How much does culture matter in campaign settings? When can it be relevant?

[Yora]

Another question about roleplaying in a campaign setting and how players interact with the world. Related to the subjects of whether campaign settings tend to lack ambition to go beyond Standard Fantasy Settings, what elements make a setting practical for campaign play, and what relevance character backstories might have.

When I look at all my experiences with RPGs there has never really been any thought about how the people in the setting actually live and normally interact. Contact with people was almost always just two conversations with quest-givers and occasional questioning of local guards about the villains of the current adventure. Is that because everyday culture of the NPCs really doesn't matter in a campaign, or is it a result of everyone just assuming the default faux-medieval culture of generic knight movies?

I've been working on and off on my own setting for years and still never really got around to spend much thought on how people actually live. So far the full extend of its culture is about the assumed resources that a common community leader has under his command. And when I look at most other campaign setting there isn't really much more.

Is it something that is simply irrelevant like the appearance of the night sky or the names of the week? Or is it instead something with a lot of previously untapped potential? When it comes to fantasy books people tend to love this stuff. Campaign settings seem to rarely bother with it.

I think a lot of adventures could greatly benefit from having a basic culture in place. Intrigue and mystery adventures would probably be a lot more interesting if the players had to take into account how leaders get their legitimacy and what things might have been taken as insults to drive a person to treachery.
The games of the powerful should be much more interesting when you know the rules. And it should be a lot of fun when the rules are something different than kings, evil chancelors, and court wizards. We've seen this, done that.

A problem would always be communicating these things to players, and for published settings to make it accessible to GMs. So I think whatever is done in that regard should probably be limited to just a small handful of simple rules. Nothing so complex it becomes impractical to use.

[Knaight]

It depends on the campaign - everything I've GMed except for a handful of very early games has had culture matter a great deal; a dungeon crawling campaign likely won't see much use of it.

[Jay R]

Culture includes:
Is the land ruled by a king, or a committee, or a high-level priest or wizard?
Are foreigners put to death or enslaved?
Are goblins (orcs, ogres, etc.) considered automatic enemies, or is killing a few for treasure going to get you in trouble?
Are there such things as magic shops?
Can high-level adventurers, who have never had a permanent home, become respectable enough that the rulers, nobles, and other established characters will treat them as worthy of their time?
Can people who don't own land use swords?
Do different races get along?
Is it legal to own gold?
How much of one's money is taxed?

In short, culture affects every aspect of the game. Most people assume a generic D&D culture in their games, but it's still there, affecting the results of most interactions with other sentient beings.

[Yora]

Yet most of these are things that I usually don't see addressed by most settings.

As a GM, I am personally quite interested in the ideas of property ownership and inheritance. This is the stuff for a lot of personal conflicts behind both minor crimes and big wars. Who own what and who gains wealth and power when other people lose it? When the players arrive at a court, who are the important people they have to look out for?
In most games I played so far it never mattered, but I think a lot of adventures would become much more interesting if it were made to matter. If you need bribes to win allies and the king says he can't, it doesn't mean that he doesn't have the money. It's that the queen decided they wouldn't use their wealth for that and the king can't overrule her on budget decisions. If the players can figure this out by themselves instead of a princess giving them a secret message that they need to get the queen on their side, it seems a lot more fun.

Another thing I like more for flavor is to come up with idea how wealth is measured. In generic fantasy it's gold in the vault. But what about goats, or horses, or stores of grain? For players it's probably always about coins because that's the most practical way to store and transport wealth, but other forms could be great ways to make simple adventures feel new. Probably not many players have been on adventure to capture a thousand goats for their current boss.

[Tvtyrant]

I had a D&D 3.5 campaign where the "capital of the continent" was the city of Pask. Pask was a magicracy set in a D&D 3.5 E6 game, and its inhabitants firmly believed that casters were strictly better then none-casters. This was not just the casters, but the none-casters internalized these feelings and so did not feel that there was anything wrong with not having any political enfranchisement. The argument was that since only casters could actually know how the world worked, only they could possibly know how to run it.

It went beyond simply knowledge, casters in Pask believed that they could feel reality through their magic in a way that was particular to them, and which naturally excluded none-casters. Pask was considered a hegemony because its ruling class would topple other governments and put the local casters in charge, remaking each region to be more like itself and thus closer to being run properly. The subjects (citizen and subject are seperate legal categories) of Pask were fine with this because it came out of the caster's pockets, as none-casters could not serve in the military, own land, and did not have to pay taxes.

