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Welcome to my very first role playing column. This column will be a
series on developing your own world for roleplaying (or writing!). The
tips within will hopefully be helpful both in making worlds for pre-
existing games and for making worlds for your very own games. It can
also give players an idea of how much work goes into creating a world... I
hope it doesn't scare them away! *grins*
My main goal here is to help GMs, game writers, and authors come up
with unique, detailed cultures. With enough work and love, your world
can be populated with cultures as complex as those found on our own
world, maybe even more complex! The sky's the limit.
I won't walk you through designing the land itself. That's pretty self-
explanatory. I also won't go into making your own races or monsters, as
that's a lot of work! Instead, let's work on creating a culture. This
culture can be applied to an existing race (ie, humans) or one that you make up.
First let me say, try to avoid "ripping off" Earth cultures. It's alright
for games you're running for just a few people, but for something you're
seeking to publish.... Well, I don't know about the rest of the world, but
I'm sick of European and Japanese-based cultures everywhere. It's OK to
borrow a bit here and there, but try to change things and add your own
unique ideas to it.
Under ideal circumstances- that being you're wide awake, inspired,
undistracted, and surrounded by food and drink so you don't have to get
up- a culture should flow out and shape itself as you write and type. All
the details should coalesce in your mind at once and you should have
hours on end to put them down in hard copy.
In the real world, you might have 10 minutes here and there to jot down
ideas, maybe more on the weekend. If you don't have a lot of time, I
recommend jotting down your ideas quickly as they come to you, and
then sorting them out and putting them in nice order when you have
more time. There's nothing worse than having a great idea and losing it
because you decided you'd write it down after you did another load of
laundry.
Let's make a list of important things for a detailed culture (many of which
are ignored by games currently on the market).
- Government. Decide who's in charge, how they got to be in charge,
how long they'll be in charge, how much power they have, who's below
them in the chain of command, etc etc. Example: The country of Morigari
is a hereditary monarchy. The current queen is Ileena. She became queen
when her father was killed by an assassin. She will remain queen until
she dies or otherwise becomes incapable of ruling. She has absolute
power over the laws of Morigari, but most of the work is handled by the
council of the nine, a group of lords who are voted into position by their
families... etc etc. If your culture has elections, decide how often, how
many times the ruler can be re-elected, and how honest the politicians are.
- Religion. I'll cover this more fully in an upcoming column, because it's
such a fun subject. For added fun, give a culture several religions, all of
whom claim to be the one true path.
- Holidays! Another thing I'll probably cover more fully later on. Every
culture needs holidays, whether they're of a religious nature, the King's
birthday, or based on Equinoxes and full moons.
- Laws and customs. This is very important! This category includes
which gender is dominant, how the other gender is treated, whether the
culture marries, if polygamy is tolerated, child labor laws, taxes,
punishment for murder, how strict they are on thieves, etc etc etc. While
you don't have to write it all down if you're just running a game, it's a
good idea to have a basic idea in mind in case one of the characters is
slightly less than moralistic:)
- History. I like to come up with at least a general outline with a few
wars, relationships with surrounding countries, and other interesting
occasions.
- Commerce. Not something you need to go super in-depth on, but come
up with a few important crops and exports. This is good information for
people who want to play characters with a merchant background. Also
decide what goods are scarce and have to be imported.
- Nuances. What makes the culture unique? Are they vegans? Pacifists?
More scientifically advanced than their neighbors? This section covers
things like honor, manners, and other little nitpicky things about cultures.
Well, that should be enough to get you started! Next month we'll get
more in-depth. Please feel free to e-mail me with your opinion on this
column!
Disclaimer: AJ is not an official RP expert. She just really, really likes
making worlds and thinks she knows something ; )
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