just too stupid to con someone.

No, you really don't want to hear my ideas for ghetto ogres or the inhabitants of gobbotown.


Yes, I do.

Seconded.

Are the white trash punk orcs related to redneck orcs? On one hand, they're unhygienic and uneducated, with no means to change that (and even less desire to), but on the other, they're completely unpretentious and straightforward, and surprisingly generous... as long as you're not an ogre.

Lvl 2 Expert
2015-11-04, 08:29 AM
Seconded.

Are the white trash punk orcs related to redneck orcs? On one hand, they're unhygienic and uneducated, with no means to change that (and even less desire to), but on the other, they're completely unpretentious and straightforward, and surprisingly generous... as long as you're not an ogre.

Damn, now I really want to play in that setting. I might start with a grizzled dwarf cop one day away from retirement getting out of a his car with his new nerdy halfling partner to stop an ogre gang fight. Let's hope he lives to have another adventure, I hear FC Boromir is coming to the stadium this friday, those riots should be fun.

Logosloki
2015-11-04, 09:08 AM
<snip>
Allow me to make an analogy; imagine you cannot eat meat. Now imagine I offered to make you a pie. It would be very peculiar of you to refuse my pie on the basis that you cannot eat meat; granted, there are many types of pies, some of which will contain meat, but the "standard pie" - what people think about when you say "pie" without any qualifications - is a crust filled with fruit or berries. You can, in theory, have a pie with anything inside, but unless you qualify that from the start, misunderstandings are sure to happen.

This must be one of those cultural centric things. "Pie" in my country is a crust filled with a meat filling, usually with cheese and/or vegetables with a small amount of gravy just to bind the ingredients but not enough to seep. You would have to specify "Fruit Pie" to give a person an indicator that the pie is not going to be savoury. Their expectation would then be Apple and/or Berries. Or, you could specify "Fruit Mince Pie" which is more of a christmas treat but some people do quite like them outside of summer.

Ralanr
2015-11-04, 09:11 AM
This must be one of those cultural centric things. "Pie" in my country is a crust filled with a meat filling, usually with cheese and/or vegetables with a small amount of gravy just to bind the ingredients but not enough to seep. You would have to specify "Fruit Pie" to give a person an indicator that the pie is not going to be savoury. Their expectation would then be Apple and/or Berries. Or, you could specify "Fruit Mince Pie" which is more of a christmas treat but some people do quite like them outside of summer.

Learn something new about cultures everyday. I can't say that meat pies are more common over fruit pies where I'm from.

This makes me want pumpkin pie.

Strigon
2015-11-04, 09:21 AM
This must be one of those cultural centric things. "Pie" in my country is a crust filled with a meat filling, usually with cheese and/or vegetables with a small amount of gravy just to bind the ingredients but not enough to seep. You would have to specify "Fruit Pie" to give a person an indicator that the pie is not going to be savoury. Their expectation would then be Apple and/or Berries. Or, you could specify "Fruit Mince Pie" which is more of a christmas treat but some people do quite like them outside of summer.

I didn't realize that. May I ask where you live?
Fortunately, my point still stands, but in the reverse direction; you should be expecting, in your country, a meat pie without any qualifications.

Anyway, in response to the earlier point about making all options viable, that's not wrong. But doing it by making griffins be able to stand toe-to-toe with fighter jets seems absurd; there are plenty of areas in which griffins may outclass fighter jets already, without making them ridiculously powerful.
For example, a griffin can take off from a standstill, and even faster than a helicopter. Once flying, it can fly either like a traditional bird, or it can hover. It's far more quiet than either a helicopter or a jet, it's lighter, it's easier to camouflage on the ground, and if it has to remain grounded, it's still an effective fighter; the same cannot be said for helicopters or jets.
And there you have it; when used properly the griffin can outperform modern military technology. This has the added bonus of not requiring much suspension of disbelief, whereas you'd have to come up with a pretty convincing reason why griffins can outperform missiles and 20mm cannons in a straight fight.

Hawkstar
2015-11-04, 09:28 AM
I didn't realize that. May I ask where you live?
Fortunately, my point still stands, but in the reverse direction; you should be expecting, in your country, a meat pie without any qualifications.

Anyway, in response to the earlier point about making all options viable, that's not wrong. But doing it by making griffins be able to stand toe-to-toe with fighter jets seems absurd; there are plenty of areas in which griffins may outclass fighter jets already, without making them ridiculously powerful.
For example, a griffin can take off from a standstill, and even faster than a helicopter. Once flying, it can fly either like a traditional bird, or it can hover. It's far more quiet than either a helicopter or a jet, it's lighter, it's easier to camouflage on the ground, and if it has to remain grounded, it's still an effective fighter; the same cannot be said for helicopters or jets.
And there you have it; when used properly the griffin can outperform modern military technology. This has the added bonus of not requiring much suspension of disbelief, whereas you'd have to come up with a pretty convincing reason why griffins can outperform missiles and 20mm cannons in a straight fight.Simple: Gryphons are intelligent. It's not any ordinary gryphon that can stand against a Fighter Jet... but a hero can (Especially if it's clad in magic bronze armor, and also has a Heroic Rider with a magic bow)

Ralanr
2015-11-04, 10:03 AM
Simple: Gryphons are intelligent. It's not any ordinary gryphon that can stand against a Fighter Jet... but a hero can (Especially if it's clad in magic bronze armor, and also has a Heroic Rider with a magic bow)

Hmm...I can't think you might be biased towards griffins. But I can't quite tell how...well said Mr. Griffin.

goto124
2015-11-04, 10:04 AM
*cue the GM banning monster races*

FlumphPaladin
2015-11-04, 10:17 AM
Damn, now I really want to play in that setting. I might start with a grizzled dwarf cop one day away from retirement getting out of a his car with his new nerdy halfling partner to stop an ogre gang fight. Let's hope he lives to have another adventure, I hear FC Boromir is coming to the stadium this friday, those riots should be fun.

I really don't want to say so, because of how easy it sounds to slip into things which we've said to avoid in this thread, but that sounds like so much fun.

Strigon
2015-11-04, 10:17 AM
Simple: Gryphons are intelligent. It's not any ordinary gryphon that can stand against a Fighter Jet... but a hero can (Especially if it's clad in magic bronze armor, and also has a Heroic Rider with a magic bow)

But that's nothing to do with the griffin, it's only to do with the magical items.

FlumphPaladin
2015-11-04, 10:26 AM
I didn't realize that. May I ask where you live?
Fortunately, my point still stands, but in the reverse direction; you should be expecting, in your country, a meat pie without any qualifications.

From the statement about pie, and that Christmas appears to be in the summer, I would venture a guess that logosloki lives in
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/warriorz-fanfiction/images/9/90/STRAYA_MATE.png

Strigon
2015-11-04, 10:37 AM
From the statement about pie, and that Christmas appears to be in the summer...

Well there's a clue I completely missed.
I really should read more carefully before asking for clarification, sometimes...

Anyway, to the topic at hand!
Do:
Make sure to include enough differences that the culture feels alien to us. Mixing and matching cultures is a start, but I don't think it quite gives enough of an alien feel; make some new (but internally consistent) cultural norms in addition to borrowing from human cultures. If you can't come up with something you feel confident in, find some really obscure culture and take from them.

Don't:
Forget to mention these differences when the characters should know them - especially if your players clue in to the "counterpart". For example, if your "Feudal Japan" is known to be populated with liars and thieves, then your players should know that honour isn't something they should be expecting others to adhere to up front.

goto124
2015-11-04, 10:52 AM
Do: Ensure that when your fantasy culture is a mismash of different aspects of RL cultures, describe said fantasy culture to your players as... well... that.

VoxRationis
2015-11-04, 11:53 AM
Sure, you can and should roleplay that. I think this is a recommended requirement that only gets discarded in a heavy optimization enviroment when the fluff and meening is peeled from the pure mechnaics, but still, you didn't manage to "lift" the whole thing into your setting, only reskinned something alteady existing.

You're taking the "fluff is meaningless" mantra of GitP a little too much to heart. A concept or culture doesn't have to be mechanically integrated to be important in a roleplaying game.



Now, I think we had a little bit of misscommunication along the line. I don't propose arbitrarily empowering an option, what I do want is parity between the options. So yes, that can mean deliberatelly breaking the SoD out of necessity.

But the process of ensuring parity between inherently disparate options requires arbitrarily empowering one of the options! It requires a thought process that begins with the statement "I want Mounted Toothpick Combat to be just as strong as pike and shot" and giving toothpicks power out of nowhere to make that true.


Let me explain and please note that I don't focus on SimWorld but using that stuff in actual play, inzended to be used by players:
And there's your problem. I've seen hints of it in your posts about slapping "Immunity: Battleship" tags on griffons, but now you've confirmed it: you're thinking entirely about making little perfectly-balanced gears to play with and not about the fact that a roleplaying game exists in a larger world that has to make sense.

Hawkstar
2015-11-04, 04:35 PM
But that's nothing to do with the griffin, it's only to do with the magical items.

Yes it does. Without the Gryphon, there are no magic items. And it can melee pretty fiercely, which planes aren't all that great at outside of just ramming.

But the process of ensuring parity between inherently disparate options requires arbitrarily empowering one of the options! It requires a thought process that begins with the statement "I want Mounted Toothpick Combat to be just as strong as pike and shot" and giving toothpicks power out of nowhere to make that true.
Not "out of nowhere" - drawn from myth and legend and symbolism and other fantastic stuff.

Strigon
2015-11-04, 04:54 PM
Yes it does. Without the Gryphon, there are no magic items. And it can melee pretty fiercely, which planes aren't all that great at outside of just ramming.

I'm clearly missing something.
What does a griffin have to do with a magical bow, a hero, or magical armour?

Also, melee isn't all that great against fighter jets or warships, on account of them being... well, fighter jets and warships.

Hawkstar
2015-11-04, 05:03 PM
I'm clearly missing something.
What does a griffin have to do with a magical bow, a hero, or magical armour?
The gryphon is a hero, with a hero riding it. A landbound hero cannot reach a plane even with a bow, nor dodge in 3 dimensions. Armor helps shrug off missiles and bullets that can't be dodged.

Strigon
2015-11-04, 05:12 PM
The gryphon is a hero, with a hero riding it. A landbound hero cannot reach a plane even with a bow, nor dodge in 3 dimensions. Armor helps shrug off missiles and bullets that can't be dodged.

But missiles that would target a griffin would be made to hit a jet; a jet is far more maneuverable than a griffin. It simply couldn't dodge with any reliability. Far better to be on the ground and hope to take cover.

And, even if the griffin and rider survived, they'd definitely be thrown apart.

Finally, with jets having a much higher flight ceiling, and being much faster, they'd dictate the range of the encounter. Which means that, griffin or no griffin, the encounter would take place at the same distance, whether that's inside or outside the magic bow's range.

goto124
2015-11-04, 09:00 PM
you're thinking entirely about making little perfectly-balanced gears to play with and not about the fact that a roleplaying game exists in a larger world that has to make sense.

Erm... do we want an 'unbalanced' game? Or a game full of 'trap options' that have great fluff but are mechnically unsound?

Or do the players have to sort that out by themselves?

Strigon
2015-11-04, 09:43 PM
Erm... do we want an 'unbalanced' game? Or a game full of 'trap options' that have great fluff but are mechnically unsound?

Or do the players have to sort that out by themselves?

Works in D&D!

In all seriousness, it's as simple as giving each option a different area of strength; back to the jets vs griffins, it's not unreasonable that the griffins would be destroyed in a straight up fight, but they have other benefits in that they require far less maintenance and are much better suited to guerrilla warfare, or fighting in dense environments.
Having the Jets -> Heroes -> Griffins -> Jets methodology turns it into a glorified game of Rock, Paper, Scissors - or, at the very least, Pokemon.

VoxRationis
2015-11-04, 10:29 PM
Erm... do we want an 'unbalanced' game? Or a game full of 'trap options' that have great fluff but are mechnically unsound?

Or do the players have to sort that out by themselves?