The party obviously had a hard time adapting to this city when they got there, but the casters were soon applying for citizenship and the none-casters were happy that for once no guards were demanding taxes.

[kyoryu]

At the risk of being glib, it's as important as you make it.

If you just stop in town to sell stuff and get your next quest hook? Probably not very important, because if that's all you're stopping in town for, it's not very important.

If your games are dealing with the inhabitants and their politics? Very important.

[BWR]

Culture and history is extremely important in settings. It is the primary point of interest in game settings. If all I get is a bland world with some locations and things to kill I don't feel connected to it. Give me a proper setting with cultural notes, a rich history and build-up of the social structure. That is, in almost all cases, what a setting is. Even settings like Planescape, which is based on wonder and weird ****, made Sigil its center and the culture and detail of the Cage is a large part of why it's so popular. Without culture, without organizations and notable NPCs and proper history of the setting to work with I end up making some bland character based on mechanics that seem less dull than the others available.

One of the reasons the old Known World gazetteers were so popular is because they took time paint, in varying detail, the background and culture of the countries, traditions, approach to life, pastimes, quirks and idiosyncrasies that make the places feel more vibrant and real than 'random dungeon built by long-dead necromancer' or 'Hollywood-esque medieval village and kings without **** all over them'.
L5R is another intensely detailed setting, and it is the detail and culture that is at least as much a selling point as the player-driven storyline.

I have to wonder, Yora, what you read that doesn't mention these things because the vast majority of settings, especially D&D settings, I've come across do mention things like form of government, basic culture, certain notable laws, etc.

[Faily]

Yet most of these are things that I usually don't see addressed by most settings.

And what settings are these, if I may ask?

Because almost all the D&D settings I can think of do adress things like system of government, particular laws that are very defining of that land/culture, who the movers and shakers are.

Forgotten Realms have different regions with different political structure. Rashemen is governed by the Rashemi witches in something of a theocratic council, while Menzobarranzan is a factional theocracy with nobility.
Mystara have a lot of well-detailed regions with a huge gallery of powerful characters.
Settings like Eberron, Dark Sun, Greyhawk, Birthright, Rokugan, Golarion, Ravenloft... all of these have cultures, different systems of government and history.

[Darth Ultron]

Yet most of these are things that I usually don't see addressed by most settings.

Mystara, Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms are the three settings with the most culture. The Forgotten Realms really, really stands above all the others with a truly insane amount of cultural information. Now, it's true that starting with 3E FR has gone down the slippery slope of being ''just a setting for adventure'' as WotC thinks that ''fluff does not sell''. So yes, the 5E Realms is just a cool place to adventure.

WotC, and by default every other publisher, would say fluff does not sell. Who really knows if they are right? Though it's hard to say in 2016 anything game related sells ''well''.

A lot of game play does not really involve culture. The style of a simple classic adventure is focused more on the wilderness. A lot of players and DM's just like to have a quick straightforward game of defeat the evil bad guy. Not all players and DM's, of course, but it's just a matter of different styles.

[Tiktakkat]

As a GM, I am personally quite interested in . . .

And there's the thing:

You, as the GM, are personally quite interested in that.
What are the players interested in?
For that matter, what are the (hopefully) several tens of thousands of GMs who will purchase the setting and (even more hopefully) several hundreds of thousands of players who will play in and possibly purchase part or all of the setting interested in?
If they aren't the same thing, the setting will do a great job of gathering dust.

That doesn't mean you cannot find settings without a considerable amount of culture out there, or ones with attention to the particular aspects of culture you are interested in. It is just a caution as to why such might not be as prevalent as you expect. And it should be a caution against developing too much culture that your players just don't care to interact with.

And to note, that is from someone who has written at least 100K words of additional culture for the setting he uses. I have just learned that not everyone cares as much about it as me, and not to try forcing it on my players if I hope the game to keep running smoothly.

[Milo v3]

Without culture I don't really see much of a reason to read a setting.

When I look at all my experiences with RPGs there has never really been any thought about how the people in the setting actually live and normally interact. Contact with people was almost always just two conversations with quest-givers and occasional questioning of local guards about the villains of the current adventure. Is that because everyday culture of the NPCs really doesn't matter in a campaign, or is it a result of everyone just assuming the default faux-medieval culture of generic knight movies?

Wow, that actually sounds rather alien to me.

[Faily]

When I look at all my experiences with RPGs there has never really been any thought about how the people in the setting actually live and normally interact. Contact with people was almost always just two conversations with quest-givers and occasional questioning of local guards about the villains of the current adventure. Is that because everyday culture of the NPCs really doesn't matter in a campaign, or is it a result of everyone just assuming the default faux-medieval culture of generic knight movies?

