A series of articles on creating fantasy cultures

[Thanuir]

I figured someone around here might be intetested in Chris Lehrich's articles on creating fantasy cultures. He's an academic and the articles reflect that, as a warning.

Preface (not that integral, but recommended if you have any academic background)
Sacred and profane, also, the importance of faith and cultural identity.
Master narratives, also, creating complexity and avoiding too simple cultures.

The series will continue when he has time to continue. It will likely take a while.

[limetom]

My God, this man put into words exactly what I've been thinking.  Definitely a must read.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

I'll have a look later; I'm curious, but it's too long to get into now.

[Raelifin]

Fantastic! Everyone on the boards needs to read these.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Well, I read it. While the second article was starting to get interesting, the series seems to have been discontinued before it really got going (maybe it will continue, but it looked like the last post was months ago, so I won't hold my breath).

I like the guy's academic style, but I feel, to be useful to me, it would have had to go a lot further.

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Agreed... it had a lot of promise, but I would like to see more.

[Lmns Crn]

This is really, truly fascinating.

Edit: Also, over too quickly. But, there are some valuable design principles there, regardless.

[Raelifin]

I agree that there isn't much actual content up, but what is there is the start of a number of very interesting design philosophies. Each part contains one seed, and I'd like to bounce some discussion around on each of these. Specifically, I'm talking about inside vs. outside (emic/etic), sacred vs. profane and ideal vs. messy.

For example, how are we supposed to discard the outside perspective? Aren't we initially outsiders, even to our own creations? And how then, do we present the internal perspective when our audience is naturally alien?

Do you agree that it makes sense to start with religion? I think we all can agree that plastered religions are poor, and that there isn't one best place to start, but perhaps by outlining what is sacred in a culture, a much deeper culture can be developed.

And then there's the question of divine vs "sacred" as by the author's definition, sacred applies to anything which is held apart as ideal or special, and is not inherantly godly. Does this mean that a good society is one which has a solid understanding of the ideal universe, even extending beyond religion?

In the third section, the author discusses "always picking the least obvious choice." Is this a good idea? In the CBDiary, Ish talks about the awesome "rule" of creating one secret for each element, but is this another rule of equal strength? Shouldn't the world fit together at some level?

[Epic Meepo]

So...
Preface: "Think what the culture thinks, not what others see."
Chapter 1: "Devise ideal values, and symbols for those values, before bothering with deities."
Chapter 2: "Have everyday life differ from the ideal, and when faced with a choice, always pick the least obvious option."

There's some good advice in these articles, but I also disagree with them on many points. To begin with, I would have liked the author to give an example of a culture from a fantasy-appropriate time period that doesn't have any gods or spirits. His claim that such cultures exist may or may not be true, but either way, its a rather bold statement for me to accept as true solely on the author's authority.

Second, when designing a culture intended for use in an RPG, it is often better to describe only the ideal form of that culture. Sweeping and unqualified generalizations about fantasy cultures are useful roleplaying tools. Determining the degree to which members of a culture deviate from these ideals is what you do when you develop the personalities of specific characters. Doing so beforehand merely ends up limiting PCs, making them strangers in their own cultures if they have a creative take on how a particular ideal would impact (or fail to impact) everyday life.

Thirdly, choosing the "least obvious option" presupposes that one option is less obvious than others. As the articles point out, the fact that some concepts seem more 'natural' than others is usually the result of a cultural bias. But that means that your choice of the "least obvious option" is going to reflect your cultural biases just as much as your choice of the "most obvious option."

If you really want an unbiased result, you should take a broad cross-section of existing cultures and recombine their features at random. You are guaranteed to have cultural biases that will affect any decision you make; your dice are not.

EDIT: Lots of the preceding discussion was posted while I was writing this, but my third objection to the article seems relevant. And I stand by it: choosing the "least obvious choice" does nothing to eliminate cultural bias.

[Lmns Crn]

You know, this really is a wondeful seed for discussion.

For example, how are we supposed to discard the outside perspective? Aren't we initially outsiders, even to our own creations?

discard[/i] it, but to avoid using external justifications for why a culture does what it does. If we play Jane Goodall to our cultures, we reduce them to apes.

