Make exotic societies interesting

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Nobby-W

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So, we've all seen the tropes before - players rock up to a new place, commit some social faux pas and get challenged to a duel/ostracised/forced to go on an ordeal or something. After some philosophising, I've come to the conclusion that just like other tropes, societies need to pull their weight in a setting. Just being weird isn't really enough - it just makes for awkward interactions with the players or the players getting social anxiety and not knowing what to do.

Here's a challenge: Describe an exotic society or culture you've done or thought of and outline an idea for half a dozen sessions worth of material without using any of the following cliches:
  • Society is hostile and xenophobic and shuns the characters, making information gathering difficult.
  • Society is based around some evil cult.
  • Locals view outsiders as easy marks and try to rip them off all the time.
  • Party commits some social faux pas and get ostracised/challenged to a duel/forced to atone by performing some ordeal
  • Party is kidnapped by slavers or some other party and forced to perform as gladiators or some other such.
That is, come up with an idea for the adventures that hinge off some aspect of an exotic culture that the players can interact with in a way that isn't (for example) taking away agency or automatically railroading them into something.

Or, tell us about something you've done already.

In particular, how did the various mcguffins you put into the culture inform the adventures themselves?
 
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So, here's a starting point:

Smegs -

These are stateless space born, often unable to return to a strong planetary gravity well. The idea was originally informed by various sources - think of a mashup of space hippies, Bujold's Quaddies, Belters from The Expanse and various nomad-within-society subcultures like Gypsies.
  • While clannish, they often live in old squatted stations or bases, many of which have working ISRU plants. They may be willing to sell fuel, allowing for back routes around the universe for folks with the right connections wishing to travel around without being noticed.
  • Some descendants of these folk can live in gravity wells and often form minority communities planetside with offworld contacts. These societies can form gangs or other factions. See the Outfit campaign for an expample.
  • They may be involved in smuggling or piracy, which might also involve connected players.
  • Some significant facilities (e.g. Freeside Station, mentioned in the S&V campaign) are smeg-owned and may be a setting for an adventure.
  • It provides a part of a network of space-borne facilities and locations for a campaign. In the setting, a lot of historical infrastructure was set up in the outer systems as early warp tech couldn't get too far into a gravity well. Once warp technology improved these facilities were abandoned (other things happened to cause this as well) but now an active society of folks squatting and refurbing these old facilities keeps a sort of off-the-grid network of stuff going in space.
I've got a campaign live (although in hiatus because reasons) based around players from this subculture in society, another one based on a party functioning as security for freeside station (which has its own politics and interactions with external factions) and and various sketched ideas for smeg factions in a pirate hunting campaign.
 
Not my invention but the Djaffra(sp?) of Talislanta have a strong belief they are under a curse for bad luck. It's considered bad to do anything to suggest you have benefitted from good luck so you get folks walking around talking about how ugly someone is or how worthless an item is.
Adventure idea
PCs can do things to bring the perception of luck onto a family due to compliments or kindness. They then need to come up with some way to demonstrably show the family is a victim of bad luck without truly harming the lives of said family to get back into the families good graces.
 
Not my invention but the Djaffra(sp?) of Talislanta have a strong belief they are under a curse for bad luck. It's considered bad to do anything to suggest you have benefitted from good luck so you get folks walking around talking about how ugly someone is or how worthless an item is.
Adventure idea
PCs can do things to bring the perception of luck onto a family due to compliments or kindness. They then need to come up with some way to demonstrably show the family is a victim of bad luck without truly harming the lives of said family to get back into the families good graces.

Kind of feels like a variation on the 'Atone for social faux pas' cliche. One of the things I'm interested in seeing is adventures that do something interesting with interactions in the society that don't revolve around accidentally annoying the locals.
 
So, here's a starting point:

Smegs -

These are stateless space born, often unable to return to a strong planetary gravity well. The idea was originally informed by various sources - think of a mashup of space hippies, Bujold's Quaddies, Belters from The Expanse and various nomad-within-society subcultures like Gypsies.
Kewe to pensa ere beltalowda, inyalowda? :smile:

Good literature with good world building is always a good source.
 
Kewe to pensa ere beltalowda, inyalowda? :smile:

Good literature with good world building is always a good source.

It certainly is - standing on the shoulders of giants and all that.

Societies in RPGs often fall into the 'mid-level world building' trap and become that looks interesting in a setting guide but are not well set up as a mcguffin for an adventure. Basically if a society is a social minefield or largely hostile and xenophobic then it tends to suffer from the 'evil empire' anti-pattern. It just becomes a no-go zone for the players unless you decide to railroad them there.

I'm interested in seeing how folks have made societies with some significantly exotic aspect work without dragging things into cliches like the social faux pas scenario.
 
...Societies in RPGs often fall into the 'mid-level world building' trap and become that looks interesting in a setting guide but are not well set up
You are too kind, half assed and not thought out, with the insight and life experience of a sheltered 12 year old...more like it for most I have seen.

I'm interested in seeing how folks have made societies with some significantly exotic aspect work without dragging things into cliches like the social faux pas scenario.

I've a whole way to make aliens more alien, but with typical fantasy and human stuff it can be as simple as what they consider virtues and vices, and then go with what follows from that. So adventure flows, tend to have at least 3 more like 5 or 7 different ones, all with overlaps and tensions, basically politics.

The cliche is simply simplistic interaction, one can certainly have societies that are hard to navigate...don't make them a road block to adventure...but players who want to build PCs with social skills that can navigate that...adds a good dimension. Species that go quickly to a duel to the death with outsiders...that is something the Pcs would know, heck everyone would and that is going to be self isolating...no one wants them around, they are going to be marginalized and not welcome unless this is a criminal world or they are the "rulers" like the Scarran who bully everyone.

So if you must deal with them as part of the adventure (kind of like hoping the PCs find the hidden door or no adventure tonight) have several avenues that will work...social skill preparation or get good at dueling :smile:

However, is it any different than going into a seedy bar without streetwise skill?
"I don't like you, either. You just watch yourself. We're wanted men. I have the death sentence on twelve systems."
I mean poor Luke he pumped all his skill points into pilot and psionics, just one point in streetwise could have come in handy...good he met up with the thief character, I mean scoundrel, I mean smuggler...that's it smuggler, who was all about pilot and streetwise, not some dead religion, yet he should really have taken a few more point in engineer skill. :smile:

It really is to me how you present this, the context, that it is part of a living, breathing world that makes sense, or that sense can be made of.

For me, social faux pas can easily occur if one completely ignores the social skill side of my game. They rarely though end up in duels or extreme situation, just people ignore you or won't talk without a bit of silver crossing their palm, or they shade the truth or hold back,...that is the stick side...the carrot side is if you speak their language so to speak, know how to act, then things go much more smoothly.

Even then, it is not all random or rolls. These folks from an exotic society have goals, problems and desires and if you can help them in those, well they are much more likely to overlook your horrible manners.


