Fantasy Forward: Culture

This week in our ongoing “Fantasy Forward” series of posts, discussing ways to make sword-and-sorcery settings feel less pre-packaged is going to deal with something… squishy. Something touchy-feely. Something that, I feel, is rarely used to its potential in imagined settings: culture. We’re not expecting anyone to become trained sociologists or, heaven forbid, anthropologists in building out their fantasy settings (although I’m very curious if anybody with said training has incorporated that into games of their own), but there’s plenty of room to develop how people (regardless of species) live, learn, love, and do things. Real world cultures are the product of generations’ worth of history, experiences, stories, and beliefs, which can be a lot to live up to! How can we come up with original cultural elements in our fantasy settings, and how can we convey them to our players and audiences in ways that feel natural instead of forced?

- B

A: Music! Art! Literature! These are all amazing examples of cultural works that can vary throughout the regions of your imaginary worlds, be it spaceport to spaceport or city to city. They also sound like things that Bugsy is likely to cover very well in his section, and I encourage you to read it! For my part, I’d like to discuss a few other things. If you couldn’t tell from my post regarding Roll for Sandwich, I have more than a passing interest in food. While certain health issues and personal preferences preclude me from indulging in some gluttonous delights, I'm the happy recipient of a regular international junk food care package. Some months will provide strange items I’m unlikely to ever eat again (hot dog-flavored seaweed chips? No thanks, not for me) or regional takes on things I’d snack on normally like Oreos or ketchup-flavored potato chips. Similar regional variations can make their way into your own settings. Certain areas may spice their lamb with mint and others with sage. This can be even further stretched out in sci-fi settings. In Star Trek, for example, Klingons have gagh (preferably served still-moving), while Worf adopted prune juice as his favorite drink. If you visit somewhere in the Star Wars universe you might sit down to some blue milk and a bantha steak. If you search around enough, you’ll even find things that are poisonous to one group and devoured by others. Just adding those minor differences, though, like how meat is served or flavored, the beverages available to characters, or the specific local specialty, will make each port of call in your tabletop games different enough to provide new experiences for your players. Best of all, you can lift your ideas from existing media or just roll up your own strange creations based on your own pantry.

The other topic I’d like to discuss would be cultural biases. I don’t mean things necessarily as worrisome as racism or sexism, although those, as well as other large-scale issues, can bring a lot to a campaign if everyone agrees that it would be okay to include them at the table. I’m talking more about the local biases you see between areas and regions. To bring it back to food, just think of how a particular NPC feels about their local dishes compared to the next city. As in our own world, the war between New York-style pizza and Chicago deep dish wages on and on, with neither side likely to give up. These kinds of differences can easily be ported into your tabletop games. While there may not exactly be sporting events per se in your game world, there are still likely to be some kinds of unifying events: pod races, jousting challenges, wizard duels, etc. Those are going to lead to their own local cultural biases (everyone knows that Neverwinter oysters are the best ones!). Those biases can even change over time, depending on the length of your campaign, especially if your players are out there changing them. You know that these differences won't mean much to the actual mechanics of the games, and deep down your players will know that too, but at least can help them feel like there's something there and developing.

B: Long before the term took an an entirely different meaning involving text pasted over top of cat pictures and cartoons, the term "meme" meant something completely different - it was a model for approaching information using the terminology and methodology of genetics. And while the concept is not without its issues, it's an excellent fit for developing the culture of fantasy worlds, particularly with tabeltop RPGs where (let's face it) everything is expressed and developed via statistical models.

