STARTER CULTURES

STANDARD FANTASY CULTURES

TO ADAPT AND PRIME

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 INTRODUCTION
This is a bundle of generalized (post-Tolkien, eurocentric) fantasy
cultural types, prepared as raw material to be used for worldbuilding
and restructured for play.
Each includes a brief description of how they are led and fed, some
notable cultural issues that characters from them ought to have
opinions on, generalized skill sets held within them, and their most
usual armaments.

PLACE, NAME, FILL, AND TWIST

Turning one of these cultures into something interesting to play first
means assigning it to a place – a spot on a map, a biome, something
that gives it local structure to build on. Once this is done, make up a
name for what the culture calls itself; if you’re planning on getting
really in-depth, scribble down some fast notes on what the language
“sounds like” before doing this (or pick, or generate, a conlang to use).
Next, if you’re using various fantasy types (kiths/species/races), decide
on the demographics; what mix of types make up this culture? Some
cultures in a setting might be mostly of one type, some deeply
cosmopolitan; very few will be exclusively of one type (and if they are,
are they isolated, or badly xenophobic?).
If you want to add some other significant twist, do so; otherwise,
you’re ready to position the culture.

POSITIONING AND POLITIES

Positioning a culture means giving it general politites – political units –
and putting those into broad-strokes relationships with one another.
It’s saying, okay, this culture has an empire that dominates that culture,
this other culture has an unstable kingdom that’s pressed up against
those ones. This is done quickly, as rough notes, and then returned to
after the culture is detailed; it’s only important to have a sense of the
power dynamics before moving on.

DETAIL OR PRIME
At this point, you’re ready to start adding specific details to the
culture; culture heroes, technology, legends, specific polities, and so on.
Culture Priming is recommended as a tool for this, but it’s not entirely
neccessary. If inspiration occurs during this process, and there’s
something you want to change about the culture, do it; allow the
material to be “drift” into new forms as you go.

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 CULTURE IN RULES
Relatively few rules are generally required to represent culture in
characters, and many traditional games already have some background
component that culture can be dropped into. Three notes, given in
each of the cultures, deserve particular notice and consideration:

STANCES
Each culture has a list of three to four notable features or issues for
characters to have a stance on. These should be updated after the
detailing process (likely by being expanded).
No specific rules are needed to represent these items, beyond a general
note that the player should convey their views to the Guide so that
those opinions can be brought up in play. The purpose of them is to
allow players to give their character opinions they can actively display
relative to their own culture – so they aren’t just products of that
environment, but can act on the same forces that shaped them.

SKILLS AND ARMAMENTS

These segments of the culture descriptions are the most likely to need
rules representation, typically by creating lists of the appropriate in-
rules abilities that would be affected, and granting or requiring a certain
number of them, allowing them to be freely exchanged with others in
character packets or ‘classes’, etc.

SINGLE AND MULTIPLE CULTURES

Many characters will have lived out their entire formative period in a
single culture, or have one which affected them to the near-exclusion
of others they encountered, even if they’ve moved around quite a lot
since then.
Other characters, though, will have moved about between cultures,
grown up in some area where two or more cultures intermingle, or will
have grown up in mixed-culture household. Whatever rules are in
place, some form of mingling the benefits of cultures ought to be
available, to reflect these characters and the things they learned in
those circumstances.

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 BARONIAL
Baronial cultures are defined by polities and hierarchies; they are near-
feudal or actually feudal; they are agriculturally supported and often
trade heavily in livestock. They have leaders chosen (partly or entirely
by birthright) from an aristocratic elite. This aristocratic elite are
themselves at least theoretically warriors, and certainly maintain a body
of warriors, but are themselves carefully educated from an early age.
The local, fixed leaders (the barons and baronesses) are often
technically part of a greater hierarchy, having some king or queen to
answer to. However, factionalism, rebellion, and maneuvering are
common; the barony (by whatever name) is the stable unit of the
culture and polities built by this culture.
Stances: Character who hail from baronial cultures are conversant with
oaths of service, rigid hierarchies, land ownership as power, and rulers
as military patrons. What opinion they have on those concepts and
practices is up to the player.
Skills: Characters from a baronial background will often have either an
fairly narrow and vocational skillset (common folk), learned on the job
from a master or group of others in the same field, or will have a
broader and aristocrat-style education, with topics especially including
tactics, strategy, mathematics, languages, literature, heraldry, theology,
animal handling, music, and oratory (for the warrior elite).
Armaments: The warrior elite are generally skilled with maces, swords,
and spears (including lances); common folk often train with polearms
(including farm implements), staves, flails, and bows.

