To view the full list of my Culture Building 101 series, click here.
To view my Conlanging 101 series, click here.
You may have read my series on conlanging (the full series here). If you haven’t and want some pointers on creating your own language, be sure to check it out! Now, what if you’re interested not only in creating a language, but creating a beautiful home for that language to live in?
That’s where culture comes in. Perhaps you’re interested in worldbuilding for a story you’re writing, a tabletop campaign you’re planning, or simply want to have an outlet for your creativity. Whatever the case, an essential part of worldbuilding is designing and fleshing out cultures within your world. There are a million and one blogs, websites, and tools helping you figure out the logistics of a realistic (or perhaps unrealistic, but original, universe and magic system). This series is going to focus most on the cultural aspect of worldbuilding—helping give some good starting points, considerations, and resources for constructing a culture (or many cultures) for your world!
Thousands of years ago, I studied Anthropology (and also Global Studies) in college. It wasn’t the most useful for getting a job, BUT, it has been very useful for guiding my own culture and language constructing. And now, I will share what I learned through my own experience in this process and implementing it in my book series, The Warriors of Bhrea.
The Why
Like in Conlanging 101, it is important to determine why you want to design a culture. What purpose will it serve? Will you need to start building from scratch, or will you already have a real world example to draw from? How involved will the cultural aspects of the setting be with the story/gameplay/etc? These questions will help determine the scope of how much detail you will need and how in depth you will need to focus on certain aspects of culture. For example, if you are writing an alternate historical fantasy set in medieval China, you won’t necessarily need to build a culture from scratch, but you will need to adapt the culture of that time and place to whatever fantastical elements you will introduce in the story (like if dragons were real). As another example, you might be creating a tabletop RPG set in an entirely different universe where the very physical laws of nature are different, so you’ll need to go DEEP into the foundations of worldbuilding and how that will affect the cultures of that universe. And finally, sometimes you won’t need to plan out an ENTIRE culture, only focus in depth on certain aspects that are important for your project. Perhaps much of your fantasy world reflects our own, but you want to pour your creativity into the religions of your world. You will still want to consider how other aspects of culture influence religion, but you won’t need to plan out detailed systems unless they deal directly with religion.
The Culture Building Process
Once you have determined your “why” and the scope of your project, on to actual building! Sort of like conlanging, culture is made up of foundational pieces that build upon each other. However, instead of just putting basic sounds together into more and more complex sentences, I view culture more like a pyramid. At the base is the fundamental aspect of reality, the physics and metaphysics of the universe, and at the top is more “surface level” stuff like the aesthetics of buildings and clothing—the things that would be more directly apparent in a setting.
And what all is in between? While it may not cover all aspects of culture, my process generally goes like this:
Metaphysics/Physics
Environment/Biology
Geography & How Geographies Interact
Physical Needs
Beliefs & Values
Family Structure
Societal Systems
Technology
Aesthetics
Individual Differences
The first three blocks pertain more to the physical aspect of a world. While not dealing with culture directly yet, they still represent very important considerations for the culture. After all, it is difficult to have a culture if there is nowhere for a culture to live!
The next seven blocks have more to do with the actual culture you want to design. Several of those categories, like societal systems and family structure, are more complex and might require some “sub posts” in order to fully explain my process.
For now, however, I will wrap up this introduction. I hope you find the upcoming information useful, and if you’d like to see my culture-building in action, be sure to check out my book series, The Warriors of Bhrea!