What are some unique real world and fantasy cultures?
Specifically ones which would be cool to implement as a setting for a campaign.
Fantasy Culture Inspiration
What are some unique real world and fantasy cultures?
Specifically ones which would be cool to implement as a setting for a campaign.
Vikings and Huns
Desert Nomads Eg: Bedouins and Berbers
Berbers are interesting.
As the Sahara turned from a savanna into a desert, people congregated at the Nile as the best spot to live. But according to some Berbers, they were there first, and lost a conflict to the Egyptians' ancestors. Expelled into the desert, they became what they are nowadays. Although it wasn't as bad before, since the Garamantes had a good thing going with their aquifer and the North African coasts still had plenty of arable land.
Berber is a based look. I'm actually worldbuilding for a custom MTG set that takes place in a North African setting
Gypsies if you want a race full of shitty subhuman scum.
Already got a race based around them, actually, though I threw in some Yoruk and other nomadic peoples to make it interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thracians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupi_people
Tribal Cannibals
Merchant Republics Eg: Venice and Genoa and Florence
>What are some unique real world and fantasy cultures?
Nazis
Angkor & Majapahit
Phoenicians
These lads who burned their whole damn city down every so often and built a new one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucuteni%E2%80%93Trypillia_culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples
Minoans
The American frontier. Cowboys. The people of the old west have always had their own unique look hence why that genre has stayed with us even long after it's popularity had waned. And it's perfect for gaming.
What led to that look exactly? So we can justify stealing from it by replication of those circumstances I mean.
>What led to that look exactly?
necessity - durable clothes, horse for mobility, and sidearm for personal defense were all needed for survival
Neolithic/Chalcolithic Europe. Praise the Circle!
>e-girl oni tummy
They're children, you sick frick.
What setting are they from?
They're mega-poor scotsmen who can't spell.
Bedouins
Always bedouins
Central Asia has some cool shit too
Some stuff I remember from my cultural anthropology class.
Life for jungle natives suck. This is because land you can farm is at a premium, and usually only exists on a spot where somebody else has claimed it. So when soil viability is up, usually the only solution when you have to pack up the village and leave is to attack some other village and take their land. This results in a very patriarchal society where warriors are prized above all else- it also means wives are pretty much always kidnapped from rival villages as your village only has about three or four families in it, and since villages are constantly at war, they don't arrange marriages between each-other.
Also some notes on brazilian natives in particular- the jungle is considered uniformly evil, and chock full of demons. A spectral anaconda is meant to surround the village to protect them from demons. These demons are also mostly of a sexual nature, as when it's only three or four families to that many huts, the prime source of social strife is sexual infidelity.
Some other stuff: there's a nomadic tribe around east-africa who are mostly peaceful herders. But the men do most of the herding, which leaves the women to do all the crafting and handling of the animal products, as well as to sell them. So there's a saying in the tribe that to have many daughters is to be a wealthy man.
Also there's a culture in southern india, who as part of the caste system the men were all warriors. However they would be away frequently on war, which resulted in their wives constantly cheating on them. This was so common that men of this culture have absolutely zero faith any of their wives children are theres. So instead they stay at home, and help raise their sisters children, who they know are at least partially related to them instead.
(cont.)
On the topic of marriage, there's also tibetan fraternal polydandry. Again related to land, most people in the himalaya's are herders and land again is at a premium. To ensure each son has a livelihood without splitting the scarce ammount of good grazing land, the sons will all marry the same woman to keep the property in the family. China (who owns tibet) officially outlaws the practice, but have considered legalizing it to deal with their one-child policy generation.
Also by the way, the nomadic tradesmen who would ferry goods across the Sahara do so today. They've just upgraded from Camels to trucks.
All of them. Even the "cliché" ones are barely used beyond monsters and aesthetics.
You can copy non-colorful Greek architecture/statues of course, but I have yet to see someone using the Stasis to have the losing side become a new colony.
>Life for jungle natives suck. This is because land you can farm is at a premium
Obsolete. The Amazon was much more populated than previously thought. Google "terra preta" and "Kuhikugu". The Mayans also developed inside the jungle, and Angkor Vat shows that isn't exclusively to the Americas. Thriving on jungles require a different set of skills and cultivars, but many cultures achieved it.
https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/2003/
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ancient-cambodian-megacities
>Also some notes on brazilian natives in particular- the jungle is considered uniformly evil, and chock full of demons.
Given the variety of natives and that many of them originate from non-jungle areas, this is hard to agree. Plus the jungle provides most of their resources. But they had to deal with spirits which claimed domain over specific places and resources. So the jungle is dangerous and full of potentially dangerous spirits, I just wouldn't call them "demons" or "evil". Though some of them were.
>They've just upgraded from Camels to trucks.
Yes. Some also have their own hidden ruins and archeological sites to ferry tourists to.