The fictional 'space' occupied by Baronial culture can easily be filled by

any feudal culture, rulers of independent city-states, or any other
relatively quarrelsome petty states with a strong elite class. If such a
culture or group of cultures exists in the setting, check if this culture
can be used as a template for setting them up.

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 GREENWOOD
Greenwood cultures are defined by forest survival; they are supported
by hunting and trapping, supplemented with gathering and limited
gardening or permaculture.
Leaders are largely followed based on competence, with group
members voting with their feet or changing leaders by confrontation
(which can be contested, formalized, violent, or ritual); the stable unit
of greenwood culture is a village-camp (often seasonally permanent)
large enough to accommodate families with leaders the members find
capable. Greenwood cultures rarely have any solid hierarchy beyond
the camp. Feuds between camps are not unknown, especially over
hunting territories. Mystical and bardic groups may connect camps,
helping maintain a depth of culture beyond simple survival.
Stances: Characters from greenwood cultures deal with woodland
survival, changeable hierarchies, and ecological management (at least to
the extent of not depleting hunting stocks). What opinion they have on
those concepts and practices is up to the player.
Skills: Characters from a greenwood background will generally have
some skills for the field, such as hunting, trapping, and other survival
skills, and also some skills for the camp, such as cooking, crafting skills,
herbary, music.
Armaments: Greenwood characters most commonly are adept with
bows, spears, axes, and staves. In especially thick forest, sickles or
brush-cutting blades might augment these.

Greenwood cultures may be sufficient to themselves or outlaw

segments of other cultures (where most characters come from outside),
and also that it’s pretty common to have all the trappings of a
greenwood culture wrapped around something else in fantasy, to
produce baronial forest kingdoms and woodsy longhall cultures.

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 HIGHTOWER
Hightower cultures are defined by combining mystical power with
strong hierarchal structures and whose stable unit is expansive –
typically as the basis of arcane empires and similar polities. Leadership
is typically inherited, but sometimes seized by those with varying claims.
Political action tends to be courtly, though assassination and civil war
are common.
Hightower cultures often have mystically-enhanced methods of food
production, often to an extent that such production is not the most
visible features of their territories.
Many hightower cultures, after driving the creation of some expansive
polity, slide into political stagnation (sometimes accompanied by a
decline of internal discipline and morality), and even into cultural
extinction. A few host mystical studies and projects which are
ultimately cataclysmic.
Stances: Character who hail from hightower cultures are conversant
with loyalty to the great state, arcana in daily life, vicious political
maneuvers, and possibly the great decline. What opinion they have on
those concepts and practices is up to the player.
Skills: Characters from a hightower background often possess high
educations in mathematics, rhetoric, history, languages, literature,
music, oratory, and skills relating to arcana – whether that’s spellcasting
or use of particular implements.
Armaments: The most common hightower armaments are bows,
swords, knives, and mystical implements, though the quality of these
arms increases substantially as the class of the holder rises.

As noted, hightower cultures often slip into decline, and it’s very
common for a hightower culture to exist in a fantasy setting as being
already in decline, to exist only as relics, having fully collapsed
sometime in the past, or to have withdrawn from the area of play but
still be active elsewhere.

