Advice and Ideas for Foreign Cultures in Settings

[Callos_DeTerran]

A hobby that I've long been fascinated with is making up new campaign settings and all of the myriad places on them, it's just something I enjoy and (according to others) I'm not half-bad at. The problem is that I tend towards more standard kingdoms/countries (kingdoms, empires, etc.) all based mostly off the ideas you see in normal Tolkein-esque fantasy fare or the society-types that fantasy specifically enables. Magocracies, Theocracies where gods exist, race-cultures based off specific races (elves, dwarves, whatever), tribal clans and the sort. I want to...diversify a bit when I set to work on creating my next setting nd take a step outside of my comfort zone.

...Admittedly, a lot of this was brought on by me reading the Bestiary 2 and 3 for Pathfinder and realizing just how many different cultures and folklores are represented by fascinating creatures in them. This, somewhat naturally, lead to me being more curious about constructing a setting that fuses Arabic, Asian, and Indian cultures into the same setting before unleashing players upon my poor creation. Thing is...I know all of jack-diddly about them. I mean, I have a few ideas based off suggestions given in books like Oriental Adventures and whatnot, but the simple fact is I know next to nothing about these cultures that isn't a trope or cliche. I'm not against using cliches and tropes since, after all, they exist for a reason and are extremely helpful if done right but I don't even really know a lot of the tropes to be perfectly honest.

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with games in these cultures and advice on what worked in them and what didn't. Ideas for such a game, tropes that would help out the construction of the setting, etc. I'm not looking to draw too heavily off history but I know it can be a useful guideline. Not so much specific ideas like character concepts, but big picture ideas...

[BWR]

Do you want detail and depth based on the various real world cultures or do you want 'Arab' and 'Indian' as a hasty paint job on a normal D&D world?
Because the latter is a lot easier to accomplish than the former. Just take India - look at how big that place is and how long and rich its history is. There are hundreds of languages and tons of cultures and cults that have developed over the years and even the little we know is far too diverse to do justice in a simple game. You will need to do a lot of reading to get a feel for the broad strokes of the stuff, not to mention making whatever you come up with a mish-mash of whatever grabs you. If this is acceptable, just go ahead and read and steal ideas.

To a lesser extent, this holds true for Arabian history too. The easiest thing to do would be to dig up old Al-Qadim supplements for 2e and use them. That and read the 1001 Nights. And lots and lots of history books.

[Brother Oni]

You may want to speak to Bhu and have a look at his Japan thread over in Friendly Banter, where he's trying to build an accurate representation of mythological Japan.

[Callos_DeTerran]

Do you want detail and depth based on the various real world cultures or do you want 'Arab' and 'Indian' as a hasty paint job on a normal D&D world?
Because the latter is a lot easier to accomplish than the former. Just take India - look at how big that place is and how long and rich its history is. There are hundreds of languages and tons of cultures and cults that have developed over the years and even the little we know is far too diverse to do justice in a simple game. You will need to do a lot of reading to get a feel for the broad strokes of the stuff, not to mention making whatever you come up with a mish-mash of whatever grabs you. If this is acceptable, just go ahead and read and steal ideas.

To a lesser extent, this holds true for Arabian history too. The easiest thing to do would be to dig up old Al-Qadim supplements for 2e and use them. That and read the 1001 Nights. And lots and lots of history books.

Depth and detail is something I aspire towards, but as a result of play rather than conscious design. My best ideas have all come about through spontaneous decision making rather than conscious effort on my part. Or to put it another way, I'm looking for ideas and advice on painting the 'big picture' so that I can build the small picture from within to fit the needs of my game. In other words I start off, for an actual game, with defining a single town/region than build up as I need to on the fly but having a framework is incredibly helpful in that regard.

[LibraryOgre]

One of my major disappointments for 2e was that the Historical Campaign Guides series never made it out of Europe. Egyptian, Japanese Shogun Era, Warring Kingdoms, Mali Empire, all would have made GREAT campaign resources.

[JusticeZero]

Research history of other places. Africa, for instance. Don't focus on flavor, focus on function. Flavor without function is tacky.

[Ettina]

Don't worry too much about it being culturally accurate - you're building a fantasy setting that kind of resembles that culture, not a setting that's actually supposed to be in that culture. As long as you get the feel of it to be sufficiently non-European, you're doing fine.

[jedipotter]

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with games in these cultures and advice on what worked in them and what didn't. Ideas for such a game, tropes that would help out the construction of the setting, etc. I'm not looking to draw too heavily off history but I know it can be a useful guideline. Not so much specific ideas like character concepts, but big picture ideas...

Fiction is a good first stop. Grab and read anything close the the culture. There is tons of fiction out there too.

And then all the real stuff you can find.

But for the most part, it is best to just make stuff up. It does not really matter how accurate it is vs. the real thing. The best way to make new stuff unique is to just make sure it's ''not like Europe''.

[Flickerdart]

All cultures evolve from specific conditions (whether environmental or social). Think about how these conditions differ between Europe and the culture in question. Is there less/more pressure to acquire land through warfare? Are there resources that are missing/available that would change the nature of monuments, buildings, weapons, or philosophy? What kind of external and internal threats exist for this culture? What is this culture's history - are they conquerors, or conquered?

If you think of a culture as a flexible, living thing, instead of an immutable block, you're going to have absolutely no trouble coming up with plausible yet distinct societies.