WORLDBUILDING CULTURES - Writing Advice

[@qzamap3870]

Anthropologist here, a few things to take note of for helping build cultures. - inheritence and sexual division of labor is very important. In some regions of the Himalayas, its common for a woman to take multiple brothers as husbands. This way, land does not leave the family as the children stay within the same family. - Funerary customs are crazy important too. Dying is one of the most significant and impactful things that can happen to people. The way people treat their dead is thus a hugely important way of understanding their philosophy. - Culture is not bound by geography. People move and bring their cultures with them. A great example is by looking at a map of languages that say variations "tea" or "shai" and how it corresponds to ancient trade routes. As merchants brought their goods across the world, they told the locals what those goods were. - Subgroups! Not everyone agrees on everything and things so culture differs regionally, within professions, socio-economic status, sexual preference, and more will all shape outlooks, language, identity, religion, and so forth. - On copy-pasting cultures. Don't do it not just because its lazy, but because you'll fuck it up. Your desert culture of not-arabs is likely going to be more orientalist than truthful to actual middle-eastern cultures. Slapping a bunch of -esques winds up not only showing that you are lazy, but ignorant, or worse, too.

[@xyreniaofcthrayn1195]

You do realise that thanks to the muppet who divided the Occident and the orient through constantinople and not the ural mountains (the more logical flipping natural barrier) every desert culture ends up looking like some dipshit who got off the burning bush call to a deity if using the silk road as the basis looking like a muppet however the better desert trade empire to pull from is the ghana trade network through the sahara.

[@potatomancer8185]

thank you! this helps so much

[@inkbythebarrelandpaperbyth6905]

Brilliant

[@user-mr6hc9hy2t]

I like points 1,2 and 4. However, I strongly disagree with 3 and 5. Geography is one of the core influences on culture. People who live in similar climates tend to develop more similar cultures. If one group wants to expand to conquer another, having similar climates and cultural ideas hugely impacts how successful the cultural conversion will be. You then proceed to bring up trade routes as a counter example, when in my opinion it's actually an example that supports the point you're against. The other cultures you are within geographical proximity of is massively impactful on cultural development. I.e. coastal peoples who are proportionately further away than inland people across a mountain range may end up with a much more similar cultures, while the land locked people behind the mountains wouldn't have the same level of cultural osmosis. I think that's what you were getting at- don't just measure the raw distance between X and Y and assume that is what determines the level cultural similarity, but instead it's how the geography enables/restricts movement between the areas. Now for your last point, while I respect the creative gumption behind wanting to make entirely unique cultures, and or telling people "don't make fantasy culture a copy paste of a real one," it's important to not take this point too far. Much like story telling itself, where it's perhaps impossible to tell a 100% creatively unique story, it's probably also impossible to make an entirely unique culture that is unlike any on earth in any way. As if you did- it's probably on an entirely un-earth-like planet and the people aren't even human beings. If you make a culture of humans and/or humanoids who generally act human, and they are on an earth-like planet, you will inevitably run into real-life cultural similarities. People who live in deserts may trend towards X concepts, while people who live in fertile flood plains may trend towards Y concepts. You will run into a creative brick wall if you stop yourself every time a culture is reminiscent of a real-life one. Art imitates life for a reason.

[@qzamap3870]

@@user-mr6hc9hy2t Thanks for the comment! In retrospect, my example for 3 was not the best. You are also right in certain types of geography limiting or enhancing cultural spread, but I mainly wanted to sway people away from environmental determinism. There are also, always, exceptions to the norm and these can be exciting to explore. A better example for 3 might be the Dene language family in America - where Dene-speaking groups like the descendants of the Apache and Navajo migrated from Alaska and Canada to the Southwest. The geography of these regions are completely different, separated by vast differents, and yet some Dene groups made that migration. Of course, ethno-linguistic groups and how you splice them are a whole other can of worms. On 5, it is a rather complicated can of words. You are right in we draw inspiration from real-world cultures, I do it too, but it is important to highlight the role of research and respect towards the cultures in question. I may not have clarified it best, but Orientalist music is a good example of this. Instruments that sound "eastern" like the duduk and daf are included in music labelled as "Arabic" despite them not being Arab. Someone outside MENA culture might not know these differences and then present a fundamentally misinformed version of a culture. Its one of the cases where "write what you know" is incredibly important. On cultures having similar traits due to geography, this is rather tricky and I'm gonna be a little pedantic in that, for example, a desert is not just a desert. Lack of animals like horses and domesticable cattle created vastly different traits among Southwestern Dene and Numic American cultures as opposed to the Afroasiatic cultures of MENA. To say all cultures of the same geographic type wind up adopting similar beliefs is a touch oversimplified. Now its a lot to ask someone to take all of this in mind, but they are important considerations and sub-clarifications. For building a fantasy culture and not wanting to pursue a degree, take a few base assumptions (magic and monsters are the foremost) and see how that might affect your initial inspirations, then as you build, throw in some interesting twists. As you build more cultures, think of how they influence one another. The web grows, and so does the poorly organized folder in your google drive.