In a roleplaying game, one's "options" are so wide-open that to balance all of them would be ludicrous. A player can do all kinds of stupid things—it is not the prerogative of the game designers or the GM to make them all viable choices. Furthermore, as Strigon said, there are plenty of advantages to having a griffon over using a fighter jet—easier to hide, easier to maintain, requires no technological expertise to reproduce—they're just in different areas of strategy than head-to-head combat.

goto124
2015-11-04, 10:51 PM
When I mentioned 'trap options', I was thinking of 3.5e (many forumers say this edition has plenty of bad options) vs 5e (same forumers mention that you'll have to be deliberately trying to end up useless, meaning you'll hace at least a decent character).

VoxRationis
2015-11-05, 12:27 AM
@goto124: I understand what you're talking about, and I do think that it's not a good thing to have things presented as workable that turn out not to be. I just think that a) the concept doesn't really apply to this particular instance, since it's not a character build flaw if you decide to ride a griffon against a supersonic jet; and b) a game shouldn't prohibit you from doing something monumentally ineffective (such as the aforementioned Mounted Toothpick Combat), but it's not obligated to save you from yourself.

Hawkstar
2015-11-05, 08:33 AM
We're not talking about individuals (Well... I'm not). We're (I am) talking about whole cultures, which, in fantasy, should have a level of parity, even if they require intrinsic magic to work.

Fantasy isn't powered by laws of physics and rationality - it's powered by ideals, themes, and symbols. Sure, physics, science, etc are valid themes, symbols, and ideals that fantasy runs on, but they don't have to be the only ones. Sure, "Pike+Shot" might beat "Mounted Toothpicks"... but "Noble and chivalrous Knights on valiant steeds" beats "Peasants with pointy sticks and metal peashooters."

Let's look at Trireme vs. Nuclear Aircraft. We all know what a no-brainer that is in reality... but in fantasy?
Aircraft Carrier:
"Meh": it's a giant chunk of metal powered by a bomb.
"Worst": A technological terror of a seaborne superweapon, forged from metal ripped from the earth and harnessing the dangerous power of the destruction of natural elements, capable of dominating the land from sea and sky, suppressing the self-determination of all 'lesser' nations.
"Best": One of the pinnacles of modern engineering - a veritable floating city capable of influencing the world from deep at sea, drawing perhaps the greatest source of power ever discovered. [Spiel about the values of American Freedom it spreads throughout the world]

Trireme:
"Meh": a small piece of waterlogged timber in a very big puddle.
"Worst": [The worst aspects, themes, and implications of Greek society]
"Best": A mighty, maneuverable vessel carved from the finest Arcadian Timber, grown by the light of Apollo himself, and built by the skilled mathematicians and shipwrights of Athens [Insert Praise for Athens' mythical virtues here], powered by the strong hearts, backs, and arms of almost two hundred Free Greeks, under the command of a man of skill that nearly rivals the Gods.

Depending on the themes powering the world, the 'best' Trireme actually stands a chance against the 'worst' or 'meh' Aircraft Carrier. (Against the Aircraft Carrier at its worst, it would be a literally epic battle)

I'm tempted to use the U.S.S. Constitution as an example - in the real world, it's a waterlogged relic with a bunch of sentimental value, but no modern combat ability. Fantasy Old Ironsides, though? It's a legendary artifact of a ship - Even modern armaments would fail to damage its oaken hull, and a broadside of cannonfire from it would damage battlecruisers.

And going back to "Spartan Warrior vs. Mongol Horse Archer"... well, it depends on the horse archer. Sure, Horse Archer can predictably defeat a Greek Hoplite... but not a Spartan (The mythical version, not the Ancient version of North Korea they really were), who's skill with his aspis and his bronze armor would protect him from the archer's arrows, and his skill with his sword and shield would bring him to triumph over the mounted warrior. A whole Mongol Horde against the Spartans would give the latter some shade to fight in as they make horsekebabs.

Joe the Rat
2015-11-05, 09:05 AM
This must be one of those cultural centric things. "Pie" in my country is a crust filled with a meat filling, usually with cheese and/or vegetables with a small amount of gravy just to bind the ingredients but not enough to seep. You would have to specify "Fruit Pie" to give a person an indicator that the pie is not going to be savoury. Their expectation would then be Apple and/or Berries. Or, you could specify "Fruit Mince Pie" which is more of a christmas treat but some people do quite like them outside of summer.


Learn something new about cultures everyday. I can't say that meat pies are more common over fruit pies where I'm from.

This makes me want pumpkin pie.
'round these parts, you'd be looking for a "pot pie" for your meaty goodness - though they tend to be a bit more gravy than what you're looking for.


That's probably an important consideration in your counterparts: You can have a common language, and a different vocabulary. I was looking for an alternate name for "humans" for one of my wood elf tribes. Now I have one: Bugbears (they're big, stocky and hairy... compared to elves).

Florian
2015-11-05, 09:29 AM
@VoxRationis:

goto124 pretty much got what I was referencing to.

There's a huge difference between idle world building and the process of game building, as the focus is on very different aspects and you have very different needs to cater to.

Strigon
2015-11-05, 10:36 AM
We're not talking about individuals (Well... I'm not). We're (I am) talking about whole cultures, which, in fantasy, should have a level of parity, even if they require intrinsic magic to work.


I agree. But aircraft carriers and supersonic jets are the pinnacle of modern warfare; not many nations have an aircraft carrier, and the quality of jets varies wildly - but any country that would shell out enough money for a carrier is probably only doing so because their air force is powerful enough to make it worth it. So we're talking about two of the most powerful things available on Earth.

Conversely, a trireme was never really the most powerful thing on the seas, especially in fantasy - the same goes for griffins which would be outclasses by dragons and the like.
If you look at my original statement, that's exactly what I said - if you wanted it to be fair, you'd have to have dragons instead of griffins, and maybe even something like a kraken to help with the carrier.

RossN
2015-11-05, 10:57 AM
Getting back to the idea of inspiration rather than outright replication, say I decide to base an Elven civilization on the Carthaginians. What were the key features of ancient Carthage:


Seapower
Trade
Heavy use of mercenaries (Gauls, Numidians, etc.)
War beasts (elephants)
Rivalry with a land power (Romans!)


So I set up a republic of Elves on the shores of an inland sea. Being great seafarers they dominate the water and have set up trading networks and colonies along the coasts, but lack the numbers to field strong armies. So they rely on hiring 'barbarians' (lets say humans, dwarves?) to fight for them, strengthening their land forces with domesticated/enchanted monsters (I suppose griffons and hippogriffs are obvious choices but I'm sure I can find something better given study). They fall into conflict with a rising Dragonborn city state, already famed for her powerful armies, over control of a strategic location - say, a small Gnome kingdom that must pay homage to one side or the other.

Now the Elves don't have to travel in triremes and the Dragonborn don't have to march their powerful armies in legions but I've drawn plenty of inspiration from Carthage, Rome and the Punic Wars.

ThinkMinty
2015-11-05, 11:04 AM
Yeah, white South African, Industrial Age English or Pinkerton-style strike breaker orcs make much more sense.

Huh. I like using Pinkerton-style strikebreakers as villains. I might even give them pink suits if I want it to be as on the nose as I can make it.

VoxRationis
2015-11-05, 12:45 PM
We're not talking about individuals (Well... I'm not). We're (I am) talking about whole cultures, which, in fantasy, should have a level of parity, even if they require intrinsic magic to work.
Should cultures have parity in fantasy? Is that really a necessary or desirable aspect of a fantasy setting? It seems like you're taking a questionable statement as true a priori and using that to base your entire argument on.



And going back to "Spartan Warrior vs. Mongol Horse Archer"... well, it depends on the horse archer. Sure, Horse Archer can predictably defeat a Greek Hoplite... but not a Spartan (The mythical version, not the Ancient version of North Korea they really were), who's skill with his aspis and his bronze armor would protect him from the archer's arrows, and his skill with his sword and shield would bring him to triumph over the mounted warrior. A whole Mongol Horde against the Spartans would give the latter some shade to fight in as they make horsekebabs.

This is the attitude that gets you killed by Bronn.
I do not believe that conflicts in fantasy should be a matter of how hard one can fanboy over something. In any case, wouldn't the crew of the aircraft carrier think the best of themselves, as much as the crew of the trireme would?

Hawkstar
2015-11-05, 01:00 PM
I agree. But aircraft carriers and supersonic jets are the pinnacle of modern warfare; not many nations have an aircraft carrier, and the quality of jets varies wildly - but any country that would shell out enough money for a carrier is probably only doing so because their air force is powerful enough to make it worth it. So we're talking about two of the most powerful things available on Earth.

Conversely, a trireme was never really the most powerful thing on the seas, especially in fantasy - the same goes for griffins which would be outclasses by dragons and the like.
If you look at my original statement, that's exactly what I said - if you wanted it to be fair, you'd have to have dragons instead of griffins, and maybe even something like a kraken to help with the carrier.Or a gryphon that's Superheroic enough that you're dealing with a mini supersonic jet anyway, but yes.


Should cultures have parity in fantasy? Is that really a necessary or desirable aspect of a fantasy setting? It seems like you're taking a questionable statement as true a priori and using that to base your entire argument on.Yes, yes it is. Or at least as much parity as the overlying themes of the setting encourage.


This is the attitude that gets you killed by Bronn.He sounds like a hero.

Named Hero>Redshirt Spartan.


I do not believe that conflicts in fantasy should be a matter of how hard one can fanboy over something. In any case, wouldn't the crew of the aircraft carrier think the best of themselves, as much as the crew of the trireme would?So it depends on who's shirts are the least red.

Florian
2015-11-05, 01:04 PM
@VoxRationis:

Cultures (or stuff in general) should have parity when they should be equal fun to the players and it's not considered to be fun coping with unbalanced features based on realism.

That's simply stating a design goal that places the players fun top center, not versimilitude.

VoxRationis
2015-11-05, 02:34 PM
@VoxRationis:

Cultures (or stuff in general) should have parity when they should be equal fun to the players and it's not considered to be fun coping with unbalanced features based on realism.

That's simply stating a design goal that places the players fun top center, not versimilitude.

Ah, "fun," the perfect last redoubt for anyone in a discussion about game design. So nebulous, and so different from person to person on account of varying tastes, that you can use "placing fun top center" as an excuse to ignore anything in favor of anything else.

Florian
2015-11-05, 02:58 PM
Ah, "fun," the perfect last redoubt for anyone in a discussion about game design. So nebulous, and so different from person to person on account of varying tastes, that you can use "placing fun top center" as an excuse to ignore anything in favor of anything else.

What you're simply saying, is that you enjoy a game where realism is a huge part of it and it contributes to your "fun", when the game also reflects that.
Well, that is fine, as long as you can also make this somple statement.
Well, do accept that that is not the case for everyone and other people find their enjoyment elsewhere, for example in picking stuff and wanting to be equal to whatever the other players picked.

You want your Conquistador to be superior to the Jahuar Warrior? That's fine, go for it. But do accept that the guy wanting to play the Jaguar Warrior bevause its a cool chatacter may think otherwise.

That difference leads to different game design choices.

raygun goth
2015-11-05, 09:57 PM
You want your Conquistador to be superior to the Jahuar Warrior? That's fine, go for it. But do accept that the guy wanting to play the Jaguar Warrior bevause its a cool chatacter may think otherwise.

Conquistadors got their rear ends handed to them by Jaguar warriors infected by diseases that the Spaniards brought, and the Spanish only won the overarching conflict because the Aztecs pretty much all got sick. Much like almost anywhere else in the Americas, if the locals had resistance to those diseases, we'd all be speaking local languages. Most of the peoples in the Americas fought like modern soldiers - in nearly invisible, small, highly skilled strike teams more interested in damaging supply and morale and using shock tactics than giving you the kind of straight fight the Europeans were prepared for. Up until they all started dying off in the second plague, European settlers were stuck on the coast due to superior fighting capability - your guns are only useful to you if you can see the people you're fighting, which is why you see a lot of bait and switch/treaty-breaking throughout American history. It was literally the only way to get your enemies out somewhere you could shoot them for a long time.

Though, honestly, I expect any D&D party to operate similarly.

goto124
2015-11-05, 11:52 PM
So... they're good in their own areas of expertise, weak in other areas, and overall generally equal?

raygun goth
2015-11-06, 02:33 AM
So... they're good in their own areas of expertise, weak in other areas, and overall generally equal?