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 LASHBOUND
A lashbound culture is defined by extreme class stratification; it is
composed primarily of a serving class, an overseer class, and a ruling
class. Conditions for the serving class are abysmal, and their labour is
extracted both by social conventions and by ongoing, daily threats and
use of violence. Mobility between classes is extremely low, but not
necessarily zero; class status is inherited.
Lashbound cultures are generally agrarian, and often industrially
advanced (by the standards of the setting), though most of this industry
is dedicated to providing opulence and comforts for the rulers.
Lashbound cultures are not stable in and of themselves; they require
constant expansion, extraction from without, or other supports to
remain so – in some cases provided by arcane power in the hands of
the ruling class. Absent such things, their polities collapse (though they
may reform on smaller scales immediately, or after some interregnum).
Stances: Character who hail from lashbound cultures are very
conversant with dominion through force, labour extraction, pretenses
of civility, and extreme class distinctions. What opinion they have on
those concepts and practices is up to the player.
Skills: Characters from a lashbound background will have a narrow,
particular set of approved professional skills and a scattering of illicit
ones, unless they come from the ruling class, in which case they may
have managerial skills, plus any hobby and dilettante skills they like.
Armaments: Whips, cudgels, and maces are the arms of the overseer
class, while knives are used by the serving class. Professional soldiers
will have a distinct kit that varies by setting.

Some cultures can become lashbound; some can rise out of this state,
often by revolution. Baronial cultures, especially, often shift towards
and away from this state. In some settings, an arcane tyrant will create
such a culture and maintain it strongly enough that it is seen as the
natural state of occupants, even by the occupants themselves.

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 LONGHALL
Longhall cultures are defined by having major, daily-use community
spaces for at least the leadership, and sometimes all members, and clear
and authoritative but highly approachable and mobile hierarchies.
Leadership is often formally democratic or found through tests of
merit, but the children of elites are trained heavily to secure succession;
still, leaders found unworthy by the warrior elite are likely to be
overthrown. The stable unit of the culture is a settlement – village,
town, city – within which a great hall houses the warrior elites, the
leadership, and often specialist scholars.
Longhall cultures mix herding, farming, hunting, gathering and
permaculture. Herding is sometimes a particular emphasis, and
productive wealth is often measured in herd sizes or land held.
Longhall settlements often engage in feuds and raids, and the warrior
elites of these cultures have attitudes toward heroism and reputation
that drive them to embrace and expect such action – attitudes that
spill over to shape the rest of the culture.
Stances: Character who hail from longhall cultures are very conversant
with reputation above safety, leading from the front, and making a
distinction between treasure vs. productive wealth. What opinion they
have on those concepts and practices is up to the player.
Skills: Characters from a longhall background often combine some
agrarian, herding, or crafting skills with some degree of combat skills;
even non-warriors generally grew up a bit rough and tumble.
Armaments: The spear, sword, and shield are the most common
armaments of a longhall warrior; for those who can’t afford a sword,
an axe is often substituted in.

The most common variations on this (mirroring real cultures) and to

swap out the hall for a grand tent and make this culture nomadic
herder, or to give them ships and having them go out for seasonal
raiding with those.

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 RITEBOUND
Ritebound cultures are defined by the presence of stifling levels of
religious observation – they have ultimately been captured by rituals
that guide civil life and civic projects to a point of dominance. Most
ritebound cultures were another sort of culture at some point, before
developing observances to the point of being “locked in”, and may still
act partly as that sort of culture, albeit far less effectively. When
creating a ritebound culture, it’s good to determine how long ago it
became one, and what it was like then.
It’s important to determine what specific sort of belief has risen to this
level of prominence. A ritebound culture might be engaged in
continual preparations for the afterlife, with individuals maintaining
purity and society supporting a vast funerary industry. It might be
captured by belief in oracular auguries, performing constant
consultations for the correct times and places of planned actions. It
might be caught up in a dense structure of (possibly legitimate, but
overwhelming) ethical practice.
It’s also worth deciding what mechanisms keep everyone locked in; is
deviation from this punished by a special agency, by everyone around
one, by opportunists who will be rewarded with what’s yours?
Stances: Character who hail from ritebound cultures are conversant
with rigid social structures, all-encompassing ritual, enforced social
unity, and some other issue tied to their rites. What opinion they have
on those concepts and practices is up to the player.
Skills: Characters from a ritebound culture will have some skills
appropriate to what the culture was previously, as well as skill in
theology, numerology, mortuary practice, etc, as suits the cultural rites.
Armaments: These will be as per the origins of the culture, and will
often be aesthetically ceremonially significant, and often somewhat
outdated, as these cultures tend to advance slower technologically.

