Posts belonging to Category Cultures
Posted by Ravyn on April 22, 2013
Most cities in fantasy worlds have a vested interest in people not getting into fights to the death at the drop of a hat. It isn’t that different from the real world in that respect, after all. And one of the easiest ways to do this is to limit access to weapons. So that got [...]
Categories: Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Places, World-building |
Tags: fantasy worlds, roleplaying, weapon control, World-building, writing | 
1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on April 9, 2013
Most of my posts on building worlds have been at least one post per topic, sometimes a full series—which is nice and all, but not very good when covering things that don’t need ages of explication. So instead, I’m looking at simple questions with far-reaching ramifications that make for an interesting way of characterizing a [...]
Categories: Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, World-building |
Tags: cultures, roleplaying, World-building, writing | 5 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on October 16, 2012
Yesterday, I talked about the idea of culture as character. To say that I’m a fan is a bit of an understatement—one of the things I was thinking, while sitting through the panel that set off yesterday’s riff, was that I keep trying to angle for an RPG of manners. It’s not just one appealing [...]
Categories: Concepts, Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Technique, World-building |
Tags: concepts, culture, plot, roleplaying, World-building, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on October 15, 2012
When I was volunteering at Conjecture, there was one panel that I had decided the moment I saw the schedule that I was going to see. I would carefully schedule my break, I would barter time with the other volunteers—but I was going to go to that piece on Fantasy/SF of Manners and Culture as [...]
Categories: Concepts, Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Technique, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: concepts, culture, plot, roleplaying, World-building, writing | 4 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 28, 2011
Two sides, both alike in… something, anyway… is an automatic recipe for drama: just ask Shakespeare! Between the inconveniences they cause and the general waste of life and potential they represent, blood feuds are a prime “problem” in a setting for protagonists to find themselves fixing. But there’s a lot to take into account when [...]
Categories: Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, History, Player Advice, Plot, Technique, World-building |
Tags: conflicts, feuds, foreknowledge, mediation, plot, roleplaying, Things You Might Want To Know When..., writing | 4 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on October 10, 2011
One of the side effects of dealing with worlds not our own is that we’re likely to be dealing with cultures not our own as well (and if we aren’t, why in blazes not?). From a player standpoint, or from the standpoint of a writer trying to deal with a culture not her own, this [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Plot, Technique, World-building |
Tags: Characterization, foreknowledge, plot, roleplaying, Things You Might Want To Know When…, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on August 31, 2011
One thing often not covered in discussions of warrior cultures (or in some cases, only covered in passing) is where they came from. After all, cultures with complex ideas about where the warrior stands in them and what constitutes a warrior don’t just sprout fully formed from a field full of dragons’ teeth—for one thing, [...]
Categories: Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, History, World-building |
Tags: cultures, role-playing, warrior cultures, World-building, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on August 30, 2011
One of the most important parts of creating a warrior culture is coming up with the standards to which its warriors are held. Without standards, after all, what is to set a warrior apart from a non-warrior in his culture, or a person who fights from that group of people over there? How is he [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, World-building |
Tags: Characterization, cultures, role-playing, warrior cultures, World-building, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on August 29, 2011
From what I’ve seen, it’s practically a requirement in speculative fiction to have a warrior culture crop up somewhere or other. Noble or not-so-noble makes no difference—what matters is that there is a cultural emphasis on fighting, and more to the point on fighting in some way that sets them apart from other cultures. It’s [...]
Categories: Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, World-building |
Tags: cultures, role-playing, warrior cultures, World-building, writing | 4 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on July 4, 2011
One of the things I find most interesting about the law, both in its real-world applications and as it’s implemented in world-building, is that it manages to avoid the kinds of dichotomy most Big Issues tend to acquire in fiction. You don’t have a universal “breaking law bad, obeying law good” dichotomy; you get shades [...]
Categories: Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, World-building |
Tags: crime, culture, law, roleplaying, World-building, writing | No Comments »