If by "overall generally equal" you mean "suffered two continent-wide apocalypses and still basically wiped the floor with dudes in armor toting guns" then yeah.

daremetoidareyo
2015-11-06, 04:37 AM
A mostly monogamous, almost communist society lead by whoever happens to do something influential at the moment, that is mostly male and open to homosexual relationships (pairing up is encouraged strongly, regardless of the genders of those involved). Child rearing is highly emphasized, as are stones (used for building homes). Could work well for dwarves, I'd say.

Explains the beards...but not the greed...but maybe that is an outsiders opinion. Maybe dwarves are always talking about greed because to them and their society, personal greed is the biggest tabboo.

LudicSavant
2015-11-06, 08:50 AM
So... they're good in their own areas of expertise, weak in other areas, and overall generally equal?

More like the plague the Europeans brought to the Americas dwarfed the destruction of the Black Death. Smallpox killed the Aztec army. It killed the emperor. It killed a massive portion of the overall population. Guns didn't pull that weight. Germs did.

RossN
2015-11-06, 09:33 AM
More like the plague the Europeans brought to the Americas dwarfed the destruction of the Black Death. Smallpox killed the Aztec army. It killed the emperor. It killed a massive portion of the overall population. Guns didn't pull that weight. Germs did.

While that's certainly true I think we're going a bit too far in the narrative that the conquistadors were useless wimps next to the Aztec superwarriors. The truth is Cortés's men were enormously outnumbered, both by the Aztecs and by the anti-Aztec locals who sided with the Spanish. At the "Night of Sorrows (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Noche_Triste)" the 'Spanish' side was overwhelmingly made up of Tlaxcallans.

Strigon
2015-11-06, 10:24 AM
While that's certainly true I think we're going a bit too far in the narrative that the conquistadors were useless wimps next to the Aztec superwarriors. The truth is Cortés's men were enormously outnumbered, both by the Aztecs and by the anti-Aztec locals who sided with the Spanish. At the "Night of Sorrows (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Noche_Triste)" the 'Spanish' side was overwhelmingly made up of Tlaxcallans.

Not to mention the disadvantage of geography - the Aztecs certainly had the home-field advantage, especially given the dampness of South America and the fact that they used black powder for firearms at that point.

I'd probably put them somewhere within the vicinity of "equal" - sure, conquistadors would have virtually no chance of invading the Aztecs without the help of plagues, but I'd like to see the Aztec do any better in an invasion of Spain!

LudicSavant
2015-11-06, 04:38 PM
While that's certainly true I think we're going a bit too far in the narrative that the conquistadors were useless wimps next to the Aztec superwarriors.

Funny, I don't see such a narrative in my post. :smallconfused:

I think you're exaggerating the position of others, with terms like "superwarriors" and "useless wimps." That's an Extreme Man argument if I ever saw one. I really doubt anyone actually thinks the conquistadors were useless wimps.

All Raygun Goth is saying is that a lot of people are under the impression that the Europeans trounced the Native Americans in a more or less fair fight because of a vast superiority of arms and (often by implication) culture. Cracked.com (http://www.cracked.com/article_19864_6-ridiculous-lies-you-believe-about-founding-america.html), for instance, calls this out as a "ridiculous lie." As do a variety of historians I've read, though I don't have handy internet links for their works. I can point at books if you want, though.

Actually, "guns beat everything" is a misconception about history in general, not just the fights with the Native Americans. It's why people wrongly think that medieval fantasy settings need fantasy gun control (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyGunControl) for people to want to use bows, swords, and plate armor. Guns have been around for about a thousand years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun#History). Knights were around for centuries after the gun showed up.

Lvl 2 Expert
2015-11-06, 04:59 PM
sure, conquistadors would have virtually no chance of invading the Aztecs without the help of plagues, but I'd like to see the Aztec do any better in an invasion of Spain!

And there's the core of the problem. It's not a home field advantage as much as it is a logistical problem. In Africa and Asia most colonies started as just trade outposts, where power was gained through politics. Spain and Portugal ended up not being major colonial powers on those continents because when their empires flourished it was still pretty hard to land a decent army. Even in later centuries the trick has always been to apply superior power with enough precision. Bribe three kings, and crush the fourth when he refuses your money. Even the Anglo-Zulu war in 1879 (!) was no cakewalk. And the zulu at this point were a very stubborn culture who refused to use the guns they captured, who used no ranged weapons, who used clubs for hand to hand combat and who always attacked in the same pattern. It's practically the ideal opponent for a modern army, but they were still a treat because of how difficult it was, even then, to field enough troops so far over seas. Even when you go recruiting among the (other) locals as well.

But that's kind of offtopic.

Ralanr
2015-11-06, 05:01 PM
Actually, "guns beat everything" is a misconception about history in general, not just the fights with the Native Americans. It's why people wrongly think that medieval fantasy settings need fantasy gun control (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyGunControl) for people to want to use bows, swords, and plate armor. Guns have been around for about a thousand years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun#History). Knights were around for centuries after the gun showed up.

It's almost like people underestimate the time it takes to reload and overestimate the accuracy of firearms back then.

RossN
2015-11-06, 05:06 PM
Funny, I don't see such a narrative in my post. :smallconfused:

Apologies, I was refering to Raygun Goth's posts.


I think you're exaggerating the position of others, with terms like "superwarriors" and "useless wimps." That's an Extreme Man argument if I ever saw one. I really doubt anyone actually thinks the conquistadors were useless wimps.

I don't think I'm exaggerating that much:


If by "overall generally equal" you mean "suffered two continent-wide apocalypses and still basically wiped the floor with dudes in armor toting guns" then yeah.

To me that seems that Raygun Goth was arguing that the conquistadors were completely hopeless even in a hypotethical 'fair fight'.

raygun goth
2015-11-06, 05:28 PM
To me that seems that Raygun Goth was arguing that the conquistadors were completely hopeless even in a hypotethical 'fair fight'.

Precisely the opposite. During the time of the Conquistadors, most wars in Europe still functioned the way they did in medieval times - because it -was- medieval. The Spanish were exploring the "new" world about the same time you'd think D&D settings were assumed to be established. At this time, the concept of a "fair fight" was indeed prevalent in most parts of Europe, the Spanish included. Armies depended on being brightly lit for firing accuracy and for shocking the enemy - part of the reason they liked to shine armor. War was about show and circumstance with strong tactics being cavalry or rapid reinforcements. The idea of a spy was brand-spanking new at the time - it had only been around a hundred years or so (ignoring the Romans, their espionage ideas collapsed when they did) and governments still struggled with exactly how to make use of them.

Meanwhile, most wars in the Americas even by then were hit-and-run engagements designed to inflict trauma and casualties. They fought in the dark, used poison, misdirection, long range silent weapons, and when it came to close quarters, most weapons were designed to kill outright and immediately. This got even crazier when the plagues swept through - bereft of large armies, skilled tactical squads completely took over warfare. The Aztecs had so many spies and espionage agents that we would recognize them for what they were and they gave them diplomatic immunity. They could not beat the Spanish in a "fair fight" for the simple reason that they did not fight fair. It should be noted that the local cultures preferred to negotiate rather than fight - that's the weakness, but it's not something you can really wedge into a class?

The Spanish showed up expecting war to be pretty similar to what they were used to, but we know how that turns out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJQ_7jKIm24).

Spanish didn't win because they were better fighters, they won because they left disease in their wake, and of course when you would prefer to open up trade but someone else wants to rape, murder, and enslave all of you they're going to find a way to do it. Despite modern society's Rome obsession, the Romans themselves learned that one pretty harshly from the Germanic peoples, if I recall.

The Aztecs weren't "unstoppable superwarriors." I just deny the idea that the real world has any semblance of "game balance" and I deny that the winners are always just better, and those are two very difficult concepts to try to communicate.

(i dont mean to keep editing this post but i do anyway; hold on a second, i'm going to hate on rome for a minute)

Rome! We're told about how advanced and awesome they were. They conquered "most of the known world," but it's important to remember that it was only the known world to them - Rome itself was puny compared to the Han dynasty, which had regular use of seismographs, stirrups, iron casting, and paper. The Mayan Empire had public waterworks, sewers that rival modern New York for size and efficiency, and long-distance mail carriers, not to mention subsidized farming and government construction work for the off-season - they, also, were as large as Rome at its height, and they began and lasted far longer. The Mississippians had almost taken over the eastern third of North America simply by having a better mailing and trade system than any of their neighbors.

We're also now discovering that the Celts and Germanic tribes were less disparate tribes and more decentralized government maintaining large networks, and they gave the Romans so much trouble because they simply ignored their governors for the most part, and taking out any leadership just caused them to react the same way a mass of jello reacts to losing a spoonfull of itself - oozing to fill the gap. The Germanic tribes had gold refineries and metal casting facilities, and their controlled territory was at least the size of Rome at its height.

The reasons we know more about Rome than any of those other places are several: the Islamic Empires were totally Roman/Greek fanboys and preserved so much of their knowledge, which only entered European hands thanks to the Crusades - the church decided to lean on Rome as well, and when the founders came over to the Americas they brought their own Roman fanboyishness with them and slathered it all over everything - Iroquois and Roman influences are basically our Constitution. Then, because it's considered the cradle for European civilization and our education systems are extremely Eurocentric, we learn more about them than the murdered civilizations America is built on.

LudicSavant
2015-11-06, 05:40 PM
The Europeans owed a lot of their victories to germs (the worst plague in history. We're talking destruction on such a scale they might as well have been shelling the Americas with nuclear weapons before they marched in their radiation-immune troops) and politics (getting natives to fight natives, breaking pretty much every treaty, targeting civilian populations and slaughtering women and children, etc).

Sredni Vashtar
2015-11-06, 08:20 PM
Explains the beards...but not the greed...but maybe that is an outsiders opinion. Maybe dwarves are always talking about greed because to them and their society, personal greed is the biggest tabboo.

I never said it worked perfectly. Maybe Penguin Dwarves aren't as greedy as standard Dwarves, or they're greedy because the wealthier an individual dwarf gets, the wealthier dwarfkind gets. Penguins do hoard their nesting stones too, and the pursuit of those stones provide us with a fun example of non-human prostitution (although I don't know how much we can talk about that here).

Hawkstar
2015-11-06, 09:24 PM
Also - Dwarven Greed isn't "It's all MINE!"

It's "It's all OURS!"

Again - community-minded.

Frozen_Feet
2015-11-07, 09:04 AM
It basically boils down to "don't be lazy, don't be racist" and counterpart cultures would be acceptable.

I'm going to swim against the tide and note this is almost exactly backwards.

Fantasy Counterpart Cultures are for when you DON'T want to spend excessive time and effort to introduce varied cultural elements. Their whole function is to pander to and satirize prejudices and preconceptions of the players so they will get on the ball quickly.

A fantasy counterpart culture is saying "the hobbos are basically Egyptians in funny hats" and if someone complains "That's racist! That's not how real Egyptians did things!" you can say "they're not real Egyptians, Dave. Now get in with the program and kill the evil hobbos".

In-depth examination and accuracy on the subject will just detract from that function. If your players can't recognize the hobbos as Egyptians on a glance because their preconceptions of Egyptians were completely wrong, it's still your failure, not theirs even if your portrayal is completely accurate and respectful.

Once you start mixing and matching cultural elements to produce something new, something which requires your players to adjust their expectations, something which actually makes sense as a causal by-product of your setting, you're no longer producing a counterpart culture; you are engaging in setting building, something which Fantasy Counterpart Cultures are normally meant to bypass!

Actually trying to move a culture wholesale into a fantasy setting with it both making sense AND remaining recognizable is more trouble than it is worth. If you want to use and examine a real-life culture in depth and accurately, JUST USE THAT CULTURE! Don't bring it to a fantasy wolrd, bring fantasy to its world and start playing from a historical or modern platform.

Strigon
2015-11-07, 09:51 AM
Snip

But that's not the only reason to make fantasy counterparts; for example, if I were to do it, it would be because I'm not familiar enough with how cultures form to make a believable culture for any given scenario.
However, there are plenty of cultures in the world, and taking a look at those in similar positions to the one you're trying to make can be a good starting point to making your culture work.