Haida are a nice alternative to the usual random vikings imo. The temperate rainforest biomes they're associated with can be striking too.
Sounds analogous to the African "bush" concept. It was medicine men who lived out in the wilds and those guys could be good or bad both. I don't know much about the Amazon tribes but I had fun inverting terra preta as a defense against hyperfertile soil (as in it'll seed under your soles and devour you). Old pottery, bone and shit do the opposite of irl by stamping "humanity" on ground to make it safe.
Fascinating. I knew Bon had a matriarchal streak but modern pragmatism readopting it's something else.
>The temperate rainforest biomes
I thought that rainforests were solely a tropical thing.
Something I know about the Haida, they had a breed of dog (which I think is now extinct) they bred for long-hair to harvest fabric from (like wool from a sheep) to make clothes and stuff like rugs.
Also reminds me- witches were a fun thing we went over in our class. In many parts of africa, belief even today in witches are common. The thing is though, often times a witch doesn't even know they are a witch, a curse can be laid on someone simply for bearing a grudge on them and wishing them ill. If a member of the tribe thinks they have been cursed by a witch, the first order of business is to find out the witch. Once this has been done the witch is ordered to undo the curse, and if they refuse or are unable to do are then banished from the tribe (even if the guy who got cursed super fricking deserved it).
Similarly somewhere in southeast asia, forget where, there's a similar sentiment. While not quite considered witchcraft, it's believed negative emotions of any kind can cause curses. So similarly if someone thinks they've been cursed the entire village is forced to sit down to mediate the grudge between the two parties. The goal here is just move past the social inharmony, not to mete out punishment or justice. So like for instance if a guy fricked my wife and me hating his guts curses him, the solution isn't punishing him or the wife, or me for cursing him. The goal is to get me to stop cursing him so the entire village can move on with it's day. If he or I get fricked over is irrelevant, what's relevant is promoting social harmony in the tribe.
(cont.)
By the way, these sort of spiritual impurities are believed in in every culture, though some take it to different degrees. It's part of Japan's bathing culture to bath to remove these spiritual ills (one way of achieving them is to be in the same room as a menstrating woman, but I don't know if that's something they still think about a lot). In western cultures we call our own version of this Sin, which has it's own rituals to cleanse ourself from (such as prayer, repentance, confession, etc.).
Rainforrest means 'forrest where it rains constantly'. Tropical rainforests are famous because the combination of heat and water create absolutely crazy ammounts of life. Temperate rainforests have the water and not the heat, to the variety of life isn't that much varied compared to other regions. The Pacific Northwest is the largest temperate rainforest, parts of scotland and scandinavia are others.
The turkic peoples are cool.
>bride kidnappings
>wrestling
>falconry
>basically born and raised in the saddle
>sheep herding and hunting
>raids on everybody you can find
>occasional migrations of conquest to civilized lands where you put your people up as the new military aristocracy
>often become wandering mercenaries that fight for whoever pays the best
We've been using Sihk dwarves for a while now in D&D and it works out surprisingly well.
>grooming standards that mandate long hair and beards
>religious obligation to be armed at all times
>strong sense of family and religious community
>charity and compassion are their greatest virtues, greed is their greates sin
>worship one god who is fundamentally good and kind, so easy setup for clerics and paladins
>craftsmanship and entrepeneurship are greatly valued, but also expected to donate to the communal aid kitchen or the nearest paladin order
Besides the pajeet aesthetics, it gives them a lot of background flavour while still being in line with what you expect them to be.
>grooming standards that mandate long hair and beards
And why exactly are those mandatory?
To Sikhs, Hair is a gift from God and it has to be cared for to the point that the comb you use to do it with is on the same level as the knife/sword you use to defend the innocent
What about Japanese culture?
We need more Assyrian representation is media.
The OG buttholes. Assyrians put the ass in butthole. They had the traditional conquest plan of kill all the men, take all the children, and rape all the women.
Not really. The Assyrians weren’t special in their violence.
Beshitun inscription from Achaemenid Persia:
> Thereupon Phraortes fled with a few horsemen to a district in Media called Rhagae. Then I sent an army in pursuit. Phraortes was taken and brought to me. I cut off his nose, his ears, and his tongue, and I put out one eye, and he was kept in fetters at my palace entrance, and all the people beheld him. Then I crucified him in Ecbatana, and the men who were his foremost followers, those at Ecbatana within the fortress, I flayed and hung out their hides, stuffed with straw...
Sensuret I, Egypt, 2000 BC
>My Majesty made a great slaughter among them, (both) men and women, the valleys being (filled) with the flayed and the mountains with the transfixed (i.e. impaled); the enemy from the terraces were placed on the brazier, it was (death by) fire because of what they did…
Pretty common stuff back then..
mansi and khanties
Warlords of yugran waging eternal brother war in urals