I like to recall that people like think they are doing "right," and they will have elaborate "reasoning" to support it (perhaps replacing "good" with "strength" and "honor"..the latter means we just have rules for how we kill you and take your stuff :smile: ...even the most evil ones, them the most as they need converts by trickery/lies and/or appeals to raw power.

That evil cult that is summoning the dread lord of the 6th hell...they have a rationale (besides just being sado-masochists and enjoying the pain...that is just icing on the cake)...they know they are the doing the "right" thing...It's just their "right" thing doesn't care about the effects it has on others, their freedom or innocence.

"It's really simple, you bring two sides together, they fight, a lot of them die. But those who survive are stronger, smarter, and better. It's like knocking over an anthill. Every new generation gets stronger. The anthill gets redesigned, made better."


Alas, like your approach it is simple enough to borrow from well made worlds and history. First step get rid of hard wired alignment in large measure for all but immortal extra-planar type entities.
 
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Well, I didn't QUITE railroad my players there, but, see, there's this region of my world called Loh. Extreme northeast of the known world, stretched across the longest river on the world, set in a rift valley a few hundred miles across. Culturally distinct. No party's gone there in decades, except in so far that at the very end of it, at the very edge of the world, is the fabled Wizards' Mountain, and the home of the College of Mages. Lots of dealings with THAT.

Except that the Mountain's vanished. So a party went to investigate what happened, and that meant me working up a full-scale culture for the exotic region. I included a number of influences: my setting is loosely based on Kenneth Bulmer's Scorpio books, and three of his last ones were set in the region. I also filched bits and pieces from Tekumel, and tossed in a number of my own.

Something I've touted in my blog and elsewhere is the use of Wikipedia for exotic cultural details. So, for instance, Lohvian cuisine is Southeast Asian, Malay in particular. Several fundamental condiments that are themselves blends. Terasi, for instance, is a foundation relish made of cucumber, cabbage, shallot, vinegar and pineapple. Spices the same: kunin is a blend of shallot, garlic, turmeric, coriander, ginger and black pepper, and commonly used with "yellow" dishes. Anyway, 1200 words worth of that. (I might put these full documents up on my blog so folks can get a clearer notion.)

For music, I went with Indonesian gamelan, which is principally gongs, metallophones and drums, with flutes and sitars mixed in. Check it out on YouTube for examples, which is just what I did not only to get an idea of it, but to be able to play short clips for my players.

Stuff? Of course there are a couple pages of equipment found in Loh, from their customary eating gear to those whacky instruments to several weapons used only there. Seeing one as a contest piece on Forged In Fire, I decided on using the mambele (suitably renamed) as the leading cultural weapon.

As far as general cultural oddities go, THAT document runs 3500 words. Some of the highlights I'll put in another post to break it all up.
 
Cultural highlights:

* Everyone gets married: to be an adult bachelor/ette is considered weird, and people just don’t take conspicuously unmarried types other than uhus seriously. Group marriages are common, and many patterns are possible.

* It’s also weird to be a virgin upon marriage, and sexual experimentation as a youth is expected ... but only within your clan and generation. Experimenting with one’s siblings and cousins is expected; doing so with your best friend’s parent is taboo.

* Speaking of those uhus -- that's the Lohvian third gender, who are either born without primary or secondary sexual characteristics, or made that way. Uhus shave themselves bald, and the voices of someone born as one or created to be one have a bit of an odd tang to them, enough to notice. It is considered a good thing by many, in that one can live one’s life dispassionately. They have preference as teachers, advisors, bureaucrats, priests and judges, the more so in that an uhu cannot rule in its own name, lead a clan or business enterprise, or have heirs-at-law (their possessions go at death to the clan chief). It is considered declassé and shocking to make someone an uhu surgically; far more often, they are made so by White Lotus mages, who are paid very handsomely for the privilege.

* The fundamental unit of life is the clan. Most Lohvians live with others of their clan in a common dwelling, or “clan house.” A small clanhouse might have only the extended generations of a single family, while those of great cities run into large compounds housing over a thousand clan members, servants and slaves. Most clans have traditional occupations, so in addition to being the centers of family life, clanhouses are where the bulk of the trade and commerce of Loh takes place.

* One of the major local wizardly orders has a table of correspondences: eight elements, corresponding to eight colors, eight cardinal directions, eight materials, eight bodily organs etc. A concept somewhat akin to feng shui derives from this table. A number of people take it to extremes (which I set as a GURPS disadvantage): a fireplace must face to the north. A woodbin must be painted green. Savory foods really should only be eaten during the night time. Pressing a sheet of lead against your chest is a good remedy for coughing fits. And so on.

* An important element is the concept of “place.” Everyone has a role, and is expected to fulfill it. Striving to achieve unseemly heights, ambition beyond one’s station, is considered somewhat blasphemous. Likewise, failing to maintain one’s station is considered a threat to society.

* Loh is pleasure-oriented and lax. Bribery and trafficking in favors are a way of life. In Loh, you can buy anybody or anything. The more decadent go in a big way for music, dance, mime, jugglers, alcohol, drugs, illicit sex and street parties. Filled with schools, with poetry symposia, with aspiring artists and writers, the average Lohvian knows more of poetry and literature than upper-class citizens of more work-oriented lands.

* Lohvians believe in reincarnation, and speak of the Circle of Souls (the “Paol-ur-bliem”). Upper-class and well-off Lohvians will secure the services of a Repositor, or spirit master, when they are near death, to take up the soul until its new receptacle can be found. When the Repositor has done his or her duty, it becomes the turn of the Dikaster – or diviner – to find the newly born infant to whom the soul truly belongs. If he or she successful (and this is by no means automatic), the Repositor then “deposits” the soul, and the newborn legally becomes that person, joining that person’s clan and taking up the person’s rank and station upon majority. It is customary to compensate the family from whom the child is taken, and honorable to do so lavishly.

And so on and so forth. A few paragraphs on major local holidays. A couple on customary attire. A list of common gestures, and one of common proverbs.

Finally, it isn't a closed system. The further upriver you get, the stauncher and more traditional these ways are. The further DOWNriver, and closer to the rest of the world, the more you have cultural pollution. Lohvians also have emigrated in large numbers, and my parties have encountered them in ethnic neighborhoods in the cities in which they've been in.
 
Can you walk through how this informed the adventures you set in the region?
 
I do this sort of thing a lot. A big part of my stock in trade as a GM is adventure in heterotopia — a place that is neither especially good (utopia) nor especially bad (dystopia) but just different. I've even had a couple of heterotopias published as settings in Pyramid magazine back in the day.