Wow, that actually sounds rather alien to me.

I second that. Even in the more bland D&D-esque homebrew worlds I've played in, have we had good interaction with NPCs. Just imagening interacting with NPCs at tabletop as if they were a conversation in a video/computer game and hitting the skip-button until I get the quest sounds just so... bizarre.

[goto124]

Pask was a magicracy set in a D&D 3.5 E6 game, and its inhabitants firmly believed that casters were strictly better then none-casters

But it IS true! This is DnD 3.5e, after all!

[veti]

At the risk of being glib, it's as important as you make it.

If you just stop in town to sell stuff and get your next quest hook? Probably not very important, because if that's all you're stopping in town for, it's not very important.

Even in that short interaction, it's going to matter:
- if strangers/foreigners are not admitted within the town walls, or not after dark, or if they have to get a passport to gain entry
- if there's anyone willing to buy "stuff", which I bet you don't have a receipt for, just because some book somewhere puts a price tag on it
- if your race, or something else about your appearance, would get you jeered or stoned in the streets
- if it's legal for people to employ you, or even talk to you for that matter
- if it's legal for you to carry arms and armour
- if anyone can understand what you're saying

All of which are cultural questions, and a great many more besides. To say "culture doesn't matter much" - can only be true if you make a vast number of baseline assumptions, which may not be correct, about that culture.

[Yora]

And there's the thing:

You, as the GM, are personally quite interested in that.
What are the players interested in?
For that matter, what are the (hopefully) several tens of thousands of GMs who will purchase the setting and (even more hopefully) several hundreds of thousands of players who will play in and possibly purchase part or all of the setting interested in?
If they aren't the same thing, the setting will do a great job of gathering dust.

Yes, that's really what is at the core of the issue. The ultimate value of anything in a campaign setting comes down to how much it matters in the interaction with players. If the players don't see it or don't take notice of it then it might just as well not be there at all. Any time you put something into a setting the question should be "how does it matter to the players?" Something that just looks nice on paper is mere indulgence on the writer's part and a diversion for the GM.

I am a bit surprised that people mention Forgotten Realms as a great example of deep culture. Going by first and third edition books it has long seeme to me as being terribly unimaginative in that regard. How is a common village or town in the North different from one in Aglarond or on the Moonsea? How is a weaponsmith's shop in one region different from any other? What about city guards?
I admit that Rashemen and Thay are exceptions where someone did a pretty good effort of creating something different. But it's really the only exception I can think of. Other places that don't look like 17th century England in the very South tend to be virtually undiscribed as far as I know.

[nrg89]

And when I look at most other campaign setting there isn't really much more.

I would say that's only partially true. A lot of settings detail what laws, type of rule and important customs there are in a territory if it's something a player is likely to get into contact with. I know for example that in Eberron I can't assume that a cleric will always follow his god given rules to the letter. I also know that in most settings halflings are very nomadic and in Sharn there's a lot of people who take the sky coach for granted to live their busy, fast paced lives.

As I think you've said before, what resolution do you want? How far can you actually zoom in? The cultures and subcultures in any society will continue on forever until you reach unique, extraordinary individuals if you try to categorize them all.

[Milo v3]

Any time you put something into a setting the question should be "how does it matter to the players?" Something that just looks nice on paper is mere indulgence on the writer's part and a diversion for the GM.

Except what matters to the players is going to be different in every campaign... What is diversion to you might be very useful for someone else.

[bulbaquil]

How relevant culture is will largely depend on the GM and the particular game being run. For some games - mostly pure dungeon crawls - it is a backdrop, which only really comes up for handwaves such as "yeah, the guards don't care that you're heavily armed and it's 1:30 a.m., they let you into town anyway"; for other games - especially RP-heavy games - it is everything.

[NichG]

For NPCs to be memorable, personality matters, even if it doesn't actually impact the end result of the interaction. Players tend to remember things like 'that weird guy who kept talking to his handpuppet' even if the handpuppet isn't plotty or causes them to have to change their plans. But its a spice added on top, you don't build the entire meal out of just that.

The analogous thing for inhabited locations is in some part, culture. Players won't remember 'just another city', but at the same time going into exquisite detail about the customs involved in removing money from your purse and whose responsibility it is to initiate greetings based on whether they're on the left side or right side of the road is probably too much.