Furthermore, having your characters make connections to real-world cultures doesn't mean they should know everything about it from a first glance - it just keeps them from getting lost amid the sea of unfamiliar practices. This allows for easier retrieval from memory - "Wait, those were the ones who were kind of like Egyptians, right?" vs. "Wait, those were the ones who only spoke when it was sunny and didn't let us walk in the middle of the street, right?" - it's not important that they understand every facet of the society, but allowing them to associate culture X with real culture Y makes things easier, whether or not the two have any differences below the surface.

huttj509
2015-11-07, 10:37 AM
Explains the beards...but not the greed...but maybe that is an outsiders opinion. Maybe dwarves are always talking about greed because to them and their society, personal greed is the biggest tabboo.

Could also be a culture clash. If many societies don't really discuss money (if it's seen as gauche, for example), then one which addresses it freely might come across as overly concerned with money.

For example, if when a child leaves home, he's considered in debt to his parents for the cost of raising him. This could easily be something symbolically waived, to symbolize the child now being on his own, free of financial ties (such as, it's no longer the parents duty to feed him, but if he shows up for dinner he won't go unfed or anything). If it's, say, ritually addressed, it could easily be interpreted as "oh, those Dwarves and their money." (yes, example was adapted from Pratchett)

daremetoidareyo
2015-11-07, 01:05 PM
I like the whole building cultures off of the habits of animals thing.

Let's do angler-fish.

I nominate goblins. All goblins you see are genotypically female, male goblins are actually tiny mindless parasites that attach and are absorbed into them. There isn't a gender identity of "female".

Frozen_Feet
2015-11-07, 01:30 PM
How about a culture where numerous infertile working-class females dictate the number and quality of offspring produced by a tiny minority of fertile women by adjusting structures of society? All males born outside of established mating season are killed in the cradle. :smallamused:

Ralanr
2015-11-07, 02:22 PM
I like the whole building cultures off of the habits of animals thing.

Let's do angler-fish.

I nominate goblins. All goblins you see are genotypically female, male goblins are actually tiny mindless parasites that attach and are absorbed into them. There isn't a gender identity of "female".

That's how angler fish work?!

Nature...that's some weird stuff compared to mammals.

daremetoidareyo
2015-11-07, 02:32 PM
That's how angler fish work?!

Nature...that's some weird stuff compared to mammals.

Explained ok here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsmxs0uDXMo). They discovered the female deepsea angler first, and thought that these weird fin protrusions were either some sort of fin endemic to the female, except that they would occasionally find females covered in them. So the next theory that there was some sort of parasite that was responsible for this. They discovered the male separately, which is tiny and has few angler like features, so it was assigned a taxon and everything. Then some biologist put 1 and 1 together to figure it all out.

Sredni Vashtar
2015-11-07, 07:05 PM
I like the whole building cultures off of the habits of animals thing.

Let's do angler-fish.

I nominate goblins. All goblins you see are genotypically female, male goblins are actually tiny mindless parasites that attach and are absorbed into them. There isn't a gender identity of "female".

We could probably do a whole thread on this.

I was thinking of goblinoids as lions, actually. Bugbears represent mature males at the head of the pride, he's mostly there to protect his territory and mate with the females, statistically represented as goblins. The females do all the hunting, gathering, child-rearing, etc. At a certain age, young males are driven off and wander to try and establish their own pride. If a new "Goblin King" takes over a pride, he kills all the young to drive the females into heat again and impregnates them. Etc. Etc.

I do like the angler-fish idea though. It's freaky.


How about a culture where numerous infertile working-class females dictate the number and quality of offspring produced by a tiny minority of fertile women by adjusting structures of society? All males born outside of established mating season are killed in the cradle. :smallamused:

I love it! :smallbiggrin:

Hawkstar
2015-11-07, 08:46 PM
I like the whole building cultures off of the habits of animals thing.

Let's do angler-fish.

I nominate goblins. All goblins you see are genotypically female, male goblins are actually tiny mindless parasites that attach and are absorbed into them. There isn't a gender identity of "female".I wonder what their gender politics look like...


How about a culture where numerous infertile working-class females dictate the number and quality of offspring produced by a tiny minority of fertile women by adjusting structures of society? All males born outside of established mating season are killed in the cradle. :smallamused:Buzz off :smalltongue:

Frozen_Feet
2015-11-07, 09:46 PM
Buzzing is involved, yes, as the suggestion is based on bees. :smallamused:

@Stavrost: Valerie Solanas approves of you loving it.

Beleriphon
2015-11-08, 10:03 AM
Explained ok here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsmxs0uDXMo). They discovered the female deepsea angler first, and thought that these weird fin protrusions were either some sort of fin endemic to the female, except that they would occasionally find females covered in them. So the next theory that there was some sort of parasite that was responsible for this. They discovered the male separately, which is tiny and has few angler like features, so it was assigned a taxon and everything. Then some biologist put 1 and 1 together to figure it all out.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/angler

By The Oatmeal. Caution, naughty words.

Roxxy
2015-11-08, 04:36 PM
DO: Try to strike a balance between familiarity and change with your cultures. A fantasy counterpart culture should recognizeably resemble it's real world equivalent, but should also be different in some respects.

I'm trying to hit this with my nation of Vendalia. On the basis of things, it is supposed to be a counterpart of America west of the Rockies, including Hawaii. However, it has it's differences. It is an independent country, yet is also a former colony. I went with Spanish and then British. It has four major population corridors, roughly comparable to Los Angeles-San Diego, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle-Portland, and Denver (this region is much more heavily populated than the real Denver is). There are major cities outside these areas, but a good three quarters of Vendalia lives in one of these four corridors (note that there are somewhat rural areas within these corridors). That's pretty similar to the real American West. Yet Vendalia's land use patterns are different. Specifically, Vendalians build in a much denser fashion. The classic city looks almost Parisian. I have two alternate universes for Vendalia so that I can have one be Eberrontech and one 20th century tech with magic, and the second gives Vendalia the automobile. Vendalians don't build their cities around the automobile like the vast majority of the United States, however. Suburbs are built around streetcar, bus, and rail lines, and the number of Vendalians who own a car but rarely use it or don't own a car at all is very high. Explaining why would get into politics not allowed on this forum, however (Though I can say that Vendalia, unlike America, is not a federation of largely autonomous states, it is one centralized state, and this is evident through the whole structure of government, and therefore urban planning and infrastructure.). That said, outside major population corridors you very well may need a car to have any sort of mobility. There isn't a whole lot of infrastructure out in the boonies, but there are rural towns out there. The point is that the climate, terrain, and in many ways history and culture is as the real American West, but the urban land scape looks different, and there are reasons within Vendalia's history and culture that explain why it looks different. This is good.

Another thing one could do with a heavily immigrant and multicultural fantasy counterpart culture like Vendalia is play around with those cultures a bit. For example, much of Vendalia was a Spanish colony at one point, just like California and the Southwest. However, Italians discovered and settled the SF Bay Area, with the Spanish just ruling the roost (Conditions in Southern Italy favored emigration much more than conditions in Spain.). Southern Vendalia was, as a Spanish colony, more Italian than it was Spanish. Yet outside the Bay Area and the slave plantations where the natives were trapped, there weren't many Europeans at all. This doesn't really change until after the British nick the land and combine it with their northwestern holdings to create Vendalia. Lots of tension arises between the mostly Italian Mediterranean peoples and the Gaelic-Scandiavian colonizers. This persists to this day in the Bay Area. Not to mention that Gaels and Scandinavians don't necessarily get along all the time. Then immigration opens up, and we get lots of Mexicans, Spaniards, Italians, Greeks, Turks, Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese. Especially East Asians. The Asian and White populations are almost at parity with each other (incidentally, that's about the current situation here in San Francisco). From a social perspective, the "primary" ethnic groups are Northern European, Mexican, Western Mediterranean, Eastern Mediterranean, and East Asian. That Natives aren't on that list is a major point of contention and dissatisfaction. Unlike America, Vendalia as a whole lacks a clear racial majority. In the modern day, however, these traditional immigrant groups have tapered off, to be replaced by South Asians, Southeast Asians, and West Africans. So, ethnically it still looks like California in many ways, but also isn't the same. Rather than being part of a superpower, Vendalia is a regional power closely allied (both politically and culturally) with two world powers, Britain and Japan, which causes tension, because Britain and Japan are reluctant allies with each other and have quite the rivalry. That Vendalia considers both close (and not in the least reluctant) allies can sometimes be a point of contention, and when the two quarrel Vendalia can end up caught in between.

Culturally, Vendalians still do American West (or at least Californian and Cascadian) things, like lionizing cowboys, considering surfing a major activity, making lots of movies and TV shows and exporting them, obsessing about high quality food (seriously, us Californians are weird about it, and I don't think Portland and Seattle are much better), loving outdoor activities, and lot of other superficial things. However, there are differences. Vendalia is historically British, and talks like it. You go to hospital (and you don't pay them), go on holiday, call them crisps and chips instead of chips and fries, ride to work on a tram or an underground (and always remember to mind the gap), and such. You do have your own slang, though. You probably say dude a lot, call a locomotive a horse, you usually call cowboys vaqueros, you call American style biscuits sticker scones and eat them with coffee (if you had tea, you would eat sweet scones), an American style soft cookie is a chewy biscuit and is primarily a northern thing, you use the word crisped to refer to either fried food or something that's been burned, ho or ho there is how you get someone's attention (as opposed to hey or oi), a coyote is an unethical business person or politician, you know and use quite a few Japanese words and a few Chinese, Greek, and Turkish ones, you probably use surfer slang if you live near the coast, and if you are from the south you say ciao instead of hello and goodbye and use Italian and Mexican slang commonly even if you aren't actually of Italian or Mexican ancestry. The British would find Vendalian accents rather casual and their word choice informal, and note that southerners speak a good bit faster than northerners. To a Vendalian, dressing up really nice is slacks, a monochrome botton up shirt, and maybe a tie, and a normal office environment would show a lot of jeans, henleys (very common shirt style in Vendalia), and polos. Some places are looser, but, while wearing shorts and flip flops to the office is a common stereotype of southerners, it is a minority of office jobs that actually allow that. Being asked to wear slacks to an office job every day would be quite weird and either British or northern sounding to a southerner and uncommon but not rare to a northerner. Northerners call southern work ethics lazy and southerners call northern work ethics hardass, while the British think they're all lazy, but those are just stereotypes. Denverites are southerners, but often resent that lable. Other southerners call them a bunch of vaquero obsessed loons who live in cities or suburbs while acting like ranchers, despite having no idea what to do with a horse. Denverites often think everybody else is soft and lazy, and resent everybody else assuming they are all reactionary and poorly educated. Compared to the British, Vendalians put more emphasis on extended family, with adult children often living at home for a while, even after getting full time employment. This is especially noticeable in the south, where you often don't move out of your parent's home until marriage (if you never marry, you might switch from your parents supporting you to you supporting your parents as they get older while staying in the same home, or you might move out as you approach middle age). In the south, it is expected that the elderly move in with their children after retirement or when they become widowed, and live in grandparents weild a lot of influence in childrearing. That said, Vendalia is also a dense country with a high rate of apartment and condo living, and the phrase "living with my parents" or "living with my children" very often means that you live in the apartment or condo next door or at least on the same floor, not that you actually live in the same housing unit. As a result of this system, it is common to see apartments and condoes that have interior doors to the units next to them so that families with adjacent units can treat multiple smaller units like one big family unit. In the north, this is less common, though certainly not unheard of. Round the Denver area, people are expected to be more independent, and children tend to move out sooner. The elderly do still commonly live with their children, though.



So, basically, it's good if a counterpart culture has something to contrast it with whatever culture it came from, but the similarities should still far outnumber the differences.

daremetoidareyo
2015-11-08, 04:55 PM
How about a culture where numerous infertile working-class females dictate the number and quality of offspring produced by a tiny minority of fertile women by adjusting structures of society? All males born outside of established mating season are killed in the cradle. :smallamused:

I keep circling back to dryads. You never encounter males. What are dryad drone equivalents? It actually makes for a weird dryad social dynamic.

The first dryads arrive. The most poweful and oldest become mother trees. Somehow, they become fertile. They then have the workers carry the fertilized acorns to new groves in different forests and protect them. The dryads are worker/protector aunts. Until the new tree can produce acorns. This new tree can now be a fey host for dryads from the feywild.

