Most of my fictional cultures in Matters of Honor are made interesting by having them take on the **surface styles ** of one ancient culture (names, looks, architecture, all mildly vandalized to make it more fun/fictional) but they tend to have deeper similarities to an entirely different culture. For example, Breccians are vaguely Germanic in style, but they have a culture of paranoia and cultishness, debased royalty, and organized crime intertwined with government more reminiscent of modern day Russia. I didn’t come up with that process step a priori, I kind of noticed I was doing it and went back and did it on purpose. I think I do my best work this way, playing around and only later formalizing my process. It just takes ages, which is fine when you’re between groups.

Recently I figured out that the problem I’m having with Zerzuran culture was that there is no such definite juxtaposition. There are cool tidbits, but there is not much dynamism. I struck upon the idea of refining their surface styles as more firmly Persian (instead of a mishmash of middle eastern) while drawing out deeper similarities to a wild west American thing, specifically drawing on spaghetti westerns and the interplay between encroaching city life against a fading frontier spirit. They already had spice rangers to fill the niche of heroic cowboys, after all.

How do you write your own original cultures? Is there a better way than carefully laundering things you’ve stolen from real human societies?

  • Imotali@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    I develop cultures naturalistically and idealistically. I also primarily work on ttrpg settings. I start with a creation myth then flip a coin to determine if it’s true or only believed to be true. Then I come up with the deities and whether the deities are cohabitative (like Celtic deities) or extraplanar (like Egyptian deities) and from there I work on the beliefs and religious practices of the people.

    This them gives me a set of values and ethics for which they follow and that I can start working on a social structure. I begin by determining what type of society they live in. Most of the time this means deciding if they’re a feudal society or not and determining their social taboos and such.