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Amaril
2016-01-26, 05:12 PM
A lot of people take inspiration from real-world historical cultures in designing their fantasy ones. But something I don't see talked about or done nearly as much is fusing more than one source of such inspiration to create something new and different, as the Giant discussed with his kingdom of Dharta and a few others in the New World article series. Perhaps that's just because it tends to be less obvious when that's done, so I don't notice, but I still feel like the process of doing it is worth talking about.

So, for anyone who likes making fusion cultures, how do you go about it? Do you prefer to combine cultural flavors that are already fairly similar, or more different from one another? How do you blend languages? What are some examples of cultures like this that you've made?

NRSASD
2016-01-27, 01:50 PM
One of the reasons people choose to lift historical settings wholesale and insert them into their campaigns is that most of the cultural subtext stays the same. If you say "Medieval Europe" your players immediately see castles, lords, merchants, poor roads, powerful churches, and decentralized governments. Creating and blending unique cultures require that you spend your time explaining this cultural subtext to give your nations the same degree of life that historical ones already possess. This is not a bad thing, just something to bear in mind.

One of my favorite created cultures is a blend between the Ottoman Janissaries, ancient Egypt, the Arabic conquest of the Levant in the 650's, and a hearty dose of binder and fire magic. A distinct ethnic group of humans lived in a series of large interconnected river valleys surrounded by desert. They were a relatively peaceful people, content to worship their own gods and farm the flood plains. Being isolated by the desert, they never really had a need for any weapons more sophisticated beyond spears, bows, and the odd axe. Clerical magic was prevalent but low key (ie nothing beyond 4th level spells), and arcane was unheard of.

An invasion force of horse riding, arcane magic wielding human soldiers from the distant coast finally managed to penetrate the desert and came upon the valleys. The invaders wielded tremendous amounts of magical firepower, and the farmers couldn't begin to stand against them. As one valley after another was conquered, the gods turned away from the farmers and left them bereft of divine support. Without divine aid, the resistance quickly collapsed and all of the valleys were captured. The people were enslaved, and forcibly relocated to support the cities on the coast.

There, the farmers were forced to grow food for their captors. In addition, every first and third child was conscripted into the military and trained as soldiers to fight for the invaders as footmen. This continued for multiple generations, until the valleys in the desert and their own gods became distant legends. The farmers have no idea why the gods forsook them, but they strive to reach out to them still. Recently, in their efforts to contact their gods, the slaves have discovered the secrets of binder magic (voluntarily being possessed by spirits from the void to channel their power). With this new found gift, and their prodigious military training, large segments of the slave population has managed to escape their captors and are now wandering the desert in clans, looking for their ancestral homeland.


I created this by just taking aspects of culture and history I like and combining them, then discovering how they and the rules of a D&D world mesh together. It's better to take large segments of a culture and blend them (say Japanese architecture and equipment but set in an Incan culture) than it is to take small pieces and stitch them together piecemeal.

EccentricCircle
2016-01-28, 12:04 PM
This is the approach I try to use. I think that a fusion of different cultural influences is always going to be more interesting that a straight up counterpart. But you need to ensure that all of the cultural elements you are borrowing fit well into the overarching themes of the campaign.

I'm currently designing a vaguely oriental setting, but figured that it would be interesting to make it more Himalayan than Japanese or Chinese, as those have been done many times. So my main influences are going to be Nepal and Tibet, with some Indian and Chinese elements, probably some stuff drawn from Buddhism and Taoism, and plenty of martial arts. So on one side of the mountains we have jungle shrouded valleys filled with hidden temples, while on the other is a high plateau, inhabited by nomadic herdsmen. the high peaks are home to temples where monks meditate on the forces of the universe and practice martial arts.

With that baseline established then I cast my net further afield and draw in some other asian elements. The Architecture of the Ankor civilisation is very cool, and evokes the south east asian aesthetic without drawing on the onion domes of Indian palaces, which look a fair bit like their middle eastern counterparts. And lets have scheming great houses in the style of legend of the five rings, or maybe Dune.

I also want this to be a D&D setting, so I want to fit in many of the race options. Lets draw on Sikhism for my Dwarven culture, as that preserves the need for large beards, and gives them a personality which feels like it fits with the region.

For the Elves I want something which will feel very different and slightly alien, so lets look at cultures that evolved in similar environments to the high Himalayas, but in a different part of the world. We'll make the Elves kind of Incan, so no wheels and quipu knots instead of writing.

We don't want to drift too far from our south east Asian aesthetic though, so lets draw parallels between Machu Pichu and the myths of Shangri La. So now the elves have a hidden empire high in secret valleys where they guard the secrets of eternal life. This can then be counter posed with the human religions, which are about achieving enlightenment through serial reincarnation.

We need one or two race options that reflect this setting, to make things unique, Yak men are an obvious example. But I won't make them entirely tibetan, maybe throw in some cutural elements draw from afghanistan and other central asian regions.