Forderz
2015-11-08, 07:18 PM
I find the Spartan vs Mongol argument kind of weird. Its not like the Griffin vs F-18 argument, because the average Spartan and an average nomad steppe warrior DID exist at the same time. A dude on a horse with a powerful bow is never going to be touched by a single hoplite. A mass of Spartans in their rocky, mountainous home might be able to force an engagement and pin the nomads against a river or cliff and actually close in on them, but if the nomads have any auxiliary forces to flank the infantry the infantry are screwed.

Unless those Spartans have protection from arrows. then its a battle of endurance.

Sredni Vashtar
2015-11-08, 07:32 PM
This applies to creating any culture, whether it's a Fantasy Counterpart or Whole Cloth, but DON'T forget about the importance of food. The food a people eat helps to define the culture (and the cultures that culture interacts with) in a way that few other cultural aspects can. Language is a good way to do this as well, but considering that it's an abstraction in D&D, it would be hard to pull off.

Milo v3
2015-11-08, 07:52 PM
How about a culture where numerous infertile working-class females dictate the number and quality of offspring produced by a tiny minority of fertile women by adjusting structures of society? All males born outside of established mating season are killed in the cradle. :smallamused:

I actually did run dwarves like this once...

Broken Crown
2015-11-08, 09:43 PM
I keep circling back to dryads. You never encounter males. What are dryad drone equivalents? It actually makes for a weird dryad social dynamic.

The first dryads arrive. The most poweful and oldest become mother trees. Somehow, they become fertile. They then have the workers carry the fertilized acorns to new groves in different forests and protect them. The dryads are worker/protector aunts. Until the new tree can produce acorns. This new tree can now be a fey host for dryads from the feywild.

I think dryads have one of those diploid/haploid alternating generation life cycles. Male dryads probably just look like spores or pine cones or something to the uninitiated.

Either that, or satyrs function as the males for dryads. Satyrs and dryads are often depicted together, and you never seem to see any female satyrs.

awa
2015-11-08, 10:50 PM
I find the Spartan vs Mongol argument kind of weird. Its not like the Griffin vs F-18 argument, because the average Spartan and an average nomad steppe warrior DID exist at the same time. A dude on a horse with a powerful bow is never going to be touched by a single hoplite. A mass of Spartans in their rocky, mountainous home might be able to force an engagement and pin the nomads against a river or cliff and actually close in on them, but if the nomads have any auxiliary forces to flank the infantry the infantry are screwed.

Unless those Spartans have protection from arrows. then its a battle of endurance.

when people say mongol they usually mean the mongol empire which was over a thousand years after sparta.
And the mongol empire has almost every advantage against the Spartans to the point that the griffin vrs jet would probably be closer. The griffin at least has a few advantages over a jet (requires less, maintenance, can function in cities and at close quarters is able to engage foes in the midst of close combat with out killing allies, can hover, can hide, can still function with out its rider while the jet is not going to be very useful with out its "rider" in the cockpit.

the Spartans on the other hand don't really do anything the mongol empire couldn't match

On another note i actually used a race with some angler fish traits in my game last night the female were aquatic jellyfish merchants, the males we basically non intelligent and used as labor or traded to other females. Although they did not really have a culture one of their things was that they could mimic other races cultures to facilitate trade but they were otherwise solitary (males don't count)

Broken Crown
2015-11-08, 11:11 PM
On another note i actually used a race with some angler fish traits in my game last night the female were aquatic jellyfish merchants, the males we basically non intelligent and used as labor or traded to other females. Although they did not really have a culture one of their things was that they could mimic other races cultures to facilitate trade but they were otherwise solitary (males don't count)

Jellyfish merchants?

Who buys jellyfish?

awa
2015-11-08, 11:37 PM
kinda wish i had a story where the pcs went off to buy jellyfish on such a regular basis they needed to get to know a jellyfish sales men alas the merchants body was vaguely jellyfish like instead. (players are all amphibious due to the nature of the campaign)

I can say the adventure was defending a snail farm which harvested mucus from giant carnivorous snails so that's something at least.

Dienekes
2015-11-09, 04:02 PM
And going back to "Spartan Warrior vs. Mongol Horse Archer"... well, it depends on the horse archer. Sure, Horse Archer can predictably defeat a Greek Hoplite... but not a Spartan (The mythical version, not the Ancient version of North Korea they really were), who's skill with his aspis and his bronze armor would protect him from the archer's arrows, and his skill with his sword and shield would bring him to triumph over the mounted warrior. A whole Mongol Horde against the Spartans would give the latter some shade to fight in as they make horsekebabs.

Actually, somewhat interestingly. The Persians and the Scythians quite extensively used horse archers, and the Spartans seemed to perform quite well against them.

Admittedly, going by the analyzing their successes and failures, the majority of victories were about finding terrain that negated the advantages of archery and cavalry rather than the Spartans being super warriors.

That said, The Mongol empire was about 1700 years after Sparta at it's height. In terms of pure logistics, technology, and numbers there's just about nothing a Spartan would have been able to do against an oncoming Mongol horde.

Lvl 2 Expert
2015-11-09, 04:23 PM
And going back to "Spartan Warrior vs. Mongol Horse Archer"... well, it depends on the horse archer. Sure, Horse Archer can predictably defeat a Greek Hoplite... but not a Spartan (The mythical version, not the Ancient version of North Korea they really were)

Though just because I like nitpicking, if we're going with that version of the Spartan I'm sure I can come up with a similar mythology for the single greatest conquering army the world had ever known. Genghis Khan and his hordes were also kind of badass after all. :smallwink:

janusmaxwell
2015-11-09, 04:29 PM
Either make-up or create something of an understanding between aspects of the culture being emulated in your game.

For example, the tale of the king of the horrible DM's created a fantasy Japan that was landlocked, but the people still subsisted on riceballs and sushi, but also used katanas that were folded steel. (with the usual thousands of times idiocy)

Besides the obvious problem where Kentucky isn't exactly known for it's sushi, is that the reason for the folded steel in Japanese katanas is because they had crappy iron ore to work with (Iron sand...just no) and it was the only way to make something that wasn't effectively pig-iron out of it.

A similar note, there is a word in Arabic that stands for "The amount of water which you can hold in your hands" which might sound silly to anybody who DOESN'T live in a desert.

Playing fast and loose copy-pasting culture's is one thing, but as long as you add some semblance of SENSE to the thing, then it should work out okay.

daremetoidareyo
2015-11-09, 04:53 PM
On another note i actually used a race with some angler fish traits in my game last night the female were aquatic jellyfish merchants, the males we basically non intelligent and used as labor or traded to other females. Although they did not really have a culture one of their things was that they could mimic other races cultures to facilitate trade but they were otherwise solitary (males don't count)

I love it.

I would disagree with the culture thing though. If they got language, they got culture. I imagine they have words for that full feeling you get when too many fish swim into your tendrils. Imagine what haggling over the males is like. What criteria do they use to judge them? They actually sound like a really interesting race. What would an evil warlord be like?

awa
2015-11-09, 05:54 PM
I love it.

I would disagree with the culture thing though. If they got language, they got culture. I imagine they have words for that full feeling you get when too many fish swim into your tendrils. Imagine what haggling over the males is like. What criteria do they use to judge them? They actually sound like a really interesting race. What would an evil warlord be like?

they don't have a language of their own but they do have the ability to mimic nearly any sound so they learn and speak other races languages. I suppose they do have a culture in the most simple sense but they largely don't interact with each other. An evil overlord would be wildly out of character for them but if there was one it would be a very subtle warlord. They are merchants and diplomats and this is a world where nonhumans are very nonhuman with a lot less magic so some species literally cant communicate using sounds outside of the others hearing range, so this species sometimes act as middle men in such relations. Combined with their habit of mimicking other races cultures and the fact that they don't age there evil overlord would probably try and be the power behind the throne for multiple generations acting as a tutor or less likely an information broker trying to manipulate kingdoms.

As an actual foe for a pc to fight they really cant not straight up. There super fragile although really hard to kill they keep there memories in a single organ that can move around the body as long as that is not destroyed they can eventually regenerate even better the organ can swim and hunt independently if needed and the body can function normally for several days without it so if they think they are in trouble they will rip it out themselves and let the rest of the body act as a decoy. Offensively they are weak but tricky it doesn't translate well to the d&d system but they tend to learn a little bit of magic from a vast number of sources. in a world where every nation has several unique magic's with very little overlap some one who can pull a tiny bit from a dozen nations above and below the waves is really good at attacking from an unseen angle.

Hawkstar
2015-11-09, 06:15 PM
I find the Spartan vs Mongol argument kind of weird. Its not like the Griffin vs F-18 argument, because the average Spartan and an average nomad steppe warrior DID exist at the same time. A dude on a horse with a powerful bow is never going to be touched by a single hoplite. A mass of Spartans in their rocky, mountainous home might be able to force an engagement and pin the nomads against a river or cliff and actually close in on them, but if the nomads have any auxiliary forces to flank the infantry the infantry are screwed.The nomads have to run away (Which they can do with impunity). But they can't hold territory all that well. Get close, and they get stabbed. Stay far, and they can plink ineffectually at big shields.

Note - we're talking about Spartans, not average hoplites.

Unless those Spartans have protection from arrows. then its a battle of endurance.
It's called an aspis.


Though just because I like nitpicking, if we're going with that version of the Spartan I'm sure I can come up with a similar mythology for the single greatest conquering army the world had ever known. Genghis Khan and his hordes were also kind of badass after all. :smallwink:

Yes, there are probably elite horse archers who can take on Spartans. But they get beat by The 300, who need the most elite of the Mongols to match, who can be beaten by The King, who can only be matched by the Khan

awa
2015-11-09, 06:19 PM
assuming were still talking about Mongols they had a lot of heavy cavalry and were pretty good at holding territory and besieging cities.

Shure they had shields but that means less of them die not none and while there sitting there unable to move the Mongols can just go around them and destroy their supply train which they can function without

Dienekes
2015-11-09, 08:06 PM
assuming were still talking about Mongols they had a lot of heavy cavalry and were pretty good at holding territory and besieging cities.

Shure they had shields but that means less of them die not none and while there sitting there unable to move the Mongols can just go around them and destroy their supply train which they can function without

Assuming flat, open terrain mongols win. They'd always win.

But don't confuse that with actual warfare. The mongols actually did lose a couple battles during the reign of Genghis Khan. Even his best general, Subotai, lost 1 battle. And it was because he got put in a mountainous territory where his cavalry couldn't swarm around, and a slower moving but heavily armored army ground him down.

Which, is how the Spartans won against cavalry archers in their time. On the occasion they fought.

awa
2015-11-09, 08:11 PM
yeah but the mongols have well over a thousand years of technological and organizational improvements to draw on.
can lose is very different then likely to lose

Hawkstar
2015-11-09, 08:50 PM
assuming were still talking about Mongols they had a lot of heavy cavalry and were pretty good at holding territory and besieging cities.Heavy Cavalry die when stabbed by Spartans, in dramatic, blood-spurting slo-mo, and their horses sent flying by powerful shield bashes. And they were good at besieging cities not defended by Spartan warriors.


Shure they had shields but that means less of them die not none Lesser Greeks might die. Not Spartans every one can block every arrow coming their way. Spartans are soldiers, not statistics.
and while there sitting there unable to moveThey can walk and block at the same time.
the Mongols can just go around them and destroy their supply train which they can function withoutNo they can't. The goat path isn't big enough for horses, and the supply train isn't needed in the actual battle. Also - the Spartans would form a wall around their supplies. Sparta did not have stone walls - its soldiers and shields were its walls, and they're highly mobile, impenetrable walls at that. (We ARE talking Fantasy Spartans here, not the real world Spartans)


Assuming flat, open terrain mongols win. They'd always win.

But don't confuse that with actual warfare. The mongols actually did lose a couple battles during the reign of Genghis Khan. Even his best general, Subotai, lost 1 battle. And it was because he got put in a mountainous territory where his cavalry couldn't swarm around, and a slower moving but heavily armored army ground him down.

Which, is how the Spartans won against cavalry archers in their time. On the occasion they fought.Mongols rule Mongol Land in fantasy. And Greeks rule Greek Land in fantasy.
yeah but the mongols have well over a thousand years of technological and organizational improvements to draw on.
can lose is very different then likely to loseDoesn't do anything against an army blessed by a true god of war.

awa
2015-11-09, 09:33 PM
Heavy Cavalry die when stabbed by Spartans, in dramatic, blood-spurting slo-mo, and their horses sent flying by powerful shield bashes. And they were good at besieging cities not defended by Spartan warriors.