That's not to say that personality (or culture) can't actually have impacts and really matter centrally to the PCs achieving their goals. However, then you have to be careful about whether the culture will end up being perceived as being placed by the GM purely for the sake of creating difficulty or worse, for the sake of 'gotchas'. If players perceive the cultural elements as primarily standing in the way of what they want to accomplish (especially if what they want to accomplish is for the good of the very people who are getting in their way), they're likely to care less about that particular people or even start seeing them as enemies. So I think its important to keep the impression of culture as having predominantly positive impacts, so even if there are negatives the PCs are more likely to play along to retain the positives rather than just reject the culture entirely and bull their way through.

To that end, if I wanted to make culture matter materially rather than just aesthetically, I'd try to collect the tensions somewhere external to the PCs. So, e.g., the culture has rules but it doesn't try to apply those to outsiders; however, those rules are impacting an NPC that the PCs would like to interact with, and so the tensions placed by those rules on the NPC provide hooks for the PCs to be able to offer aid or perform manipulations or so on. An example would be a culture where there are conditions under which challenges to a duel must be accepted; the PCs are likely to win any duel they enter (so being challenged isn't really a danger), but now they can consider whether they can place an NPC they wish to attack under the conditions where that NPC would have to accept their challenge, or things like that. Or perhaps an NPC they like has been challenged, but if they navigate the customs of that culture there's a way for them to act as a stand-in.

[hifidelity2]

At the risk of being glib, it's as important as you make it.

If you just stop in town to sell stuff and get your next quest hook? Probably not very important, because if that's all you're stopping in town for, it's not very important.

If your games are dealing with the inhabitants and their politics? Very important.

+1

Most of the games I play-in / DM are long running so the party always ends up getting involved in the local politics

[Kol Korran]

Yora, I think your experiences may differ from those of others. Myself for sure, though there seem to be quite a lot more comments saying that culture IS important to them. As to settings?

Eberron is FULL of cultural aspects and references, and most people whom I met playing this take this into consideration. From the way Dragon Marked people are treated, and their influence (Even with their lame powers), their establishments, the effects of the last war, goblinoids being "second class" people, the various interpretations and attitudes towards The Silver Flame, Blood of Vol and more, the odd role of the Drow in the setting, the abundant magitech, the intricacies of the various regions (Many people I played with have attitudes towards Berlish, Aundarian or Karrnathian people), the peculiar role and dilemma of warforged, the Inspired and their culture an embassy.

True, some adventures don't take those much into account (Even my first campaign log was an "Eberron light" game), but many, many players do take culture deeply into account.

Dark Sun, while I haven't touched upon it in a long time, is also full of unique, evocative, and memorable cultural effects, and you can easily die if you don't treat those with respect.

Golarion, while "generic" and a "kitchen sink", also has tons of cultural info and effects, and most players I've met who played in it gave these some thought, consideration and incorporated them in their games.

Shadowrun, is best known for it's flavor, more than it's mechanics, and there are just LOADS of cultural quirks, effects and more. A major selling point of the system is playing in that world, experiencing the setting.

[B]Salt in Wounds[/B, while new, also seem to be full of cultural implications due to its... quite horrific and disturbing nature.

Ravenloft, while being more a sort of a parasite setting, is also full with lots of cultural aspects.

As is Planescape, Greyhawk and lots more. It all depends on how much you, and your party, like to take these into account and incorporate them in the game. It's not a problem of the setting I feel, but rather of the play style in it...

[Yora]

If players perceive the cultural elements as primarily standing in the way of what they want to accomplish (especially if what they want to accomplish is for the good of the very people who are getting in their way), they're likely to care less about that particular people or even start seeing them as enemies. So I think its important to keep the impression of culture as having predominantly positive impacts, so even if there are negatives the PCs are more likely to play along to retain the positives rather than just reject the culture entirely and bull their way through.

I really like that thought. This seems like a pretty major insight to me.
When creating backstory for adventures, one of the big challenges is always making the players remember what you told them as brains always filter information for "how will this be useful to me?" If a cultural element allows the players to gain access to things they would normally not expect, that information becomes very relevant. If the players have to jump through hoops or NPCs refuse to cooperate with them, it's probably true that the players are more likely to search for other ways instead of trying to figure out whether they can do something to get them to help or if it's a pointless effort.
In RPGs, the carrot almost always beats the cane by far.

[Mastikator]

I would say it's 100% necessary to make a character with a backstory that is grounded in the world it exists.