So, to start with, what am I referring to as "memes" here? For the purpose of this argument, we'll say that it's any specific bit of cultural material that's transferred from one individual (or group) to another, whether it be a coat-of-arms, a bawdy limerick, or a recipe. (Or, for that matter, the concepts of symbols visually representing qualities of a group, of poetry, or step-by-step instructions.) The important thing here is that it's being identified as a complete and distinct thing, even as it's connected and built up of many others. If that seems overly broad, remember that this is a model to be applied to whatever circumstances are under discussion - compare, for instance, to the similarities between movement rules across individuals or vehicles in tabletop RPGs. It's not that everything works in the same way, but a framework by which we can represent and express ideas. Here, it's a way we can look at the way ideas spread and are changed across different populations and circumstances. It makes the otherwise huge task of creating the cultures for an entire world and the way the develop into something approachable... not to mention flexible enough to fit a creator's preferences. The geographically-inclined creator, for instance, who wants to imagine how a story or song will spread from its point of origin by going to a map and tracing the most likely directions it will take, and the way the peoples who come into contact will make this cultural artifact their own before passing it on. Someone with an interest in historical lineages might make a similar plot along family and social lines. Going back to the original idea of fighting the stagnation that comes with a "standard" fantasy setting, the point here is that movement, that change. The amorphous messiness that comes with life and living, rather than the clean sterility of met expectations.

Early on in our Fantasy Forward series, Andy asked me what piece of technology I would most want to see in a sword-and-sorcery fantasy setting. It took a while, but I realized my answer would have to be the printing press. After all, we can see the effect it had on own world and extrapolate from there to any other we may be contemplating. Of course, moveable type was the result of centuries' work in metallurgy and craftsmanship (not to mention literacy), so inserting an equivalent into a society with an otherwise medieval level of technology will require magic, fantastic materials, or  outside assistance from some a little further down the line of technological development... any of which could easily fit into most standard "fantasy" settings without major changes. And as for once it's out there, again, there's a reason some historians consider Gutenberg's Bibles to be the start of the Renaissance era. With this sudden boon to communication and recordkeeping, every aspect of human society was changed forever. As always, there's no reason to assume that things will shake out in a fantasy world the same as the did here, but I particularly like this example for the way it shifts the dramatic emphasis from the "great individuals" (royalty and nobility) to which sword-and-sorcery works tends to attach themselves, to a broader, and more capable, population in general. Approaching it in the way we've discussed, the printing press becomes a kind of meta-meme, an idea that can be replicated, that itself facilitation of ideas.

Just as with our magic-powered (or dwarf-forged) printing press, a lot of the cultural development can be done through applying the specifics of the circumstance (the people, the place, the things they have available) to the cultural meme that a person or group has acquired. To go with another example, let's take music. Our own history shows us that people love to make music, and will do so with whatever means they have available - and the music they make is influenced by their own cultural heritage, the peculiarities of the available tools (the ways instruments are made, the ways spoken language is adapted into song), and the incorporation of outside influences. So much of musical development has been when one population has lived in close proximity with another and incorporated the new influences into their existing framework. (The same can be said of most art, of course, and belies, for example, the racist motivations behind the opposition to early rock'n'roll.) Even without aping the specifics of own development, we can assume the same would apply to a fantasy setting. The human community that lives in close proximity to dwarves or elves would be be exposed to their music, art, and stories, and, over time, be influenced by them... and influence the other species in turn. The degree of the influence and the time frame will depend on the specifics of the situation, of course - there could be traditionalists on either side who see this as dilution of their proud heritage. (And, if we're continuing to draw from human history, likely represent a power structure that would be threatened by the unification of oppressed groups, thus seeking to sow division wherever possible.) Material conditions, too, present opportunities for development: entirely new kinds of instruments, for instance, could result from adapting existing human designs to dwarvish materials, or sculpture could be revolutionized by artificers who can briefly animate their medium, achieving designs that could never be done by outside hands. And let's not forget Andy's excellent examples of food: the first orcish restaurant in a mostly-human town would probably scare a lot of people at first, and might even receive threats and other harsh treatment. But some of the locals (probably the younger ones, who receive the combined benefit of new experiences and irritating their parents) will develop a taste for the new cuisine and it eventually becomes part of the regional flavor, both in traditional forms and as new fusions.

All of this, even (especially) the little details like that make a setting unique and far, far more interesting... at least to me. And the term "culture" can mean so very many things that touch on every aspect of our lives - not to mention those of any non-human neighbors. There's so very, very much to play with, to explore: all that we think, say, and do. As for the things we believe, well... that's going to be a post all its own, worry not.

Send questions, comments, and memes about memes about memes to neversaydice20@gmail.com or "X-ecute" us @neversaydice2.