Lesser Greeks might die. Not Spartans every one can block every arrow coming their way. Spartans are soldiers, not statistics.They can walk and block at the same time.No they can't. The goat path isn't big enough for horses, and the supply train isn't needed in the actual battle. Also - the Spartans would form a wall around their supplies. Sparta did not have stone walls - its soldiers and shields were its walls, and they're highly mobile, impenetrable walls at that. (We ARE talking Fantasy Spartans here, not the real world Spartans)

Mongols rule Mongol Land in fantasy. And Greeks rule Greek Land in fantasy.Doesn't do anything against an army blessed by a true god of war.

i feel like you are having a different conversation then me becuase your comments while technically addressed to me have no bearing on what i was discussing. We were talking about the abilities of real world forces and how they would likely interact your comments about how divinely empowered warriors would fare adds nothing.

LudicSavant
2015-11-10, 03:07 AM
That's how angler fish work?!

How the anglerfish works, in song form: https://youtu.be/9t7E4amWDqI?t=38s


Nature...that's some weird stuff compared to mammals.

Mammals have some weird stuff going on too. Anyways, here's some of nature's gender roles explained with adorable cartoons, which should be useful for inspiration:

https://www.pinterest.com/onjivan23/animal-lives-by-humon/

Ralanr
2015-11-10, 09:53 AM
How the anglerfish works, in song form: https://youtu.be/9t7E4amWDqI?t=38s



Mammals have some weird stuff going on too. Anyways, here's some of nature's gender roles explained with adorable cartoons, which should be useful for inspiration:

https://www.pinterest.com/onjivan23/animal-lives-by-humon/

Humon comics are awesome. The hyena one inspired me to write a novel about Gnolls.

Not that I ever revised it.

NovenFromTheSun
2015-11-11, 01:10 AM
I skipped a lot of posts, but I approve of the idea of using animal behavior to base cultures on :smallsmile:.

daremetoidareyo
2015-11-11, 01:21 AM
I skipped a lot of posts, but I approve of the idea of using animal behavior to base cultures on :smallsmile:.

Spellscales and peacocks.

Hawkstar
2015-11-11, 08:31 AM
We were talking about the abilities of real world forcesHuh? Since when?

I've been discussing Fantasy Counterpart cultures and how they hold their own in fantasy worlds.

awa
2015-11-11, 11:06 AM
I find the Spartan vs Mongol argument kind of weird. Its not like the Griffin vs F-18 argument, because the average Spartan and an average nomad steppe warrior DID exist at the same time. A dude on a horse with a powerful bow is never going to be touched by a single hoplite. A mass of Spartans in their rocky, mountainous home might be able to force an engagement and pin the nomads against a river or cliff and actually close in on them, but if the nomads have any auxiliary forces to flank the infantry the infantry are screwed.

Unless those Spartans have protection from arrows. then its a battle of endurance.

since here all references to real world stuff and all the post following it were based on real world info

Honest Tiefling
2015-11-11, 04:29 PM
One problem would be location. I sincerely doubt that Mongols are going to do great in all places of Greece, given the whole tons of islands thing they have going on. Also, I was under the impression that until Genghis Khan started looting siege engine operators, the Mongols and similar cultures were crap against fortitcations, hence why someone thought it'd be a great idea to build a giant wall to keep them out.

Swim faster, steed, so I can hit them with my arrows! Actually, now I want a archer culture who ride hippocampuses. Sea-Mongols.

awa
2015-11-11, 04:46 PM
as a generally statement its true that most nomad groups are bad against fortifications but the ancient Greeks were worse one of the disadvantages of most siege engines not being invented in their period and the fact that their logistics were poor. When the attacker has that much of advantage in mobility both because of their mounts and also because of their skill at logistics hiding in a city just allows them to take over everything else. For Sparta specifically they are in bad shape if they lose control of the helots territory.

as for islands we were talking about Sparta not Greece in general and Sparta was primarily a land power

Segev
2015-11-11, 04:58 PM
This harkens back a bit, but I feel the need to chime in on the griffons vs. fighter jets discussion:

Even if a setting has both, there's still a definite military use for a trainable, ridable animal with prodigious natural weapons and a tactical flight speed. No, you're not going to have griffons dogfighting with Migs or F-15s (let alone F-22s), and probably not even with Zeros, but you don't have A-10s doing so, either. In fact, the A-10 is designed for an entirely different mission profile, and depending on the strength of a griffon, it might be that they would have been ideal mounts for the Vulcan cannon, without need to invent a plane for it. Even if not, the lack of engine noise makes them good for low-to-the-ground missions with 3D movement required, and they make good attack animals.

The thrust of this being: don't discount the usefulness of something just because it doesn't parallel directly with a real-world item (or vice-versa); consider instead what it DOES do well, and what it COULD be used for.

Imagine the street patrolmen in New York City riding hippogriffs instead of horses.

awa
2015-11-11, 06:05 PM
definitely agree personally i feel a griffon is most analogous to a paratrooper. It does not fight from the air and it fights like an infantry man not a vehicle.

Hawkstar
2015-11-11, 06:47 PM
since here all references to real world stuff and all the post following it were based on real world info

So, we're all following someone who missed the "This is fantasy discussion" memo? I don't think so.

Strigon
2015-11-12, 08:47 AM
This harkens back a bit, but I feel the need to chime in on the griffons vs. fighter jets discussion:

...

The thrust of this being: don't discount the usefulness of something just because it doesn't parallel directly with a real-world item (or vice-versa); consider instead what it DOES do well, and what it COULD be used for.

Imagine the street patrolmen in New York City riding hippogriffs instead of horses.

See, this is exactly what I've been saying all along!
Griffins would be incredible for stealth missions, missions in tight spaces, and extremely long missions, since it wouldn't have to refuel in a relatively short amount of time.
They'd also be very effective scouts, with high mobility, and low audio and visual profile - sure, they aren't as stealthy as a single man, but they can get in and out far more quickly.

But no, in terms of sheer power, griffins wouldn't be useful compared to modern weaponry.
To get that from fantasy, we'd (http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--5VZwuU1l--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/18tgjz0508766jpg.jpg) have (http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2014/022/2/0/behemoth_by_der_reiko-d73ajev.jpg) to (http://i.imgur.com/7mbjmC2.jpg) look (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EhHM1Gv4diY/TZBWyQ6mQHI/AAAAAAAAA5U/ZDtpWBZk98Q/s1600/wyrm2.jpg) elsewhere (https://latimesherocomplex.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/smaug1.jpg).

Hawkstar
2015-11-12, 08:53 AM
definitely agree personally i feel a griffon is most analogous to a paratrooper. It does not fight from the air and it fights like an infantry man not a vehicle.

Infantry in fantasy have the potential to be very powerful. I mean... seriously. Single infantry soldiers are prone to saving the whole world on a regular basis. We tend to call them Heroes, though.

Lord Raziere
2015-11-12, 08:57 AM
Infantry in fantasy have the potential to be very powerful. I mean... seriously. Single infantry soldiers are prone to saving the whole world on a regular basis. We tend to call them Heroes, though.

do you mean guys wielding swords or guys wielding spears? because sword-wielders are generally a weapon of the nobility. infantry are people who wield spears, and the only Hero I know of from fantasy who wields a spear is Kaladin from The Stormlight Archive, which is pretty new all things considered.

Milo v3
2015-11-12, 08:58 AM
Bah, just shave some runes into the griffin's fur to increase it's speed faster than a jet and scratch a rune in it's claws so it can slice jet's in half :smalltongue:

Beleriphon
2015-11-12, 09:31 AM
<stuff> definitely agree personally i feel a griffon is most analogous to a paratrooper. It does not fight from the air and it fights like an infantry man not a vehicle.

I think griffons are more akin to an attack helicopter or a air cavalry (quite literally in this case) than a fighter jet. Air superiority jets like the F-15 or F-22 are meant to kill other planes. An F-16 or A-10 was specifically designed to take out ground targets. SAM sites in the case of the Wild Weasel and armoured vehicles for the Warthog.

As for more analogous fantasy creatures that work as actual modern weapons, I think the Godzilla looking thing isn't a weapon so much as a mobile natural disaster. If we go with the typical super powered dragon though, those are seige breakers if I've ever seen one. A unit of D&D gorgons would be pretty terrible as well since they're basically chemical weapons that can also smash a dude to bits.

awa
2015-11-12, 09:38 AM
attack helicopter is definitely a better fit then a jet but I still stand by my paratrooper comparison. helicopters are much bigger and less maneuverable cant go in buildings or engage in hand to hand combat and have no ability to hold a piece of ground well the griffons cant has no ability to blow up a building and is a fraction of the speed.

In regard to air cavalry were being setting neutral and I would not assume a griffon could carry a man and fly long distances at the same time lions just arnt that big. Not to mention they could at best hold only one guy and there kinda slow certainly compared to a helicopter. As a personal matter of opinion their combat abilities would typically out weigh their benefit as a transport except perhaps in the case of dropping a fighter over a wall or across a river a short tactical movement.

Strigon
2015-11-12, 11:20 AM
attack helicopter is definitely a better fit then a jet but I still stand by my paratrooper comparison. helicopters are much bigger and less maneuverable cant go in buildings or engage in hand to hand combat and have no ability to hold a piece of ground well the griffons cant has no ability to blow up a building and is a fraction of the speed.

Then again, most paratroopers lack the ability to take off again; keep that in mind.


As for more analogous fantasy creatures that work as actual modern weapons, I think the Godzilla looking thing isn't a weapon so much as a mobile natural disaster. If we go with the typical super powered dragon though, those are seige breakers if I've ever seen one. A unit of D&D gorgons would be pretty terrible as well since they're basically chemical weapons that can also smash a dude to bits.

It's very difficult to find fantasy beasts that would be used en masse to fight on today's battleground that also wouldn't be annihilated by armour.
I had to basically settle for things that would probably be used in very small numbers.

LudicSavant
2015-11-12, 11:22 AM
do you mean guys wielding swords or guys wielding spears? because sword-wielders are generally a weapon of the nobility. infantry are people who wield spears, and the only Hero I know of from fantasy who wields a spear is Kaladin from The Stormlight Archive, which is pretty new all things considered.

Kaladin is awesome. There's also Balsa from Seirei no Moribito.

Segev
2015-11-12, 11:37 AM
It's very difficult to find fantasy beasts that would be used en masse to fight on today's battleground that also wouldn't be annihilated by armour.
I had to basically settle for things that would probably be used in very small numbers.

If the beasts have desirable offensive qualities, they could be armored. We do have infantry still, and infantry is annihilated by high-powered armor-mounted weaponry in the wrong circumstances.

awa
2015-11-12, 11:53 AM
yes para troopers cant lift back off but I still feel that's the closet analogy. if we ever invented decent jetpacks they would be an even better example.

In regards to monsters on a modern battle field their are tons of monsters that could revolutionize modern warfare but few of them would do so by being big and strong. Something like a doppelganger able to infiltrate and read minds to grab security codes out of a guards head or monsters able to burrow through solid rock would have a huge impact that would force you to radical alter how wars are fought in order to counter them.

vampires would also be deadly dominate and gaseous form on the basic infantry men would grant a huge advantage. Your tanks not so useful when they can turn to mist flow into the tank and mind control the crew

Strigon
2015-11-12, 11:57 AM
If the beasts have desirable offensive qualities, they could be armored. We do have infantry still, and infantry is annihilated by high-powered armor-mounted weaponry in the wrong circumstances.

Naturally; werewolves and the like would work very well for infantry.
But most fantasy beasts use fire, claws, or teeth to kill; none of which are very effective against vehicles, so they'd be ineffective whether they were armoured or not.
Unfortunately, the problem I found was that in fantasy, things are either powerful enough to beat humans, but not enough to beat armour, or they're big enough to lay waste to a small country before being stopped.

awa
2015-11-12, 12:03 PM
you don't need to beat the tank just render it irrelevant
lots of monsters have movement or stealth powers that can allow them to bypass traditional fighting forces and for the more human ones many could use weapons to. 3.5 style imps with sacks full of bombs could devastate any conventional military force in the world given enough time by teleporting in to a sensitive area dropping a bomb and running away that's assuming he cant go straight into the tank directly.

a succubus would be even worse because it can do the same thing plus mind control would have all your guys so paranoid they could not function.
incorporeal foes likewise render tanks obsolete.