My last adventure was set on Sparta, an under-developed planet where the women live (with their children) in matrilineal land-owning "communes" and draw their subsistence from real estate (agriculture and plantations, mining, quarrying, forestry, and commercial real estate), and boys are recruited between eight and thirteen into occupational "unions" that draw their incomes from the sea, skilled occupations, trade etc. Women live with their sisters and cousins and so on in massive mansions, accumulate large physical heritages of heirlooms, and consider travel and especially sleeping out of doors to be masculine and improper. Men live with their co-workers (often alone or with a master or apprentice), preferably in a vehicle or a temporary camp, and consider any suggestion that they own land or permanently occupy land to be an affront to their masculinity. Long-term sexual relationships between men and women are strongly discouraged, and cohabitation is actually forbidden and taboo. Men are supposed to perform courtship displays of various sorts in established leks of various sorts, and women to choose partners for one-night stands when they feel inclined. I posted a draft description of the culture in a previous thread.

Visitors to the planet are mostly distracted by the odd courtship customs. The far more important thing for the adventure that I ran last month was that women find it awkward and conspicuous to travel, whereas men find it difficult to get in to the palaces where all the important stuff is. The PCs had to work around that, and a lot of the mysterious stuff about the case they were investigating had to do with the fact that the person they were looking for had to work around it too. And the mcguffin of the adventure was a mineral resource out on the un-settled steppe, in an area where only a "union" of itinerant graziers ever went, so that it could simply be appropriated by any woman or group of women who went there, built a nominally permanent dwelling, and proclaimed themselves a commune — but they had to persuade the union that knew where it was to reveal the location.

Stepping back to the general case, I think that this sort of stuff works best in adventures where the PCs have to get people to give them information or to do things for them, rather than in campaigns where the PCs are essentially looking for arses to kick. I run a lot of mysteries (thrillers and hard-boiled mostly, sometimes police procedurals) in which the motives of the villains and the difficulties with witnesses &c trying to hide things and otherwise complicate the case depend on the social and cultural peculiarities of the planet. I also run a bunch of troubleshooter adventures in which the trouble that has to be shot, and the failure of local staff to shoot it themselves, depends on the unusual values, taboos, and cultural norms that compel them to do things that perpetuate the trouble and not to do things that would solve it. So one of the things that I always try to figure out is what the values and shames peculiar to its way of looking at things. What do people of the culture admire in others and try to achieve? What do they conceal doing or their wish to do, and accuse their enemies of doing?
 
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I don't get into cultural specifics and details for a given human group beyond some general reference to similar historical humans...like would not come up with cultural weapons or dishes (those sauces you mentioned sound delicious by the way), except on occasion or arise in the banter in play...and the they are noted and incorporated.

Here is an example of my dwarves, nothing earth shaking, but more how I map out what I'll need for my "narrative sandbox." The same can apply to any culture, or group.

Geo-Political
Dwarves are found exclusively on the continent of Nodria. Many a forgotten cave, hall or delve dot the foothills and mountains of Nordria. Dwarves are often on trade terms with those who live about them. Dwarves prefer their own kind (+4 react) no matter how much they may complain about their own kind.

History
Dwarves, Khazâd in their own tongue, are one of the Original Seven Peoples of Arth: dwarves, elves, goblins, humans, halflings, keldak, and sauru. Dwarves appear to have evolved in the central Land Teeth Mountains of Nordria, and in myth with the aid of the god Kozinut. ...there is actually more to history in a bullet point document have for the campaign...

Language
Dwarves almost invariably speak the human language of their local, and that of their primary trade partners. The dwarvish tongue is never spoken around outsiders, except for their war cry, and only written in the inner sanctum of temples to Kozinut.

Society
Stubborn, quick to make friends, quick to make enemies, slow to forgive or forget a wrong. Dwarven society is centered around the patriarchal clan but a higher degree of cooperation exists between clans than in centaur society. The exact role of females in dwarven society is unknown but it is suspected that they hold great power and respect. Dwarves are also rumored to engage in large-scale orgies. Dwarven society is very, very secretive. Non-dwarves which learn the unspoken secrets, however inadvertently, must be silenced.

Religion
The greatest god to the dwarves is Kozinut, Dwarf Father, god of Mountains and Caves. The eight children of Kozinut form the pantheon of dwarven gods. Dwarves also engage in a form of ancestor veneration and revere the Seven Fathers and Seven Mothers almost as much as any god.

Pastimes
Crafts are the favorite of all dwarven pastimes. Metal working, stone working and weaving are the most popular. Dwarves enjoy all kinds of eye-hand coordination games and sports. Darts is the most popular. Dwarves have also been known to play the halfling game of baseball. Dwarves also enjoy wrestling, but will only arm wrestle with non-dwarves.

Virtues
Dwarves esteem hard work, reliability, and a reserved, serious and straightforward nature.

Dress
Dwarves prefer practical garments made of leather, fur, wool, and in summer, cotton; but dislike silk. They love to adorn their garments with precious metals and stones. Dwarves love to wear rings and torques but are also fond of bracelets, pins, plate and crowns.

Music
Dwarves love the sounds of drums and brass instruments. Their songs are either merry or somber and deep.

Food
Dwarven cuisine is spicy and of average quality. Dwarves don't care for sweet foods or drink, except for mead.

Drink
Dwarves by and large prefer strong bitter beers and mead. Dwarven meads and beers are renowned for their strength and excellent quality. Dwarves also like stronger spirits but do not care for wine. Dwarves are also very fond of coffee but dislike most teas and positively abhor fruit juices.

Drugs
In general dwarves do not smoke but some enjoy smoking tobacco pipes. Mushrooms are the only drug taken by dwarves and then only in special secret rituals.

Peoples
There is but one ethic group of dwarves on Nodria.

Interspecies Relations
Dwarves hate: goblins and orcs (-4 react)
…are neutral to: centaur, marook, mermen, sauru (+0 react)
…tolerant of: ariox, benku, elves, humans (+1 react)
…feel goodwill toward: giant eagles, halflings, pukel (+2 react)
…and prefer dwarves (+4 react)
 
Can you walk through how this informed the adventures you set in the region?

Mm. A lot of this was background local color, especially since I have little use for the Ren Faire/Hollywood/Merrie Olde standard RPG setting details.

Some things, though. The couple shieldmen in the party took great interest in how the hadefeka (= mambele) were often affixed to the backs of shields, and used as thrown weapons at the start of a melee. The party had to sort through all the unusual foods to see what would keep on their long upriver journey, obtain local clothing to fit in better, and learn as much language and idiom as they could. One other limiting factor is that the party leader was a princess who is legitimately one of the world's most powerful wizards ... except she comes from utterly plebeian stock, her family runs an inn in the poor section of her home city, and in a culture where it's shocking for those of high station not to act like the swaggering lords of the earth, she ran into problems.

Another incident involved a cultural element I hadn't mentioned uptopic. I have an intercalary period at year's end in my gameworld, a full six days where five are a no-holds-barred week-long party, and the sixth a quiet day of reflection. The Lohvian belief is that the souls of those who die during this period are believed to sometimes return in the form of a spirit-bird. These revenants are always thought to be malicious and evil. The (NPC) girlfriend of the party's second wizard was a newly-minted journeyman wizard in her own right, who can shapechange into a small hawk, and in that form was buzzing a bandit-held keep that was impeding the group's upriver progress. Said party wizard, having avidly read the briefing materials, started shouting that the Spirit Bird was coming for their souls, in vengeance for their villainy. It was all too plausible a notion to the bandits, whose morale was shaken as a result.