[@jjhh320]

I always get this weird vibe when people insist upon looking at fictional cultures through modern values, like always judging them in comparison to it. It's low key ethnocentrism, harmless toward a fake culture, but still a bad perspective through which anyone should practice learning about different people

[@korniestpatch]

Games workshop 2024 😂

[@keirscott-schrueder5625]

what would be an example of this? just out of curiosity

[@duck_entertainment]

@@keirscott-schrueder5625Looking at a medieval city and being disappointed when the woman aren’t influential idk

[@Thomas-fk3xl]

I’m swiss and I just realized today my country is basically a huge valley sandwiched between two montain ranges. If it had just been a single range my country would be scarce and irrelevant

[@lordtea7688]

Yeah, that's why Switzerland was always a great place for humans to thrive, difficult to pass natural borders, a small central area of flatlands with a big source of water and food. Easy to defend and good amount of resources

[@cheesypoohalo]

I found a lot of this advice really hard to imagine without giving examples. For example, it's fine to say a long-lived race would have a stagnant culture, but what would that actually look like? I'd love to see another video where you took this advice you give and actually made a few settings, giving examples of how the cultures are built in each example.

[@xyreniaofcthrayn1195]

my favourite version of dwarves are offshoot children of earth elementals and thusly live to a grand old age of 52,000 years maximum before they start petrifying into weird and whacky minerals. Elves being some sort of mutant offshoot of dryads, treefolk and a time travelling horny wizard was involved as well which is why my elves have a reverance for and a massive stick up their butt for the forest. Humans, orcs (half dark elves, a quarter troll and a quarter human), goblins and the humble trollfolk who are whether or not the bridge or road is taxed by the nation that claims ownership of the road or bridge toll road you (while officially it is unknown but it's widely believed that every minister of tax of every nation is in fact a troll).

[@Menzobarrenza]

I love the tax-troll fact.

[@kaicastle.]

I like that you’re giving ideas that can be explored in our worldbuilding process.. thanks, learned a lot!

[@zhcultivator]

Something I think should be done is that each race or species in a fantasy setting should have multiple nations or multiple sovereign countries since because it's unlikely that these races or species are Monoliths. I always find it weird that in popular fantasy humans can have multiple countries but others only have one country each......

[@lordtea7688]

True, the best they can do is divide those into a different side-species (elves, dark elves. Dwarf, Mountain dwarfs or things like that)

[@johnnelson4411]

For my DND world, I set it up where the elves are only a monolith in the surface. In truth, they are competing clans and city states only truly unified by religion and hate for orcs. The orcs aren't unified at all. Dwarves only think they are unified due to falsified histories. Etcetera I love having multiple cultures or nations of more than humans in my settings too

[@jacksonhoiland2664]