Having a ritebound culture be a stagnant, regional branch of a culture

that also has an active, still-developing branch, or as the last remnant or
an otherwise-extinct culture, can be particularly interesting.

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 ROAMER
Roamer cultures are defined both by a nomadic lifestyle and by having
mobile dwellings – flat-bottomed boats that double as cottages, roofed
wagons, large howdahs atop megafauna. They often travel in flotillas,
wagon trains, or herds, forming small and informal polities, and will
often built seasonal encampments where conditions favour it.
Leadership among roamer groupings can be familial, contractual, or
democratic; it is generally transparent and approachable, but no less
firm for that. However, beyond the family boat (or wagon, etc),
structures are primarily exclusive rather than oppressive – you can act
like that, but nobody will want to camp with or travel with you if you
do. Roamers that don’t fit into the culture leave it, or are pushed out.
Roamer cultures engage in hunting, gathering, and fishing for
subsistence; where conveyances or camps allow, there’s gardening as
well. Most also engage in heavy trade with the polities of nearby (or
surrounding!) cultures, acting as wandering metalsmiths and in similar
roles.
Stances: Character who hail from roamer cultures are very conversant
with tradition as law, fluid living groups, and exclusion over
punishment. What opinion they have on those concepts and practices
is up to the player.
Skills: Characters from a roamer background will have a full
complement of travel and survival skills, hobby and entertainment skills,
and professional skills.
Armaments: Roamer armaments often include knives, hatchets, and
other items depending on transport – boat-hooks and fishing spears on
bots, bows and flails on wagon, long polearms on howdahs.

Roamer cultures entered the glossary of fantasy fiction by way of

fictionalizations - and often very racist ones - of the Romani people, of
Irish Travellers, and other nomadic people. When building a roamer
culture, particular attention to tropes from such fiction is called for so
as not to inadvertently repeat bad material.

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 UNDERSTONE
Understone cultures are defined by being heavily invested in
underground life, and supporting major architecture and mining there;
they are often technically advanced, especially as regards stone and
metals. A cave-dwelling group might become an understone culture if
they take constuction and improvement seriously enough.
The basic stable cultural unit of an understone culture is a project,
building, maintaining, or crafting, along with all it’s support – a mine, a
foundry, an undergarden, etc. Some projects necessarily will occur on
the surface, but generally as extensions of underground ones. Polities
form where these projects create intersect to the point that
underground nexuses, villages, or cities form. Once entrenched as
tradition, such polities are also extremely stable, being literally cut into
stone; major leaders are often elected by smaller leaders, from a pool
of qualified (often meaning raised to the position) candidates. Class
mobility is exceedingly slow, often generational.
Understone cultures subsist on extensive gardening of underground
plants and keeping of small livestock, as well as surface and near-surface
trapping; food resources are often restricted and carefully managed.
Trade with agrarian surface cultures is often very heavy, with stone and
metals being traded for food and soft stocks.
Stances: Character who hail from understone cultures understand
limited-resource accounting, operational hierarchies, industrial dangers
and safety, and institutional intertia. What opinion they have on those
concepts and practices is up to the player.
Skills: Characters from an understone background will have
professional skills, basic geological and prospecting skills, and some side
skills for hobbies and entertainment.
Armaments: Understone armaments are hammers and picks especially,
and pickaxes if surface contact is common in the area.

In much fantasy fiction, this cultural type is largely synonymous with

dwarves, but there have been heavily underground human communities
in reality, and there’s no particularly compelling reason that an
understone culture ought to be strictly limited to any particular typing
or imagined as demographically homogeneous.

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