(Never mind that the romance between the two, which they'd been shyly dancing around for quite some time, went open when they decided it'd be easier to hold themselves forward as being married, them both still being teenagers and not wishing to be considered children in the eyes of the natives.)
 
  • Society is hostile and xenophobic and shuns the characters, making information gathering difficult.
  • Society is based around some evil cult.
  • Locals view outsiders as easy marks and try to rip them off all the time.
  • Party commits some social faux pas and get ostracised/challenged to a duel/forced to atone by performing some ordeal
  • Party is kidnapped by slavers or some other party and forced to perform as gladiators or some other such.
Ahem, you do realize that this list crops up a lot with "non-exotic" societies as well, right:shade:?
 
Ahem, you do realize that this list crops up a lot with "non-exotic" societies as well, right:shade:?
The point was to see how people had done different societies in a way that informed adventures without resorting to the locals being hostile or the players inadvertently pissing the locals off. What you've just said is quite true, and if that's the best one can think of to do with a particular culture, then as a trope it's just taking up page count without really pulling its weight.
 
The point was to see how people had done different societies in a way that informed adventures without resorting to the locals being hostile or the players inadvertently pissing the locals off. What you've just said is quite true, and if that's the best one can think of to do with a particular culture, then as a trope it's just taking up page count without really pulling its weight.
OK, I see the point here...though I think assuming the locals wouldn't be hostile to the PCs is a bit of a stretch. I mean, do they have any reason to assume they're not dangerous:grin:?

Also, what counts as "exotic" society? Honest question, here...I play wuxia, the baseline itself is "exotic" to many people - and then it get weirder:thumbsup:!
 
OK, I see the point here...though I think assuming the locals wouldn't be hostile to the PCs is a bit of a stretch. I mean, do they have any reason to assume they're not dangerous:grin:?

Also, what counts as "exotic" society? Honest question, here...I play wuxia, the baseline itself is "exotic" to many people - and then it get weirder:thumbsup:!

The locals in a major town or city that has any external trade aren't going to bat an eyelid beyond a bit of casual racism. Maybe locals in an isolated region would be suspicious of a party of armed adventurers turning up in their village. That's not a terribly interesting trope for a culture, though.

By 'exotic' society, I mean a culture where some aspect or aspects of the society inform an adventure in some way that's a bit more interesting than 'The locals are suspicious of you.' I'm looking to see discussion about how people have come up with or used aspects of a society to inform an adventure in interesting ways. If you've got some examples from a wuxia campaign then go for it.
 
Sometimes the approach of 'you are taken captive, have to fight in the arena, etc.' is fine. It is more-or-less what happens to John Carter when he arrives on Mars and is taken prisoner by the Tharks, so in a Barsoom game I'd see nothing wrong with it.

I'm not sure from the initial post whether the culture is supposed to be exotic from the point of view of the players or of the characters. If the former, then I'd say most of the history-based games I've run feature 'exotic' cultures and I try hard to milk the historical record for unusual customs, events, institutions, etc. that I can use in play. For instance, the Renaissance Roman custom of speaking statues.
 
Sometimes the approach of 'you are taken captive, have to fight in the arena, etc.' is fine. It is more-or-less what happens to John Carter when he arrives on Mars and is taken prisoner by the Tharks, so in a Barsoom game I'd see nothing wrong with it.

It makes for one adventure of perhaps 1-2 sessions but it's a bit of a cliche and you really get to do that at most once per campaign before it starts getting tired. The 64,000gp question is how to make a culture work as a backdrop in ways that inform an adventure of some substance in a way where the culture is significant to the adventure without dropping back to the cliches in the original posting - making the culture pull its weight as setting canon as opposed to just a bunch of people who talk funny and wear silly hats.

I'm interested to see examples where someone has done this for a campaign, or at least something non trivial like a side-quest of 5 or 6 sessions.
 
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It makes for one adventure of perhaps 1-2 sessions but it's a bit of a cliche and you really get to do that at most once per campaign before it starts getting tired.

Well, to a degree. It depends to some extent on the genre of the game and the source material it is trying to emulate. To stay with the Barsoom example, John Carter soon rises within the tribe of Tharks and the 'new arrival has to prove himself' trope is largely done--for that novel. But then in the second book, Burroughs uses it again--John Carter arrives on Mars in the Southern Polar region, is captured, etc. But I'll grant you that, outside of some specific genres or examples, it's quite limited.

The 64,000gp question is how to make a culture work as a backdrop in ways that inform an adventure of some substance in a way where the culture is significant to the adventure without dropping back to the cliches in the original posting - making the culture pull its weight as setting canon as opposed to just a bunch of people who talk funny, wear silly hats and happen to be rabidly xenophobic.

I'm interested to see examples where someone has done this for a campaign, or at least something non trivial like a side-quest of 5 or 6 sessions.

I'd say you could look at just about any history-based game for examples of this. A lot of the recent Mythic Babylon for Mythras, for instance, is just a description of how Ancient Mesopotamian culture, economy, and society, worked, so that g.m.s can incorporate that into their games. Some of this will just be 'local color' but much of it will be used to create scenarios or adventure hooks. Again, I'm talking about a culture that is exotic to the players, not necessarily to the characters.

Now, given the nature of real historical cultures, it is unlikely any one feature of them is going to be key to an entire campaign. It is more a question of a multitude of customs, institutions, or other cultural patterns, any one of which might form the core of an adventure, or an encounter, or what have you.

A minor case in point--in Renaissance Europe, it was generally believed that children who died before baptism could not enter heaven, so parents sometimes tried to wangle baptisms for infants that were still-born or who died soon after birth. Based on this, I once had p.c.s encounter a small band of peasants who were 'escorting' a local priest to the village church to coerce him into baptizing a dead infant at the font. The priest didn't want to do this and appealed to the p.c.s for help. So, a small facet of an 'exotic' culture used to create an incident that might possibly lead to an adventure.
 
....I'm interested to see examples where someone has done this for a campaign, or at least something non trivial like a side-quest of 5 or 6 sessions.
I rely a lot on what they view as virtues and vices....the food, clothes, music, drink, etc. they prefer can be used as hooks. Really with adventure, it is more driven by politics and trade (which are of course flavored by the virtues and vices of a people)...and adventure locations are driven by hisotry.

Perhaps one example, is my goblins...and the following interacting ahs come up in play if the PCs know a bit about goblin culture...

Physiology
Goblins are a unique in that male goblins continue to grow throughout their entire lives. A “goblin” passes through 6 growth phases: Kobold (childhood), Goblin (adolescence, ~3.5’-4’tall); Bobgoblin (adult~4.5’-5’ tall); Hobgoblin: (~6’ tall); Bugbear (~ 7’ tall); and Grendal (8’+ tall). Lifespan is 75 years.