I like to fit orcs and goblins into my worlds as well, as I'm a great believer that there's no such thing as an always chaotic evil race. But creating a counterpart culture for them is much harder, as you can run into unfortunate implications if you cast any real culture as one which has a lot of negative baggage.

I need to decide what the core conflicts of the campaign are and how the different factions interact. And this will help choose what elements to highlight and what to ignore. The main thing is always going to be effectively communicating these ideas to players. There's always a risk that you will get a group that don't care about the background material and will drift towards a more European baseline despite your best efforts. So it helps to see what the characters like, and tie the class and race choices they make into the world. Where do wizards and clerics fit in this world, who rules and who doesn't? What are the main axes of conflict and how will those influence the players, and draw them further into the world?

CharonsHelper
2016-01-28, 12:25 PM
In addition to the extra explanation required - it also has the disadvantage of it not making any sense if you're not careful.

For example: what if you tried mixing Aztec/Inca with the early empire of China - you're going to have all sorts of issues. Large parts of Aztec/Inca civilizations were the way they were because they were still in the bronze age, they didn't have the wheel, and they were still on the barter system rather than having any currency (that was actually one reason why they had so much gold/silver stockpiled for the conquistadors to steal - it wasn't mixed with the populace in coinage). China was wary of horse-raiders - making such difficult was the main reason for their wall... and there were no horses in South America at all. That's just off the top of my head.

While it can be cool - it's generally not worth the effort. Usually it's easier to lift a civilization entirely out of history, because you can be sure that it mostly makes sense why things were the way they were, and then make smaller tweaks as needed to make it match what you want.

Tzi
2016-01-28, 01:01 PM
When creating new cultures I try not to TOTALLY copy existing cultures but use enough familiar aspects of a culture to create the illusions of familiarity but give it enough distinctness that they sense this isn't exactly what they expected.

So in my setting you have the Kingdom of Brigantia (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?474471-R%EDoltad-Brigant%ED-Celtic-themed-setting-v2-WIP), The first thing I did was find and designate the Briganti people with a language, one SIMILAR to what I wanted but not exact. So my working checklist is....

Culturally Celtic
Reniassance Time Period
Modeled on Britain


So I used a Celtic-Conlang for the Briganti people. Because straight lifting Welsh would be fairly obvious. It looks Celtic, but the players could place what celtic language it is so they have a cultural framework, but not a 1 to 1 match. I wanted it to model British history, so I gave them a royal dynasty thats foreign. In this case coming from a similar culture my "Maebitic," speakers whom are a not so obvious reference to the Gaels. I even use Scots-Gaelic for their language. So Britain has an Irish conquest, instead of a Norman one. The Briganti language also gets more words that Sound Kinda Gaelic. Next I just fast forward the time period and the technology.

The players have a sense of what this culture is like, who they are, and it has some illusionary familiarity. But it isn't exact.

Or my Lydian Empire, Kinda Roman-esque. Kinda Byzantine, Kinda Minoan. I used Esperanto for their main language. So its Latinish like, but not exactly Latin. There is familiarity but not a 1 to 1 match.

To me the key is having familiarity but avoiding 1 to 1 matches. Usually I do this by borrowing conlangs or relatively rare languages my players are unlikely to have encountered. I borrow familiar elements from history but always change some key aspects to make it seem fresh, yet familiar.

EccentricCircle
2016-01-28, 05:04 PM
For example: what if you tried mixing Aztec/Inca with the early empire of China - you're going to have all sorts of issues. Large parts of Aztec/Inca civilizations were the way they were because they were still in the bronze age, they didn't have the wheel, and they were still on the barter system rather than having any currency (that was actually one reason why they had so much gold/silver stockpiled for the conquistadors to steal - it wasn't mixed with the populace in coinage). China was wary of horse-raiders - making such difficult was the main reason for their wall... and there were no horses in South America at all. That's just off the top of my head.

While it can be cool - it's generally not worth the effort. Usually it's easier to lift a civilization entirely out of history, because you can be sure that it mostly makes sense why things were the way they were, and then make smaller tweaks as needed to make it match what you want.

I'm aware of those issues certainly. I'm more interested by the Incan culture than the Aztecs, as the two are very different and the latter definitely doesn't fit with the way I want my Elven culture to fit into the setting. To go into more detail the ancient elvish culture is going to have been largely Incan in nature, but its modern expression is largely different. The elves have reacted to the influx of migratory human tribes by becoming highly isolationist, much in the way that Japan tried to cut itself off from European trade. Because the elves are immortal there is much more of a focus on tradition and much less on innovation. They are aware that humans have invented the wheel, and bred horses that are strong enough to carry riders, but neither is actually that useful if you are farming terraces in steep mountain valleys. Likewise the economy of their neighbors is treated with suspicion.
Many of the elder elves believe that the reason they are immortal is that they have actually achieved enlightenment and are no longer trapped within the cycle of Saṃsāra as the humans are. They don't want to jeopardise their enlightened souls by mingling with humans, and so Half elves, who do reincarnate are considered to be fallen.