We are all quite accustomed to everyday cultural behaviors that, though we don't usually notice, are objectively quite odd and completely without explanation. When we travel, other cultures' similar behaviors astonish and bewilder us, just as ours bewilder them.

If I go to China, I may be confused at the unfamiliar behaviors I find there. But if I start justifying what I observe through my outsider's perspective-- "The Chinese do X because of Y" -- then I am grossly oversimplifying that culture (and probably getting it all wrong, in the process.) Any tale I could tell you about China based upon my oversimplified explanations would be quite dull and false-feeling, compared to the actual Chinese culture.

I think this is very closely related to the "ideal vs. messy" distinction that's discussed in the later chapter. "Ideal" situations are simple, external, and false, and the "messiness" of messy situations is invisible to the cultures that grew up with them-- it only stymies the foreign observer.

And how then, do we present the internal perspective when our audience is naturally alien?

Do you agree that it makes sense to start with religion? [/quote]And then there's the question of divine vs "sacred" as by the author's definition, sacred applies to anything which is held apart as ideal or special, and is not inherantly godly. Does this mean that a good society is one which has a solid understanding of the ideal universe, even extending beyond religion?[/quote]anything.[/i]

In the third section, the author discusses "always picking the least obvious choice." Is this a good idea? ... Shouldn't the world fit together at some level?

and then, later, decide how to tie everything together.[/i] The author is not encouraging a hodgepodge of unconnected ideas.

The "least obvious choice" rule is a tiebreaker for relatively inconsequential decisions, when you're not already committed to one outcome or the other. It's purpose, apparently, is to help you sidestep deep-rooted clichés that you might otherwise write into your culture without realizing.

I'm not sure how well it would work in practice, but I wouldn't consider it detrimental-- unless, of course, you were to forget to go back afterward and tie all the pieces together.

[psychoticbarber]

These are excellent (and a challenge to read, for once). I have more thinking to do before I can really discuss it, but I certainly think it's a big help.

[Lmns Crn]

If you can get a concrete handle on "emic" and "etic", please explain them to me.

[Wensleydale]

I like it, but I do think that it cut off much too quickly. Other than that, I agree that it is difficult to get an 'inside perspective' on creations that you're starting, especially at the very beginning.

[limetom]

[quoteLuminous Crayon]If you can get a concrete handle on "emic" and "etic", please explain them to me.[/quote]emic[/b] is looking at a something (in our case, culture) from an insider's point of view.  Etic, on the other hand, is looking at something (again, culture in our case)  from a neutral, outsider's point of view.  He makes the claim, and I think rightly, that most cultures are designed from an etic point of view.

I hope that's clear enough...

[Lmns Crn]

So, is it accurate to characterize an etic point of view as unbiased, and an emic point of view as biased toward the thing being observed? (Bias is probably a pretty terrible word to use here because it implies value judgments I'm not intending to imply. Still, it is that sort of coloring of perspective that distinguishes emic from etic, correct?)

Edit:

I re-read the relevant passage, and in light of your explanation, understood it better, I think. This paragraph sealed the deal:

The distinction, first formulated by the linguist Kenneth Pike, derives from the linguistic division between the phoneme [adj. phonemic] and the phone [adj. phonetic]. To oversimplify somewhat, the study of phonetics examines sounds in spoken language as sounds, as constituent units of language, looking at the ways in which they are put together, interrelated, and so on'"without reference to what they mean in a given language. By contrast phonemics looks at how sounds intersect meaningfully, that is to say with reference to how meaning is constructed in a given language. Pike proposed to generalize this distinction: the etic dimension of language would be that analyzable statistically and scientifically without reference to meaning; it would look at how certain elements or aspects of some language, language-group, or even language itself works, but not focus on how these same elements are used to construct meaning by users of the language. An emic perspective would consider elements or dimensions of language precisely insofar as they are constitutive of meaning. Necessarily an etic approach could be more objective than an emic one, because in the former case it makes no difference what the language-users think or believe about their language.

Thanks for your necessary guidance.