Religion
Goblins are generally irreligious and believe the gods have either forgotten or ignored them even though goblins have their own gods: Marduk (God of Duty and Cities), Dahak (God of Strength), Tianu (Goddess of Fertility and Vice) and Bes (God/Goddess of Luck and Gambling).

Virtues
Strength, luck and fertility are the most prized of characteristics amongst goblins. Disloyalty to ones clan and kind is the most serious of transgressions.


In combination, the politics in goblin society are near constant. As authority and power is based on size, and size comes with age and growing there is incredible pressure to grow and incredible pressure to maintain power by controlling the food supply and vital nutrients that allow growth.

So that hobgoblin guard, may well be bribed by maple sugared bacon (it has a whole lot more value to him than just a meal) as long as what ever you are up to doesn't betray his clan. Goblins are almost always willing to take a bet/gamble...it is almost a religious obligation to accept. Now on if one can "cheat"...elaborate cultural rules and theological schools in goblin society, bottom line is not to get caught. Also as Strength is a virtue, a little chest puffing is a good thing in negotiation....but like everything leave them room to save face to not have to be weak to accept you strength.

So it inform how they will interact with you, what you can use to influence them and certainly will inform the quests and what they may ask of a party to do.

Also it informs how they live, fertility is important so goblins have as many children as they can. So their "lairs" are often crowded and noisy, they will have special areas if they can for dealing with food storage (treated more like a treasure chamber given the above) and feeding everyone, and waste disposal will be an issue and a common tasks (i.e. the goblin with the wheelbarrow on disposal duty may be ripe for capture or parley). Given their veneration of luck a gambling den/temple is almost always present, another raucous place. So what they value, their physiology, informs how they live, and how they live impacts adventurers. A goblin lair is going to be a noisy and even smelly place, which means easier to detect or sneak up on. Not that goblins don't know this, but it is a strategic decision how far away from the lair they can or want to post guards...or perhaps better to just have a skulking scout out past the perimeter.

Realize the thing put up for dwarves, just the lead page in my "monster manual" entry of them is only a bit (it is succinct as I make these things 1 page with room for art). Doesn't include that dwarves view of property is very specific, i.e. it lasts forever, they have no concept of things being abandoned so a dwarven "hoard coin" is always there's no matter how you got it, they make special "trade gold" that is the property of whoever has it.


I'm not certain if understand what you are looking for? I do very much the "narrative sandbox" so the exotic/cultural impact the role play...and the rules I use ensure there is a means for mechanical effectuation of it.
 
The locals in a major town or city that has any external trade aren't going to bat an eyelid beyond a bit of casual racism. Maybe locals in an isolated region would be suspicious of a party of armed adventurers turning up in their village. That's not a terribly interesting trope for a culture, though.

By 'exotic' society, I mean a culture where some aspect or aspects of the society inform an adventure in some way that's a bit more interesting than 'The locals are suspicious of you.' I'm looking to see discussion about how people have come up with or used aspects of a society to inform an adventure in interesting ways. If you've got some examples from a wuxia campaign then go for it.
So how is that "making a culture actually relevant and interesting to interact with":tongue:? Is that what you're after?

In that case: it's the exact same thing that makes any culture interesting and relevant. Including the PCs' own culture.
Namely, first you give the PCs a chance to interact with people from said culture...not necessarily on friendly terms, though that helps.
Have them react differently, not always in the expected manner or like 21st century WEIRD* people...unless that's what the NPCs in question are. (And then you get into sub-cultures...which you can also make relevant and interesting:devil:).
Have them wanting different things that the players might or might not expect...it's not my job as a Referee to second-guess the players. (It's their job to second-guess the NPCs, if they feel like it). But those things might well be different from those WEIRD* people would think of. Like the example upthread: a priest who is being lead under armed guard to perform a baptism on a dead child, which goes against the rules of his religion.
Enjoy the havoc when the barba...PCs get themselves into a tangle:gunslinger:!

* Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) - in other word, unlike most of the humans in the world, most of which don't check one or more boxes. It probably describes most/all of your players...but if you go back in history, their ancestors wouldn't fit the bill, either:thumbsup:!

Sometimes the approach of 'you are taken captive, have to fight in the arena, etc.' is fine. It is more-or-less what happens to John Carter when he arrives on Mars and is taken prisoner by the Tharks, so in a Barsoom game I'd see nothing wrong with it.

I'm not sure from the initial post whether the culture is supposed to be exotic from the point of view of the players or of the characters. If the former, then I'd say most of the history-based games I've run feature 'exotic' cultures and I try hard to milk the historical record for unusual customs, events, institutions, etc. that I can use in play. For instance, the Renaissance Roman custom of speaking statues.
Yes, that's exactly why I asked first why is it so important that the interaction should be free of attempts to exploit the PCs:shade:.
 
So how is that "making a culture actually relevant and interesting to interact with":tongue:? Is that what you're after?
Making it pull its weight in the game. You don't need a whole culture to make up a bunch of thugs who try to kidnap the party and sell them to slavers; that's just one encounter. If a society is going to take up page count how is it going to usefully inform an adventure - or more than one adventure?

[ . . . ]
Yes, that's exactly why I asked first why is it so important that the interaction should be free of attempts to exploit the PCs:shade:.
It's lazy and it's been done to death; more importantly it's good for one or two encounters at best before it gets stale. The question was to see if anyone had some examples of where they'd managed to do better than that.

If a society is just an evil empire than it becomes a no-go zone on the map - wasted real estate. If it's just a source of hostile thugs then it's just target practice. If it's a social minefield then it's just the place where we got chased out of town. These are things that can inform a few encounters but not much more than that.
 
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Making it pull its weight in the game. You don't need a whole culture to make up a bunch of thugs who try to kidnap the party and sell them to slavers; that's just one encounter. If a society is going to take up page count how is it going to usefully inform an adventure - or more than one adventure?
Actually, you need a society. One that would either support slavery, or at least allow it to proceed unmolested enough for the profession of slaver to be profitable. And each of those two options would entail different options and alternatives...:shade:

It's lazy and it's been done to death; more importantly it's good for one or two encounters at best before it gets stale. The question was to see if anyone had some examples of where they'd managed to do better than that.
"If"? Did you seriously doubt that there would be examples:shock:?
 
Making it pull its weight in the game. You don't need a whole culture to make up a bunch of thugs who try to kidnap the party and sell them to slavers; that's just one encounter. If a society is going to take up page count how is it going to usefully inform an adventure - or more than one adventure?
I'm sorry to repeat myself, but I'm still confused on whether we are talking about:
  • A society that is exotic to the characters--e.g. they are washed up on an unknown shore, touch down on a previously uncharted planet, etc. The characters know little or nothing about the culture they are going to contact.
  • A society that is exotic to the players--very different than the 21st-century milieu that they inhabit. It may be perfectly familiar to their characters, of course.
The material in the initial post seems to be aimed mostly at the first alternative--the characters are placed in a new culture they would not have any knowledge of or experience with, and have to flail around a bit. Hence the references to being enslaved, etc.

Is that what you're interested in, specifically?
 
