The Pros and Cons of Fantasy Counterpart Cultures
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Part of the fun of DMing for me is in homebrewing cultures…or, more accurately, homebrewing factions that have a culture.
Besides which, there are some fundamental flaws in your premises:
You assert that a counterpart culture is easier to understand than an original one. I 100% understand any culture I make up, definitionally. On the other hand, neither I nor anyone else at my table can say the same about any IRL culture. Even members of a given IRL culture can never fully understand the totality of it.
You also say
[if] you create fantasy ancestries from scratch, you need to convey all that information to the players.
And I don’t think that’s true. Players don’t need to know everything about a culture to interact with them. In many cases, the player characters are themselves unfamiliar with that culture, in which case any mystery, mistakes, miscommunications etc are valuable in-character roleplay. And when the PCs would be familiar with a relevant aspect of a given culture, you can simply tell them that detail, no need to loredump everything. (Eg “I beg for mercy” “Your character knows that The Southern Pirates are notorious for never taking prisoners, are you sure you want to try that?”)
I 100% understand any culture I make up, definitionally.
If true, that’s very impressive indeed. Every custom, every belief, every fashion, every turn of speech? I study folklore - “culture” is a many-headed beast, and fractal.
I doubt that even Professor Tolkien truly understood the cultures of Middle-Earth “100%”.
In many cases, the player characters are themselves unfamiliar with that culture, in which case any mystery, mistakes, miscommunications etc are valuable in-character roleplay. And when the PCs *would *be familiar with a relevant aspect of a given culture, you can simply tell them that detail, no need to loredump everything.
I do believe that player should be able to gain a basic understanding of the cultures their characters come from. The question is how much information can they get, and process?
As an example, consider Glorantha with its many intricate cultures. The players don’t need to know everything about the setting - indeed, it is so complex that few people have even read the majority of the source material. However, it is essential that they understand what their home culture believes, and how members of that culture expect the characters to act.
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