Unless I (as a player) get to design the culture of the country we're playing in I'll need to have one handed to me. I can't roleplay a character that exists in a vacuum, there's more than just politics, it's how you treat NPCs of any kind, how you deal with obstacles, how you view defeat or victory, how tolerant are you of PCs different from you. EVERYTHING is culture, every last single tiny detail in the game is culture and everything that isn't present in the campaign setting will have to be created by the player. Sometimes that means the player will create a culture for that campaign setting, most of the time they'll import their own culture into the game.

[2D8HP]

Contact with people was almost always just two conversations with quest-givers and occasional questioning of local guards about the villains of the current adventure. Is that because everyday culture of the NPCs really doesn't matter in a campaign, or is it a result of everyone just assuming the default faux-medieval culture of generic knight movies?

Are those movies that common?
Off the top of my head the only "knight movies" I've seen at all have been:

The Adventures of Robin Hood,

Monty Python and the Holy Grail,

Excalibur,
and
A Knights Tale

Each of which I loved. I"d like to see more like them. Please tell me more of these "generic knight movies"
(I guess I should ask this at the "Media Discussions" sub-forum)

Other places that don't look like 17th century England in the very South tend to be virtually undiscribed as far as I know.

Well I don't know about the 17th century (civil war, the commonwealth?), but for this 20th century American, judging by reading
The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England and The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England, both written by Ian Mortimer, 14th and 16th century England were incredibly rich and alien civilization's.
It would take a very good GM to get them right!

[Darth Ultron]

I am a bit surprised that people mention Forgotten Realms as a great example of deep culture. Going by first and third edition books it has long seeme to me as being terribly unimaginative in that regard.

2nd edition is where FR really gets the details. And sadly each edition from there just goes down hill towards 'nothing'.

[BayardSPSR]

I'm inclined to say that culture is one of the most important things in an RPG with RP in it - that is, one in which the people at the table interact with each other as characters, and the things they say and the ways they respond matter. I suspect this is usually invisible, because the default assumption for "how would my character interact with this other character" is "how people interact with each other in my culture" crossed with "my stereotyped expectations of the setting's theme." So a group of American, East Coast college students who've read fantasy novels will roleplay in a way dictated by that cultural background when it comes to questions of politeness, friendliness, status, family, community, economics, religion, etc., along with all the ways that all of those interact with each other, unless specifically and explicitly instructed or agreed otherwise (and often not even then: for instance, a group that agrees that their society has a caste system in it will probably not expect enforcement of that system among the people at the table, and may get annoyed if they're forced to actually diverge from their accustomed patterns of interaction).

The practical things we're talking about tend to be the dressing on top of that (forks or chopsticks?).

[Thrudd]

The culture and structure of society, the economy and way of life for people should be considered in a setting. It doesn't always need to be known by the players before the game starts, either. They can be strangers from a foreign land learning about new cultures as they go. Figuring out how a new society works could be a significant element of different adventures for characters traveling in distant lands. Why do all the people wearing red ignore the people who wear green, don't even acknowledge their existence, even though they live in the same city? (That was from a Dying Earth story)

[Tvtyrant]

I am a bit surprised that people mention Forgotten Realms as a great example of deep culture. Going by first and third edition books it has long seeme to me as being terribly unimaginative in that regard. How is a common village or town in the North different from one in Aglarond or on the Moonsea? How is a weaponsmith's shop in one region different from any other? What about city guards?
I admit that Rashemen and Thay are exceptions where someone did a pretty good effort of creating something different. But it's really the only exception I can think of. Other places that don't look like 17th century England in the very South tend to be virtually undescribed as far as I know.

Al-Qadim? The Underdark (which was later adopted by every D&D setting ever), the massive history of Mulhorand and Imaskar.

A man loses his horse and he is from:
Calimport: He swears and then mentions that it was fate, and who can escape fate?
Mulhorand: He says that Ra is not smiling on him this day, and lets the matter go.
Imaskar: He is outraged that the world does not obey his will, and uses his magic to try to find it.
The Underdark: He is terrified that whatever got the horse is near, and argues that they should leave.

[Yora]

I've never heard about any of that. Where is that from?

[PersonMan]

When creating backstory for adventures, one of the big challenges is always making the players remember what you told them as brains always filter information for "how will this be useful to me?"

I wouldn't say always. I know that I'd be more happy with "we require X for the ritual of Y because if we don't do the ritual, peace talks with the Z-folk will break down, so have it back in time for that" than "you have a 3-day time limit on this quest for no discernible reason", even though the former is full of "useless" information.

Even if a lot of things get boiled down or half-remembered, it's good to have enough information to make the world feel like a world, and not a cardboard cutout.