Actually, you need a society. One that would either support slavery, or at least allow it to proceed unmolested enough for the profession of slaver to be profitable. And each of those two options would entail different options and alternatives...:shade:


"If"? Did you seriously doubt that there would be examples:shock:?
I've seen a few in this thread, although not a lot of discussion about how they actually got used in play. There are a few examples that have some thought gone into them, presumably from campaign worlds that the posters built. I was really interested to see how they actually got used.
 
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I'm sorry to repeat myself, but I'm still confused on whether we are talking about:
  • A society that is exotic to the characters--e.g. they are washed up on an unknown shore, touch down on a previously uncharted planet, etc. The characters know little or nothing about the culture they are going to contact.
  • A society that is exotic to the players--very different than the 21st-century milieu that they inhabit. It may be perfectly familiar to their characters, of course.
The material in the initial post seems to be aimed mostly at the first alternative--the characters are placed in a new culture they would not have any knowledge of or experience with, and have to flail around a bit. Hence the references to being enslaved, etc.

Is that what you're interested in, specifically?
Maybe I haven't explained it all that well. I was looking for examples of how you had used a society that had some quirk(s) or other in a game and some discussion of how the game itself went. Who the society was exotic to isn't really the point - it was about how you had used the quirks to inform the game, preferably in some game episode that had gone over at least a few sessions rather than just a single encounter.

Or (if this was to be used in the future) some plans about how you designed aspects of the society to be used.
 
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The 64,000gp question is how to make a culture work as a backdrop in ways that inform an adventure of some substance in a way where the culture is significant to the adventure without dropping back to the cliches in the original posting - making the culture pull its weight as setting canon as opposed to just a bunch of people who talk funny and wear silly hats.

I think you're looking for something that is both very hard to quantify and completely in the eye of the beholder. Whether something is a "cliche" or not is subjective, whether a culture "pulls its weight" or is brushed off as silly-hat-dom is heavily influenced by the degree to which players give a damn. We all know people -- and many posters, for that matter -- who are bored by anything that (in their opinion, anyway) gets in the way of solving the tactical problem put in front of them. To them, I wager that any setting detail beyond a thin veneer of pseudo-Ren Faire/Merrie Olde (or, in the alternative, pseudo-1960s Analog) takes up more bandwidth than they care to expend.

Some players can wrap their heads around a Tekumel. As events proved, most can't or won't.
 
[ . . . ]
Some players can wrap their heads around a Tekumel. As events proved, most can't or won't.
Tekumel is an example of a setting that has a lot of detail that doesn't really pull its weight in a game - what I've referred to as mid-level canon elsewhere. Mid-level canon is a sort of world-building anti-pattern where the author comes up with a bunch of lore that sits a couple of degrees of separation removed from thing the players actually interact with and winds up taking up headspace or page count without getting used much.

I've seen - and I imagine we've all seen - elaborately described societies with a lot of lore and history that isn't much use to inform gameplay. I was looking for examples of where someone had built societies with cultural quirks or some other aspect and used them to inform a game, ideally with some discussion of what happened or about the reasoning of the design.

I don't think it's an easy problem, or at least one that's not easy without taking a lazy route and making the society antagonistic to the players from the outset. It may be subjective, but I think the tropes I listed above are interesting for one encounter or perhaps a short side-adventure - and that's about it. Perhaps you could make an interesting campaign about rising through the ranks in a gladiatorial pool, but I guarantee you'd have to come up with a whole load of other material in order to do that.

To go back to RQII as an example that's contemporary with Tekumel, most of the published material pulled its weight. Cults of Prax, for example, discussed religion integrated into society, but laid out the specific role of the cults in character generation and advancement; it was relevant to gameplay. I think a lot of RQII was like that in that it did a pretty good job of making the source material useful. Glorantha didn't really become grog fodder until a couple of decades after that.
 
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Maybe I haven't explained it all that well. I was looking for examples of how you had used a society that had some quirk(s) or other in a game and some discussion of how the game itself went. Who the society was exotic to isn't really the point - it was about how you had used the quirks to inform the game, preferably in some game episode that had gone over at least a few sessions rather than just a single encounter.

Or (if this was to be used in the future) some plans about how you designed aspects of the society to be used.
Thanks for clarifying!
Tekumel is an example of a setting that has a lot of detail that doesn't really pull its weight in a game - what I've referred to as mid-level canon elsewhere. Mid-level canon is a sort of world-building anti-pattern where the author comes up with a bunch of lore that sits a couple of degrees of separation removed from thing the players actually interact with and winds up taking up headspace or page count without getting used much.

I don't really agree about Tekumel. A lot of it, I guess, depends on what version of the setting and what games you are looking at. Personally, I cut my teeth on the original Empire of the Petal Throne. It's a relatively short rulebook, only 120 pages all told, though with lots of words on a page by modern standards. Of that, only an initial section of 7 pages describes the world and gives setting information that is not immediately gameable. All of it is useful, I think, and Barker does a fine job of providing evocative details about his imagined world without loading the reader down with too much information. But the rest of the book is all character-generation, rules, spells, monsters, etc.

Similarly, one of the most recent commercial rulesets for Tekumel, Brett Slocum's Bethorm, isn't precisely loaded down with a lot of background information. It's about 250 pages long and IIRC the only background information that isn't directly relevant to the rules and gameplay is a 3-4 page section at the beginning describing Tekumel and its history. Other elements of Tsolyani society, culture, etc. are introduced when they are important. So, for example, there is a description of the clan system and a list of various clans in the character generation part of the book. Since clans are important support systems (and sources of adventure hooks) for p.c.s, that information has real relevance.

I think you're looking for something that is both very hard to quantify and completely in the eye of the beholder. Whether something is a "cliche" or not is subjective, whether a culture "pulls its weight" or is brushed off as silly-hat-dom is heavily influenced by the degree to which players give a damn.

That seems right to me. It all depends on what the players (including the g.m. here) of the game want and enjoy. For some, at least, part of the pleasure of RPGs is imagining oneself as part of a different society and culture, so including details and evocative elements from those cultures in the game has value. For others, maybe not so much--it's a distraction from killing the monster, or whatever. And, as you imply, the phrase 'pulls its weight' seems tilted towards the latter point of view--that cultural details have to be justified by the role they play in the 'plot.' But for some players they are desirable in themselves.
 
Tekumel is an example of a setting that has a lot of detail that doesn't really pull its weight in a game ...

To go back to RQII as an example that's contemporary with Tekumel, most of the published material pulled its weight. Cults of Prax, for example, discussed religion integrated into society, but laid out the specific role of the cults in character generation and advancement; it was relevant to gameplay. I think a lot of RQII was like that in that it did a pretty good job of making the source material useful. Glorantha didn't really become grog fodder until a couple of decades after that.