Honest Tiefling
2015-11-12, 01:06 PM
I feel as if we could somehow magic up a spider to fly and be able to bite through jets, there's an advantage on the sheer fear factor. That, and if the spider silk could somehow be utilized...

'I see your planes have met Charolette. We would return the bodies of your comrades, but she was very hungry and liquefied their organs to feed her newest brood.'

Strigon
2015-11-12, 03:51 PM
you don't need to beat the tank just render it irrelevant
lots of monsters have movement or stealth powers that can allow them to bypass traditional fighting forces and for the more human ones many could use weapons to. 3.5 style imps with sacks full of bombs could devastate any conventional military force in the world given enough time by teleporting in to a sensitive area dropping a bomb and running away that's assuming he cant go straight into the tank directly.

a succubus would be even worse because it can do the same thing plus mind control would have all your guys so paranoid they could not function.
incorporeal foes likewise render tanks obsolete.

Not quite; keep in mind you have an objective in war; sure, you could spend months being very stealthy and slowly defeating the enemies one by one, but long before you'd be able to cripple a modern military, it would have achieved its goals, especially if those goals were as simple as "take this piece of land" and you weren't offering any actual resistance.

Segev
2015-11-12, 04:19 PM
Actually, infantry is one of the best tools for taking and holding land. Armor is useful for helping to take it, but less so to hold it. Air power only lets you control a battlefield; it won't help you actually hold territory, because it can't TAKE nor HOLD ground.

So an infantry of powerful beasts would be very useful for helping HOLD territory. An infantry that can electively fly would be a powerful tool for that, not because of "air power" but because a more mobile infantry is a more useful one.

awa
2015-11-12, 04:54 PM
Not quite; keep in mind you have an objective in war; sure, you could spend months being very stealthy and slowly defeating the enemies one by one, but long before you'd be able to cripple a modern military, it would have achieved its goals, especially if those goals were as simple as "take this piece of land" and you weren't offering any actual resistance.

I was mistaken I thought imps could teleport at will I was wrong so lets go with a bearded devil (cr 5) im going to round a bit to make math faster the number would actually be greater.
he could using teleport drop a 50 pound explosive on a target anywhere on the planet that he can describe every 20 seconds with a ring of sustenance and an ally feeding him targets he can hit 3600 targets in a day a squad of bearded devil can be 10 in number, so assuming they kill an average of 1 soldier with each run that's 36000 targets per day if we assume the united states army has 2 million soldiers then the entire thing is gone in two months.

Now logically the armed forces would collapse far sooner the odds of 50 pounds of c4 and nails killing only an average of 1 soldier seems slim as well the force will be rendered ineffective long before every single soldier is dead.

The math is different with vampires as it is exponential rather then linear but even if we assume that they cant just turn civilians into spawn and spawn cant use modern weapons the gaseous form and dominate would rapidly turn it into a civil war as they took control of enemy commanders. If spawn can use weapons and can turn civilians then its super one sided.

being sneaky and fast doesn't mean they cant hit hard.

for the more mundane monsters their are still uses for dogs on the battle field I cant imagine a talking dog that breathes fire couldn't do them better

Hawkstar
2015-11-12, 08:39 PM
do you mean guys wielding swords or guys wielding spears? because sword-wielders are generally a weapon of the nobility. infantry are people who wield spears, and the only Hero I know of from fantasy who wields a spear is Kaladin from The Stormlight Archive, which is pretty new all things considered.
So, you have never played a Fighter-type in D&D who isn't a noble, or seen anyone else play such a character?
Gimli was also infantry, as were Legolas and Boromir. And all 13 Dwarves reclaiming the Misty Mountain. (Especially in the movie). Infantry just means they fight on foot.

Honest Tiefling
2015-11-12, 08:47 PM
If by fantasy you mean mythology, we got Odin, Cú Chulainn, and Achillies who are all spear wielders. If I am not mistaken, spears also show up in Hindu mythology. This (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mythological_objects#Spears) will get you a few more results. Sure, it is not fiction, but I think mythological heroes should count for 'heroes'.

awa
2015-11-12, 08:56 PM
Actually, infantry is one of the best tools for taking and holding land. Armor is useful for helping to take it, but less so to hold it. Air power only lets you control a battlefield; it won't help you actually hold territory, because it can't TAKE nor HOLD ground.

So an infantry of powerful beasts would be very useful for helping HOLD territory. An infantry that can electively fly would be a powerful tool for that, not because of "air power" but because a more mobile infantry is a more useful one.

not to mention many monsters have superior senses to humans it gives them a good advantage inside cities where tanks and planes are at there weakest. there is also the psychological effect monsters have say a Minotaur might not be as dangerous as a guy with a gun but it would be great for say guarding a prison where its size and natural weapons would have a huge psychological effect where with a human they might think they can jump him and take his gun with the Minotaur it has the threat of the guard dog hugely amplified and combined with a degree of intelligence.

The big thing is barring the more overtly magical find the thing the monster does well or better then technology and have them do that don't try and make them fit the same niche as stuff we already have specialists for of course they will come up short.

If the griffin tries to duke it out with jets or helicopters of course it will lose but if you use it as say a fast scout (both cats and eagles are known for there senses so a setting neutral griffin can be safely assumed to have super human senses) in a combined arms force with traditional soldiers it has a valuable niche to fill. urban combat would be particularly good there is currently no flying technology that can function as close to a building as a griffin can.

Broken Crown
2015-11-12, 09:12 PM
do you mean guys wielding swords or guys wielding spears? because sword-wielders are generally a weapon of the nobility. infantry are people who wield spears, and the only Hero I know of from fantasy who wields a spear is Kaladin from The Stormlight Archive, which is pretty new all things considered.

Cavalry are also people who wield spears. (Traditionally; lately, neither infantry nor cavalry commonly use spears.)

Infantry also wielded swords, such as the Roman gladius (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladius).

Many notable Fantasy Heroes are not members of the nobility, but wield swords anyway.

Many notable Mythological Heroes (who, if not Fantasy Heroes themselves, at least inspired them) wield spears. Examples include Cú Chullain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cú_Chulainn) and Achilles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles).

In short, I can't figure out what your argument is, here.

AceOfFools
2015-11-14, 04:08 PM
Thinking more about aspects of cultures other than military, I see three reasons why one would want to use a fantasy counterpart culture:

It allows you to generate a lot of the realistic complexities of a culture without a lot of work on your part. You only need to define what parts of the culture deviate between reality and the fantasy counterpart and then you have a lot rituals, values, customs, and potentially even organization you would expect from a culture.
It allows you to communicate to your audience a lot about a character or culture rather quickly. If I identify an elf as a ninja, you know she is a warrior that focuses on stealth, misdirection, assassination and other underhanded tactics rather than direct confrontation.
You think what you know about the culture is cool, and you want to game in it.


Given these objectives, I would suggest the following, if you want to use a fantasy counterpart culture (FCC):

DO include whatever "common knowledge" you expect the audience will bring with them wherever possible (as explained below). You don't want to penalize players who do extra research, and you want to minimize misconception for people who are reasonably unwilling to read reams of setting material, or are unwilling or unablle to keep the little differences between what they're familiar with and the setting in their mind while focusing on how to keep alive surrounded by dangerous enemies.

DO consider the subext of your worldbuidling decisions. "Orcs are native Americans" + "All Orcs have an int penalty" can imply that indigenous people are less intelligent than other people. (For this particular issue, I would suggest allowing each race to pick from multiple racial ability packages or racial substitutions, ala pathfinder).

You can also be aware of the subtext, but use the FCC anyway. If this is just you and your friends gaming, you can be as mature or immature as you like as long as everyone is having fun and no one is offended.

DON'T be afraid to ignore or change parts of the inspirational culture that fit poorly with the game you want to play. This can be adding elements required by the game mechanics (e.g. Kindred in Vampire), elements of other cultures (including your own, e.g. toning down the blatant sexism that you might expect to find in your 1930s-inspired action).

DO include divergent elements in the FCC that would make the game more fun. Sure, Rome didn't exactly have fireballs or dragons, but I signed up to play DnD in FCC Rome, not a tabletop reenactment troupe.

DO draw from a culture's myths as well as history. This idea just allows you to add so much to a game. Plus, what is more interesting for a fantasy game, a culture where everyone wrongly believes in dryads, or one where spirits of the trees can fight against people who need to cut down trees to feed their children?

Mr. Bitter
2015-11-14, 04:21 PM
This harkens back a bit, but I feel the need to chime in on the griffons vs. fighter jets discussion:

Even if a setting has both, there's still a definite military use for a trainable, ridable animal with prodigious natural weapons and a tactical flight speed. No, you're not going to have griffons dogfighting with Migs or F-15s (let alone F-22s), and probably not even with Zeros, but you don't have A-10s doing so, either. In fact, the A-10 is designed for an entirely different mission profile, and depending on the strength of a griffon, it might be that they would have been ideal mounts for the Vulcan cannon, without need to invent a plane for it. Even if not, the lack of engine noise makes them good for low-to-the-ground missions with 3D movement required, and they make good attack animals.

The thrust of this being: don't discount the usefulness of something just because it doesn't parallel directly with a real-world item (or vice-versa); consider instead what it DOES do well, and what it COULD be used for.

Imagine the street patrolmen in New York City riding hippogriffs instead of horses.

In Ursula K. Le Guin's book Rocannon's World (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocannon%27s_World) there is a scene where a griffon rider takes out a helicopter. I think the two are pretty analogous in role.

raygun goth
2015-11-14, 05:29 PM
In Ursula K. Le Guin's book Rocannon's World (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocannon%27s_World) there is a scene where a griffon rider takes out a helicopter. I think the two are pretty analogous in role.

In 1966 maybe, nowadays the tracking systems and defenses on just an old Chinook would tear apart a squad of griffons. At maybe a mile away - and that's really the rub. D&D type fantasy armies are simply not effective at mile ranges. There's really only a couple of things that could really stand up to modern military infrastructure - and one of them is Enchanters.

The others are mind flayers and basically anything with mind-gargling powers, and none of these things could really beat Scotland or France's military infrastructure.

awa
2015-11-14, 09:09 PM
now im no expert on modern military tech but i would be surprised if they were as effective at detecting non metallic objects with a minimal heat signature that can fly really low to the ground as they are at spotting conventional military targets.

in fact i would not be surprised if a creature with the eyes of an eagle could reliably spot the large metal thing first.

Broken Crown
2015-11-15, 01:24 AM
Reading this thread, I've been wondering the same thing: Given its likely radar and heat signatures, would a griffon actually register as a valid target to today's guided missiles?

The question probably becomes irrelevant once the fighter gets within effective cannon range, in any case. But if, as awa suggests, the griffon has eagle-like visual acuity, it might be able to land and get under cover before that happens.

raygun goth
2015-11-15, 03:04 AM
now im no expert on modern military tech but i would be surprised if they were as effective at detecting non metallic objects with a minimal heat signature that can fly really low to the ground as they are at spotting conventional military targets.

in fact i would not be surprised if a creature with the eyes of an eagle could reliably spot the large metal thing first.

It has nothing to do with whether it's metallic or not, griffons have a radar signature that's bigger than a wren and they incredibly slow, they get spotted from miles, often without a bird in the air. Jet is dispatched and wipes out the griffon rider in less than five minutes in a single strafing run and that's because they had to wake the pilot up out of a sound sleep. You just - you can't.

Griffon is great anti-infantry. In the woods. With no spotters. At night. But then, goblins are way better at that, too, and kobolds are just as good if you can get 'em.

We have systems in common use that can annihilate man-sized biological targets with such efficiency that one of the great moral dilemmas facing us right now is whether or not it's even okay to use them.