​@@johnnelson4411 this is something funny about my dnd setting, all the species are able to be split into one "unified" nation state each, but this often isn't the most accurate way to do it. The humans are much like the Greek city states, they will work together sometimes and put on a united front, especially in peace time or when working against a common foe, but they are ruled by a mix of many nobles of varying ranks and have many disputes amongst themselves. The elves are the most "United" in one state, this is because it is heavily isolationist and non-elves need direct permission from a powerful noble or are killed on sight and even other elves are distrusted if they have been outside the borders of the elven nation. This means the many elves outside the nation state just don't have any recognized state. The dwarves are in an alliance with each other, but this is in large part a recent development due to outside pressure and the individual dwarven nations don't always get along but avoid fighting each other as of the past couple hundred years and didn't fight each other very often before that. The orcs, hobgoblins, bugbears, gnolls, trolls, hags, and other monsters weren't united at all until very recently as leaders of their smaller groups fell under sway of the bbeg(mind flayers who have convinced many of these groups that their elder brain dragon is a god they must unite to serve) who is causing them to align together, become more disciplined, and generally form a more cohesive force as they build keeps and settlements while preparing to take over less defended villages.

[@b5fremdet]

That's what I noticed myself doing, and I didn't like it. My solution was to stop thinking of elves as a separate species from humans, and treat them like a variant of human. Now there's actually more variety in my elves than in my humans, they live basically together in certain parts of the world sparking racism and stuff, that's a giant source of conflict, perfect for writing a story about it

[@Menzobarrenza]

In my setting the Inquisition are very much the good guys, and are only feared in the same way you might get a litte nervous if a cop asks you couple questions on the street (unless you really ARE in league with dark forces, in which case you're pooping brickwork).

[@bencemervay]

I wanted to work on my Gothic 1 review (yeah, still not ready yet...), but I saw you uploaded a new vid, so I thought, I might just watch it first... :D Very interesting, thank you!

[@bencemervay]

Then I opened davinci resolve and realised in the next section I need some skyrim footage for comparison. Guess I need to boot it up...

[@skree272]

Honestly i find writing about the place helps alot before writing the people who live there, like for one idea theres an island nation who have access to tropical fruit the other countries see as a delicacy, now add in strict control and gaurding the tropical fruit and boom, it makes sense in a way, being some countries took advantage of others who couldnt grow the plants or harvest material of a type, now these guys have a statewide monopoly on say bananas, now thier country will have yellow on the flag because the banana is important to them, maybe the banana becomes more than just a fruit but even a symbol of luck or something

[@dingle4]

till I come with a big hammer and take all the fruit

[@zaphyrusm8940]

On long lived races: the age-driven calcification of an individual’s positions and the societal inhibition which emerges is likely just not something that can occur in a species of thousand year olds. Is it not more likely that such a species would be mutable for much longer, as three generations of humans cause so much strife, what would fifty simultaneous generations do to the society and species? It seems to me that long lived species would be almost required to physiologically be significantly more dynamic as individuals than humans just to maintain a cohesive society, potentially valuing the reinvention of oneself in the same way the humans value traditional continuity?

[@averageeughenjoyer6429]

Definetly using this for dragons

[@SailorBarsoom]

About basing your fantasy culture on a real culture (copy/paste): to some degree it can't be helped. Your desert culture is going to bear some resemblance to real-world desert cultures because if it doesn't, it probably doesn't make sense. If you decide from the start "this culture isn't going to be anything like the Egyptians, the Arabs, or the Anasazi," then it's probably a culture which would never survive in the desert, because they aren't doing the reasonable things which the Egyptians, Arabs, and Anasazi did. That doesn't mean you have to duplicate things right down to a sphynx, bowing towards a holy city, or growing maize. But there are going to be some similarities, and that's OK. Maybe instead of living along the world's longest river, they live in oasis which are scattered across the desert and often occur in chains. They are somewhat like the islands of Polynesia, only separated by sandy desert instead of salty ocean. You'd still have some similarities with Earthly desert culture, but now you also have necklaces of flowers, and since no there's no ocean to pull tons of fish out of, maybe there are huge flocks of migratory birds. I don't think a double-hulled canoe is going to get very far sailing across sand, so maybe you do have caravans of some desert animal, but these would be Arabic or even Mongol flavorings of your alternate Polynesian culture. Or they live in the Arctic and sail ice boats, and the culture is modified for this new environment (what if the Hawaiians had sailed north and colonized Siberia or Alaska?). This culture, based on Hawaiians, is going to inevitably have some Inuit or Saami flavor (otherwise they would all die), but it's sure going to be different from any other Arctic culture I think I've ever seen portrayed. BTW, that's what I'm doing: Ice Sailors.