Yeah, I go back to my statement about players giving a damn. It sounds like you define cultural elements as "pulling their weight" if they are directly pertinent to (and unable to be uncoupled from) character advancement or plot bunnies. Fair enough, but by that definition very little detail in ANY setting "pulls its weight." I agree that if you want to gain supernatural power in Glorantha, you HAVE to engage with the religions -- and how does that not "take away the players' agency" by heavily restricting their ability to be powerful spellcasters AND atheists? -- and that this isn't the case in Tekumel. But this isn't a matter of one setting being better written/designed than the other. It's a matter of a gun being put to the players' heads in one case, and not in the other.

I just don't play that kind of game. I've created a very dense setting. I set out many, many, many cultural (and historical, and religious) elements in that setting. I prefer players who want to interact with those elements, and incorporate them into their roleplay. What is relevant to gameplay is what the players and GM decide is relevant. At my table, and at many others, our notion of relevance goes further than "that which is mechanically advantageous." Cuisine, music, clothing, customs, proverbs ... these are desirable in of themselves.
 
I just don't play that kind of game. I've created a very dense setting. I set out many, many, many cultural (and historical, and religious) elements in that setting. I prefer players who want to interact with those elements, and incorporate them into their roleplay. What is relevant to gameplay is what the players and GM decide is relevant. At my table, and at many others, our notion of relevance goes further than "that which is mechanically advantageous." Cuisine, music, clothing, customs, proverbs ... these are desirable in of themselves.
Good point. The most effective single step you can take towards making exotic societies interesting to gamers is to play with gamers who are interested in exotic societies. And the worst mistake you can make is to try to force an interest in exotic societies onto [extreme] tacticians, arse-kickers, and hangout gamers whose interest in playing RPGs is predominately to break out the combat rules or to hang out in the room where it happens. If you want to make an exotic society interesting, choose the right players (and while they are in the right mood).

Another thing that you have to do outside the obvious area of designing and presenting the society is to choose an appropriate scope and level of stakes for your campaign.
  • If you set the actual adventures outside of society (e.g. down in the dungeon or at war with outsiders) players will find society less interesting than if you set them inside society, contesting against rivals, criminals, and infiltrators.
  • If you make the PCs' mission too important then the players will tend to think that the NPCs' social ambitions and fears are annoying trivialities. When PCs are on a desperate mission to save the world the players tend to be impatient of an NPC's being intent on getting their children into the right cub-scout dens or concealing their forbidden love affairs.
If you want to make society interesting, don't make it trivial, don't overshadow it with adventure stakes that are overwhelmingly more important, and don't set your adventures outside it and in conflict with non-members of it.

When I want to run epic, that is, the globally significant adventures of larger-than-life heroes, I set it in the real world. When I want the players to take a level of interest in my social world-building sufficient to justify the work that I put into it, I run small-scale adventures in which the stakes are human and personal, so that the social concerns of surrounding NPCs neither ought to nor can be swept aside as trivial. For example, I run a lot of capers and police procedurals, private-eye stories and clandestine ops, and adventures motivated by social and political intrigue inspired by Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers.

Make your exotic societies interesting by setting adventures in them that focus attention on them. Adventures that are about protecting or discovering people's secrets are good for that. Adventurers who need to compel or persuade a range of specific NPCs to do specific things for them are good for that. Campaigns about progressing to rank and power are good for that, especially when complicated by romantic intrigue.
 
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As for designing exotic societies to be interesting in RPGs, I've done a lot of that over more than thirty years, and I have developed a few tricks.

One of the things up my sleeve as a social-worldbuilder is a checklist with three lives on it:
  • home life,
  • working life,
  • social life.
In most societies larger than a couple of hundred people and with economies sophisticated enough to display division of labour into more that a handful of roles, people typically have three lives lived with different three groups in three different places. They live in a household with one group of people; they work in a workplace with another group of people (perhaps overlapping); they socialise in a third place with yet another group of people. So a group of PCs who are trying to approach a specific NPC on terms that will let them make a request or apply pressure routinely have three avenues to do it through and three places to find them. That means that if you are running adventures that involve PCs approaching specific NPCs to [mis]inform them, persuade them, trick them, steal things from them, or sneak things to them, players will naturally take an interest in the NPCs' homes, workplaces, and recreational spaces. Make those exotic and like magic you will have make the exotic social features interesting.

I find that trick so easy and so effective that I pretty much start every time with a strange and perhaps bizarre household structure, structure of the typical firm, or social group, and then perhaps wonder what would happen if this society combined two or all three.

For example, I designed the planet Sparta that I mentioned above by giving women and men separate households but combining workplace and home for both sexes. That left the third places as the only places where men and women mingle. With no cohabitation allowed children had to be begotten in social spaces, and without children in men's families that meant that men had no motive either to support families nor to leave inheritances, which gave them an unfamiliar attitude to income and wealth. Just following the implication from there gave me a whole exotic culture.
 
The second thing up my sleeve is to consider what people or groups of people own the different types of wealth and enjoy the incomes that they produce. We WEIRDos are used to societies in which anyone can own any type of wealth and earn any type of income, and all that matters is how much. But other societies have supposed or might suppose that, for example
  • any aristocrat is disgraced if they work for a living, so their labour and human capital cannot be a source or income to them, so they are intensely concerned with land and capital passively invested, and with inheritances and legacies
  • land and horticulture belong to women, while the sea, fishing, and trade belong to men
  • skilled trades and other occupations are the monopoly privileges of hereditary castes
  • young people are given a grubstake of education and training, and then have to work until they are 75. Only after retirement are people allowed to live on the income of land or capital.
Start with an economic proposition like that, and you can often extrapolate a very exotic culture. And taking that approach you (and players) end up being able to deduce what anxieties, shameful secrets, and unfulfilled needs NPCs might have to be enticed and persuaded with. Furthermore, the economic and financial incentives that such societies present to their members can tempt them with or expose them to exotic crimes, or draw them into exotic intrigues that can form the basis for adventures and whole campaigns. Think, for example, how many dramas, adventures, and romances — or passages of history — have been dominated by inheritances, entailed estates, dowries, and so on. Wealth and income are interesting, especially to payers whose characters don't have them. Make wealth and income exotic, and the exotic becomes interesting.
 
The third thing that I make sure to consider for every society I design is what its values and taboos are.
  • What things do people in this society admire, strive for, and expect others to want? What do they take pride in if they have it and fake if they don't?
  • What things do they consider shames in themselves and disgraces in their neighbours, suspect in people they envy, and accuse their enemies of? What are they outraged by? What do they conceal?
Examples of such things being different in other cultures than in the contemporary Anglophone West range from the obsession of knights and samurai with pride and shame, through Hispanic machismo and Afghan pushtunwali to Nordic Janteloven. They are the meat and potatoes of guides to doing business in foreign cultures and of dramas and adventure stories set in exotic cultures.

Player characters can use these things to bargain with NPCs, persuade them, bribe them, blackmail them. They can be the motives for crimes that they are investigating, or they can explain the suspicious behaviour of the early suspects detective have to rule out. They can be the weaknesses of compromised spies or officials. They can be the sticking-points of problem people in a troubleshooting scenario, the key to negotiating a surrender, compromise, or win-win solution. They can define the path of least resistance, or allow PCs to force NPCs into catastrophic acts.