As to whether it is worth the effort I guess it depends on whether the setting design is a means to an end, with playing the resulting game being the main focus, or whether creating a setting for its own sake is something you enjoy, and running games in it is just a great way to share it with others.
I find that lifting a culture straight out of history is problematic. Nothing exists in a vacuum, cultures interact with one another on a global scale, even in ancient times. Ideas and religions migrate from one part of the world to another. As you rightly point out there has to be a very good reason for a culture not to adopt the technological advances of its neighbours.

Essentially you have to take real cultures as a starting point and then wind the clock forwards and see how they evolve and interact, how their histories intertwine and what the probable result will be. In practice of course you kind of do that the other way around. You decide what kind of aesthetic, or themes you want in your final setting and then consider how it could have gotten there from the basic seeds that have been copied from the real world.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-28, 05:19 PM
I'm aware of those issues certainly. I'm more interested by the Incan culture than the Aztecs, as the two are very different and the latter definitely doesn't fit with the way I want my Elven culture to fit into the setting.

I actually didn't write my post in response to yours - I started mine before yours posted - both of us mentioning Incas was purely chance.

Yours does sound like it could be interesting, basically having racism make the elves not trust all of those newfangled gadgets in order to keep them in a less developed culture. But it only works for games where the world and such issues are the focus of the game.

In more general games - such intricacies of the world are just going to detract from the plot and require bunches more exposition. It's like how annoying it is when a system goes on and on about their world's mystical powers and how it was first created etc. Generally they'd be better off just calling it magic and moving on.

EccentricCircle
2016-01-28, 05:57 PM
I generally find it works best when the key themes of the setting are hard baked into the character options. So by tying each faction, be it a race, a class, a political group or a religion, into the world any option the players pick will have story elements associated with it. Of course you need a group who want to play that sort of game for it to work. Some groups will find that the GM redefining the class options make them less playable. Still, once you get a group of players who are interested in world building and keen to throw themselves into the conflicts of the setting it soon becomes well worth it.

Whats great is when a campaign goes on for a while, and players are keen to come back to play different options and side with different factions on the key conflicts. Its great when you get a few players who really get a setting, as it makes all the hard work creating it feel worthwhile.

Cealocanth
2016-01-29, 11:20 PM
Fusing such cultures is very doable and can be quite fun if you pick the right cultures. Unfortunately, this can and often does run into the political correctness issue an awful lot. People don't like having their culture or their heritage combined with others, generally, because it generally comes across as a perversion of something they hold close. This particularly comes into play if you take cultures too close to modern day and, strangely enough, too ancient (tribal cultural aspects, even if they are not based on real tribes or real cultures in pretty much any way, are considered cultural appropriation and are often seen as racist because of the history.)

For example, I once tried a game set in an alternate history in which China and several Native American groups managed to stake claims in the American West. It was an interesting blend of Western and Eastern ways of thinking and practices, and actually came across as something kind of like Star Wars, if that makes any sense. However, to suggest that outside influence could mix with his culture insulted the Navajo tribesman in my group, and the mixing of Chinese and American culture was found insulting by one player of Chinese descent. Cool concept, but the PC factor made this a difficult game to play.

It would probably be wise to clear it with your players if you plan on doing an RPG in this. When it comes to cultural appropriation, it's best not to insult anyone you don't have to, and not to step on anyone's heritage.

Amaril
2016-01-29, 11:48 PM
Fusing such cultures is very doable and can be quite fun if you pick the right cultures. Unfortunately, this can and often does run into the political correctness issue an awful lot. People don't like having their culture or their heritage combined with others, generally, because it generally comes across as a perversion of something they hold close. This particularly comes into play if you take cultures too close to modern day and, strangely enough, too ancient (tribal cultural aspects, even if they are not based on real tribes or real cultures in pretty much any way, are considered cultural appropriation and are often seen as racist because of the history.)

For example, I once tried a game set in an alternate history in which China and several Native American groups managed to stake claims in the American West. It was an interesting blend of Western and Eastern ways of thinking and practices, and actually came across as something kind of like Star Wars, if that makes any sense. However, to suggest that outside influence could mix with his culture insulted the Navajo tribesman in my group, and the mixing of Chinese and American culture was found insulting by one player of Chinese descent. Cool concept, but the PC factor made this a difficult game to play.

It would probably be wise to clear it with your players if you plan on doing an RPG in this. When it comes to cultural appropriation, it's best not to insult anyone you don't have to, and not to step on anyone's heritage.

That's definitely a good point, thanks for reminding me to pay attention to it. I think the particular fusion I'm working on is about as safe as I can be--it's between ancient Israel, which I have a decent claim to using because it's my own heritage, and Dark Ages Britain, which is the basis for such a huge chunk of western fantasy that I think the chance of people being upset is fairly minimal. I'm mostly just doing it as an exercise for myself, though (although I've thought about using it for a CRPG I hope to make someday), so it's sort of a moot point.