Fantasy monsters, despite all the big oogy-boogie hype they have for themselves, would not be particularly effective in a straight-up fight with any kind of modern military infrastructure and weaponry. We are prepared exceptionally well for large, fast-moving hard targets - a D&D troll would be eaten alive the instant it stepped into view, and likely often before that. A dragon would be fought from the other side of the planet using missiles that can bore through concrete before triggering. A swarm of griffon riders? You remember that missle from Iron Man, the Jericho? We have that. It's called the CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapon - and deploying it would be playing softball. Oh, no, a teleporting Barbazu, quick, get on the horn determine the nature of its targets, soft deploy to likely locations, let it get a couple more successes to figure out if you're right about where and what it's hitting, then next time it bamfs in someplace it gets a torso full of bullets that can put holes in tank armor. Modern warfare is played out on screens reading signatures not much more impactful than a cricket fifty miles away, anything that puts a blip larger than a human in the air or on the ground is just done. Whereas, say, those little slug things from the Expanded Psionics Handbook? They could tear a path through the government and have pretty much any nation on modern Earth locked down in maybe 48 hours tops, simply because there's nothing in place to defend against such a thing.

awa
2015-11-15, 11:20 AM
i think you dramatically over estimate how rapidly you could deal with the teleporting monster they can carry a 50 pound bomb so they don't need to be particularly close to the target and only exist in any given part of the planet for roughly 6 seconds there is no way a human could react that fast.

If stopping bombers was so easy terrorist would not be a thing if they could literal appear anywhere on the planet in an instant bypassing all forms of defense with a huge bomb and no need to plan out the attack, they would be infinitely more deadly. A teleporting monster is basically a wmd the only defense is mutually assured destruction or more magic.

The target i described was every military base or instillation the monster can teleport to its target or to low orbit and everywhere in between and just drop the bomb on the base it will fall to fast for you to do anything about. If the teleporter has half a brain they can randomize their targets, using American example becuase of name familiarity they could blast the white house then hit the pentagon a few times then drop a bomb in an air craft carriers engine room then a few in random barracks at places that are nighttime then back to the pentagon to re-strike the same locations to get first res-ponders the bearded have so many targets to choose from and would do so much damge so fast that even if they eventually could devise a counter measure the military would be crippled long before they could.

The only thing you could do to avoid an attack would be to be in a location the devil can't describe

regards to griffins you have ludicrously overestimated a modern militarizes ability to stop teleports so i suspect you are overestimating are ability to detect and fire on flying creature low to the ground, non metallic ect. but as i said i am no an expert so have no place arguing it further.

raygun goth
2015-11-15, 04:01 PM
No, I haven't. You described a pattern of attack - that's what's important. Because at that point we're not longer dealing with the enemy's capabilities, we're dealing with its methodology. The issue with terrorists is they aren't one guy, they're several guys, pretending to be normal people. The Barbazu can't do that, unless it's got something like a Hat of Disguise; heck, we'll add that to his list of needs.

6 seconds? More like 12.

Also, what kind of 50-pound bomb are we talking about? Is it a 50-pound fertilizer bomb? Is it a general purpose bomb? A dirty suitcase bomb? Because we don't make general 50-pounders anymore, and any military target is going to be well-prepared to take it, especially from overhead.

Also note that you can't teleport somewhere you haven't been described. It's going to need to scry first. So here's a list of things the devil needs:

A bomb - as mentioned, this can be done pretty easily, but every bomb construction leaves a trail, every military bomb is tagged and managed. Though the nuclear arsenal of the United States is pretty poorly managed (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g) versus the conventional arsenal. It needs a bomb that will do lots of damage, and not something it's going to drop from the air - we're ready for that, and any target it wants to wipe out is too hardened from overhead hits. I suggest any kind of thermobaric weapon that saturates the air with an accelerant first, that way it can put the package down, it can fill up all the tubes and tunnels it wants to get, and then explode. These things are like old school fireball - scouring snakes of death that worm through a facility. Your devil, meanwhile, teleported away long before the explosion happened.

A way to see/describe the inside of the secure location - this can be done with scry, but remember that scry works on people, not places. Scrying on someone you don't know incurs a penalty, is not reliable, and is probably way less effective than capturing personnel, using detect thoughts to interrogate, and then slipping on your hat of disguise and getting as deep into the target as you can. Remember that hat? Super overpowered and broke as hell when combined with detect thoughts.

A plan involving randomized targets. This is to prevent you from establishing a true pattern Find a list of towns and cities all over the world online, pick totally random ones, and mix those in with your military bombings. Don't forget to randomize your appearance, here, your goal is to make it look like more than one person is involved in these particular attacks. Bonus round if you can pin them all on an existent terror group. If you really want to get creative, switch up your MO so that they can't lock down your end game. Get old school if you want - poison some water supplies, release biological weapons, gas entire villages, put mines on civilian roads way outside of any military target (I suggest Interstate-4 in Florida) - your hands aren't tied by the Geneva Conventions, so get wacky! If you really want to screw things up in a "they're not coming back from this" kind of way, think about your fire immunity and your ability to grab coronal material and just put it down gently on the ground. Or surface material - that'd really spice things up a bit, holy cow.

A good plan. If you want to get really dangerous, try things other than military targets and the United States at first. Tag oil refineries (you don't need to worry about fields - pretty much all of the Earth's usable oil comes from South Korea or Texas), collapse chromium, manganese, platinum, copper, and gold mining operations. Tear down our ability to get uranium - depleted and otherwise - and make the Cape of Good Hope impassable. The modern world does a remarkable amount of shipping using sea traffic, and make the Panama canal unusable and the Cape of Good Hope just not there anymore will basically cripple the shipping industry - make South Korea and Vietnam's dock cities utterly useless and you will actually cripple it.

(edit: 1) it's a side note, but if the Barbazu is using bombs, then you need to start giving the modern military some magic, and I think this thread is more about what you might get if both of these things grow up naturally together, and 2)you want a big scary in-your-face monster that can handle a modern military for a while? Anything incorporeal that makes more of itself, which will tear holes in everything until we figure out what "incorporeal" means and proceed to handle it, though by then it might be too late)

Anyhow. This is so off topic it hurts.
__________________________

I regularly use indigenous American cultures, there's just so many of them and they're all so awesome. I think the big deal here is actually in what D&D refers to as the "race" category. Do not make races with cultures packaged in - races, if you're even going to use them (I usually don't >_>) need to have a broad spectrum of cultures that, ideally, are mutually exclusive.

Eberron is pretty cool about this - sure, there's the subraces, but the base elf out of the Player's Handbook has four whole cultures that are completely different animals. It was really refreshing - even though gnomes and dwarves were a bit monolithic. That's the big thing - making a monolithic race is racist. It's removing agency that you're trying to give them, and I would think "dwarves are greedy people with beards and they live in holes in the ground" is something we'd have moved past.

My personal fun places to crib are anywhere but Europe - Europe itself is pretty small in general and there are hojillions of awesome cultures in places like Russia alone. So that's my rule - if you're going to crib, crib from somplace you're unfamiliar with, because getting to learn and place yourself in the mindset of an entire other culture is awesome.

awa
2015-11-15, 07:56 PM
the open air above a particular military base is very easy to describe
terrorist need to blend in with normal people becuase they need to get close to place a bomb the devil does not a 50 pound block of c-4 dropped into a base would cause at least several casualties he appears on the surprise rnd drops it as a free action and then is gone on his turn. Now real people need more then 6 seconds to react to an unexpected thing so even if they are sitting there holding a gun when it appears the odds of them being able to do anything about it are effectively zero.

Your crazy if you think they could figure out a pattern and plan fast enough to do something before the entire military collapsed in on itself.

goto124
2015-11-15, 08:29 PM
DO rename 'races' into 'cultures' if you want monocultural races.

... why did I come up with that?

LudicSavant
2015-11-15, 08:42 PM
So now team magic gets to take modern technology like C4? And Barbazus apparently can accurately aim a bomb from low orbit as a free action? :smallconfused:


Now real people need more then 6 seconds to react to an unexpected thing so even if they are sitting there holding a gun when it appears the odds of them being able to do anything about it are effectively zero.

There's actually quite a bit of data on the subject of human reaction times, including factoring surprise. Average human reaction time is 0.15-0.25 seconds. A highly skilled human can be as low as a tenth of a second and produce complex reactions (examples include olympians or e-sports players). Tests on Joe Commoner driving a car and reacting effectively to something completely unexpected apparently can take about a second! Joe Commoner is slow like that.

And then, of course, there's our capacity for automated defenses.

raygun goth
2015-11-15, 09:16 PM
the open air above a particular military base is very easy to describe
terrorist need to blend in with normal people becuase they need to get close to place a bomb the devil does not a 50 pound block of c-4 dropped into a base would cause at least several casualties he appears on the surprise rnd drops it as a free action and then is gone on his turn. Now real people need more then 6 seconds to react to an unexpected thing so even if they are sitting there holding a gun when it appears the odds of them being able to do anything about it are effectively zero.

Your crazy if you think they could figure out a pattern and plan fast enough to do something before the entire military collapsed in on itself.

Say hello (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system).

It drops that block of C-4 and both it and the C-4 get smeared across the sky without any human intervention.

That's besides the point, if you start letting the bearded devil have C-4, you need to start letting the military have dimensional anchor and scry.

Also, I've told you twice how to use the Barbazu to foil some of our modern systems, and simply appearing and dropping it is not the way to go. Remember that "surprise aerial bombing from up to continent-wide distances" have been the main method of attack for over a century. We are prepared for surprise aerial bombing.
______________________________


Another thing I would say to do is to take care of how you're stealing - don't just take the parts you like. Everything that people do came from somewhere, often things completely unrelated, and transporting a cultural quirk without the conventions that surround it or a reason for that aspect of the culture does a disservice to the place from where you took it. Most cultural aspects are heavily related to our belief systems, especially if they're weird. Religion and culture are so intertwined that it's hard to separate the two, considering things that are taboo are largely linked to religion - the stigma surrounding tattoos and piercings in the United States, seiza in Japan (as part of "propriety"), and not letting women into sweat lodges in the great plains are all religious in origin.

Unfortunately, it's really something that can be discussed here - but I think a fun exercise would be to come up with a weird quirk, then figure out where it came from, especially if we started throwing them back and forth.

So, some starters!

-> Adults in this town wear a red patch of cloth on their shoulders, like a unit patch.
-> Nobody in this town disturbs weeds lower than a knee, except in the winter, when they dig them up and take them inside until the spring.
-> The colors red and purple in this culture are considered base and common.
-> In this culture, you must not throw away, bury, or cremate bones of any kind - animal and humanoid alike. They must be used for something.

JoeJ
2015-11-16, 02:32 AM
The Greenland Norse seemed to have been so intent on not absorbing Inuit culture that they seem to have all starved to death because of it, according to Jared Diamond's "Collapse."

Diamond is mistaken. The Norse in Greenland were surviving quite well on a mostly marine diet, with no evidence of starvation. A 2012 article in the Journal of the North Atlantic (http://nyheder.ku.dk/alle_nyheder/2012/2012.11/nordboerne_i_groenland_maeskede_sig_i_saeler/Human_Diet_and_Subsistence_Patterns_in_Norse_Green land_AD.pdf) goes into detail about, based on evidence from isotopic analysis of human remains. It was most likely either economic or other cultural reasons that caused them to abandon the colonies.

LudicSavant
2015-11-16, 03:39 AM
Diamond is mistaken. The Norse in Greenland were surviving quite well on a mostly marine diet, with no evidence of starvation. A 2012 article in the Journal of the North Atlantic (http://nyheder.ku.dk/alle_nyheder/2012/2012.11/nordboerne_i_groenland_maeskede_sig_i_saeler/Human_Diet_and_Subsistence_Patterns_in_Norse_Green land_AD.pdf) goes into detail about, based on evidence from isotopic analysis of human remains. It was most likely either economic or other cultural reasons that caused them to abandon the colonies.

Reading it. Thanks for pulling this up. :smallsmile:

Segev
2015-11-16, 12:15 PM
I think a fun exercise would be to come up with a weird quirk, then figure out where it came from, especially if we started throwing them back and forth.

So, some starters!

-> Adults in this town wear a red patch of cloth on their shoulders, like a unit patch.
-> Nobody in this town disturbs weeds lower than a knee, except in the winter, when they dig them up and take them inside until the spring.
-> The colors red and purple in this culture are considered base and common.
-> In this culture, you must not throw away, bury, or cremate bones of any kind - animal and humanoid alike. They must be used for something.

This would likely be better off as its own thread. It will get more replies, with less distractions.

raygun goth
2015-11-16, 12:52 PM
This would likely be better off as its own thread. It will get more replies, with less distractions.

You are, of course, right. Even just a list would be fun.