I consider the prides and shames of an exotic culture the key things that I have to keep in mind to make the exoticism come across in play, and indeed to make the NPCs seem real. But I never have much success in starting with a pride and a shame and building a society around them. I always seem to find that I have to build the society, economy, and government, experiment with a few social features, even consider the climate sometimes, and then deduce a set of prides and shames that are in keeping with the whole.
 
This is an edit that I had not seen until today:smile:.
Better late than never:wink:!
If a society is just an evil empire than it becomes a no-go zone on the map - wasted real estate. If it's just a source of hostile thugs then it's just target practice. If it's a social minefield then it's just the place where we got chased out of town. These are things that can inform a few encounters but not much more than that.
...so much wasted potential:shock:!
What if the characters ARE from the evil empire? What if only the Evil Empire and its offshoots exist in the setting?
"Society as target practice" doesn't work, you become the target practice for their teams of problem-solvers...:shade:
And if you got chased out of town, why were you in town to begin with? That task is now failed. What are the repercussions? Those could "inform way more than a couple encounters", you know?


Tekumel is an example of a setting that has a lot of detail that doesn't really pull its weight in a game - what I've referred to as mid-level canon elsewhere. Mid-level canon is a sort of world-building anti-pattern where the author comes up with a bunch of lore that sits a couple of degrees of separation removed from thing the players actually interact with and winds up taking up headspace or page count without getting used much.

I've seen - and I imagine we've all seen - elaborately described societies with a lot of lore and history that isn't much use to inform gameplay. I was looking for examples of where someone had built societies with cultural quirks or some other aspect and used them to inform a game, ideally with some discussion of what happened or about the reasoning of the design.

I don't think it's an easy problem, or at least one that's not easy without taking a lazy route and making the society antagonistic to the players from the outset. It may be subjective, but I think the tropes I listed above are interesting for one encounter or perhaps a short side-adventure - and that's about it. Perhaps you could make an interesting campaign about rising through the ranks in a gladiatorial pool, but I guarantee you'd have to come up with a whole load of other material in order to do that.

To go back to RQII as an example that's contemporary with Tekumel, most of the published material pulled its weight. Cults of Prax, for example, discussed religion integrated into society, but laid out the specific role of the cults in character generation and advancement; it was relevant to gameplay. I think a lot of RQII was like that in that it did a pretty good job of making the source material useful. Glorantha didn't really become grog fodder until a couple of decades after that.
Actually, Tekumel is my go-to example of a setting that DOES "pull its weight" in play...:grin:
That alone probably says a lot about the difference in our approaches, though. I definitely don't find only the details "pertaining to character generation and advancement" to be "relevant to gameplay".
The simple truth is that anything that the NPCs value, look for, want to avoid, or overlook due to a social "blindspot" is something that can be relevant to gameplay. I really struggle to give you examples where those were the main moving parts...because almost all of my sessions are related to that.

Here's an example that shaped the whole campaign in my art of wuxia game, albeit subtly.
Mother Ma has several daughters. When the PCs meet her, she is intensely worried about marrying them off (they're just coming of age), because 5 dowries would make her go bust - she's a minor/average business owner, but she wants them to marry well, and that requires a dowry, period!

Ma the First, being a xia in her own right, decides to take the matters into her own hands: she announces Hero Contest! Whoever wins an impromptu tournament, wins her hand.
As it happened, a former soldier won. But then they had to wait for an auspicious day for the wedding!
...which, using an automated diceroller, turned out to be several months ahead:shade:.
So the guy had to keep away from his bride-to-be, because seeing her after the bethrothal but before the marriage is ill luck:tongue:.
What does he do? Why, he joins the PCs as a retainer, in D&D terms. Though actually, it's rather they who joined him - he had an idea how to make money, which included bounty hunting. They just decided it's a great idea:grin:!
So, how many encounters do you think I got influenced by the details about marriage customs:devil:?



Also, everything Agemegos Agemegos said. And I do mean "everything"!

Yeah, I go back to my statement about players giving a damn. It sounds like you define cultural elements as "pulling their weight" if they are directly pertinent to (and unable to be uncoupled from) character advancement or plot bunnies. Fair enough, but by that definition very little detail in ANY setting "pulls its weight." I agree that if you want to gain supernatural power in Glorantha, you HAVE to engage with the religions -- and how does that not "take away the players' agency" by heavily restricting their ability to be powerful spellcasters AND atheists? -- and that this isn't the case in Tekumel. But this isn't a matter of one setting being better written/designed than the other. It's a matter of a gun being put to the players' heads in one case, and not in the other.

I just don't play that kind of game. I've created a very dense setting. I set out many, many, many cultural (and historical, and religious) elements in that setting. I prefer players who want to interact with those elements, and incorporate them into their roleplay. What is relevant to gameplay is what the players and GM decide is relevant. At my table, and at many others, our notion of relevance goes further than "that which is mechanically advantageous." Cuisine, music, clothing, customs, proverbs ... these are desirable in of themselves.
Word!
 
If a society is just an evil empire than it becomes a no-go zone on the map - wasted real estate. If it's just a source of hostile thugs then it's just target practice. If it's a social minefield then it's just the place where we got chased out of town. These are things that can inform a few encounters but not much more than that.

Mm. Apologies for the pile-on, but yeah, this is worth a comment. If these are the tenets on which a GM runs the campaign, then it seems to me that the only purpose for that society is to inform the players whom to shoot and whom not to shoot.

Because damn near EVERY culture is a "social minefield." From small town America to Sengoku-era Japan to Louis XIII and the world of the Musketeers, there are rigidly set ways in which people are expected to act, dress, speak and react, and which they ignore or contravene at their peril. The hostile elements in those cultures are only "target practice" to parties insistent on combat as the only recourse to solving problems. Getting chased out of town is only a standard reaction for parties insistent on fleeing a situation in which they're not strong enough to just kill them and take their stuff.

Fight or flight aren't the only options.
 
Yeah, I go back to my statement about players giving a damn. It sounds like you define cultural elements as "pulling their weight" if they are directly pertinent to (and unable to be uncoupled from) character advancement or plot bunnies. Fair enough, but by that definition very little detail in ANY setting "pulls its weight." [ . . . ]
A bit exaggerated, but more or less what I was getting at. The original question is asking for examples of where you had used the design of a society to inform an adventure, or the reasoning in the design where you had some ideas in mind for how you wanted to use aspects of a society.

Just to confirm, I feel like a sort of reformed world builder. One can waste a lot of time on mid-level canon that never gets used in play. It's interesting to do in a self-indulgent way but might not be terribly useful at the table. Things like Agemegos Agemegos's shames might be quite useful because you can use them to inform NPC motivations. Who succeeded Ogar II the flatulent or what generals were present at the battle of Lower Throcking in T.A 1314 may be less so unless they have some specific relationship to the background of an adventure.
 
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