Create a Homebrew Campaign | #11: Populations and Culture
In today’s part of my Homebrew Campaign Creation Series, I’m talking about populations and cultures; specifically, we’ll talk about developing your own to make your world feel more alive and vibrant than it otherwise would. Instead of populating your world with stale, inconsistent people, these are tips you can use to ensure that the inhabitants of your world feel realistic and consistent, rather than bland and lifeless.
If you’d like, I have a video version of this part of my series, as I do with every part of the series! My video content and quality have improved a lot, and I owe that largely to this series, which has taught me quite a bit about the video production process, from writing to filming to editing! So if you didn’t like my earlier videos, don’t worry: neither do I. These newer ones are much better, so please give them a chance if you haven’t tried some of my video content since the early stages of this campaign creation series.
You can check that video out below.
Okay, let’s get on with today’s session!
How Cultures Develop
Cultures develop in incredibly diverse ways—or, at least, they did. When a culture is developed, it does so through socialization with the people within its circle. Ideas permeate and grow in that way, which means that, at least in the early days, culture was based largely on the region. However, as time has gone on, the ability to pass information and ideas across great distances has grown, so we now see cultures changing, adapting, and becoming largely similar. Not entirely similar, as there are still many differences, but even those differences are being weaned out. It isn’t far-fetched to believe that all of Earth could be one culture at some point in the distant future.
This means that when you are thinking about the development of the cultures in your world, you need to look at two key “ingredients”, both of which you should have by now. The first is your map, which we created in the Macro View session, and the second is your history, which we made in a session a couple of weeks back.
Understanding how cultures develop is a key aspect of understanding how to create multiple cultures in your world that are unique and believable. Based on how much the different people groups in your world interact with one another, there may be a significant or minimal crossover between their cultures. A walled-off, highly-isolated people group is going to have a vastly different culture from those of other people groups in your world if the other groups interact with one another often and have reliable forms of consistent communication (trade routes, for example).
Cultural Cornerstone
When you’re drafting numerous cultures for your homebrew world in your TTRPG, then you need to have some core building blocks in order to prevent it from becoming overwhelming. I call this the cultural cornerstone, making it the rock upon which everything else is built and extended. This single building block is what ripples out and forms the rest of the culture. From there, you can make it more and more interesting as you add layer after layer to the culture of your people group.
For example, I may make the cornerstone for one people group power, which is exactly what a cornerstone needs to be: extremely simple. From, there, I ask myself how the high valuation of power caused the people group to develop and how it influenced their culture. Obviously, this people group would be focused on war, so their weapons and defenses would be more advanced and abundant than those of other cultures. Their architecture would be designed for defense and their weapons would be well-crafted and years ahead of the weapons of surrounding nations. They’d likely value strength above all other attributes, which would influence leadership and who is permitted to lead. It’s unlikely that leaders are elected democratically. Leadership is more likely won through displays of power and significant accomplishments.
Of course, you could have a cornerstone of power and develop a completely different idea for a culture than what I’ve just proposed. This is just a suggestion of how I would build a culture off of a single cornerstone. Regardless of what direction I take the culture’s development from the cornerstone of power, it is going to end up standing in stark contrast to a culture that was developed on a cornerstone of peace, art, or knowledge.
So… How Do I Get Started?
If your map is similar to mine, you likely have a vast continent available to you. It’s expansive and filled with different cities, towns, and people groups. The idea of developing a culture around each people group can be daunting, but I hope that the cornerstone suggestion is enough to make it feel less overwhelming. At this stage, you should make a copy of your map and segment off where the differences in cultures would be most prominent. When I do this, I make a layer above my map and add colors to the map based on where those cultures would be strongest. This helps me determine where I need to put different cultures and how many I should have.
Remember what I said a the start of this post: cultures will be influenced by communication with other people groups and how often that communication occurs. Island nations are going to be among the most diverse cultures you have, as are nations that develop in some other form of isolation (such as those divided from the rest of the world by impassable mountains, or underwater cultures if your world has those).
Once you know how many different cultures you need to write about and where they will be located, it’s time to get started. My recommendation is to ensure that every diverse culture on your continent has a different cornerstone. While this may not be entirely realistic, we’re not writing a novel here, we’re creating a world for our homebrew campaign! Having such diverse cultures is going to be helpful to your players as they navigate and learn about your world. It ensures that no two things are going to be exactly the same, making things feel more lifelike. Yes, it’s likely that there would be more than one warmongering culture on a vast continent, but that just makes things complicated for the newcomers of your world. I prefer to ensure that every culture on a single continent stands out on its own, ensuring that it is memorable and unique to everything else around it, resulting in a more colorful playground for my game.
Some More Tips
Before I wrap up this post, I want to give you just a couple of additional tips to help make the cultures of your world as vibrant and diverse as possible. These are the dos and don’ts of making a culturally diverse homebrew world. Some are things I’ve learned from other creators while others are things I’ve learned through mistakes of my own, so I hope that they’ll help you make better worlds than I have in the past.
DON’T Make 1:1 Parallels of Real World Cultures
It’s perfectly fine to borrow from the real world. In fact, I encourage it, especially when you’re first starting out. Almost everything you read has some form of real-world inspiration. However, when you make a perfect parallel to something in the real world, it can be heavy-handed and lazy at best, insensitive and immoral at worst. Instead…
DO Mix and Match Aspects of Real World Cultures
Instead of creating a perfect 1:1 parallel of a single culture in the real world, take inspiration from various cultures that do exist or have existed in our world. Are you creating a culture that has developed high in the mountains? Well, why not take aspects from several of the cultures in our world that developed in similar conditions? Look at how they developed and what they became as a result of their history, then draw from that to create your own cultures. Be inspired by real cultures, but don’t copy them completely.
DON’T Make Morally White and Black Cultures
Demonizing or glorifying an entire culture is lazy and dull. Your players are going to notice and it’s going to make your homebrew world feel like every other fictional world that was written in the 90s. The truth is, most things aren’t black and white, even if we perceive them as such. Just because your culture is hungry for power doesn’t mean they’re the evil culture in your world, and just because a culture is pursuant of peace doesn’t mean they’re the good culture in your world. Make clear the good and bad aspects of every culture in your world. Think about what problems may arise from each culture, as well as what positives they can provide to the world.
DO Push Against Stereotypes
When you write about a particular culture in your world, you’re essentially creating a stereotype. A stereotypical member of your culture is going to follow the cultural direction to the letter. They’ll be exactly what you’d expect from that people group. However, just because a culture has a stereotype doesn’t mean everyone in the associated people group is the same. Some may go counter to the cultural norms or they could be a divide within the culture, splitting it into different groups. There may be artists and romantics within a culture centered on war, or there could be angry and violent people in a culture that otherwise loves peace. Some of these individuals may even rise to power within the people group, allowing them to represent some of the minority voices within that people group. This will improve the believability of your cultures and help you to create more interesting and dynamic NPCs!
Conclusion
Your homebrew world can be as beautiful and rich as you like, but it won’t hold the interest of your players if you don’t fill it with people who are unique and interesting. Populations and cultures are a vital part of your world’s creation. They add life and richness to your world in a way that you could not otherwise have, no matter how carefully considered the placement of every mountain is. The more well-considered and carefully written your world’s cultures are, the more believable and enjoyable your players will find your world to be. They’ll want to interact with the people of your world and see the many regions you’ve drafted if you can entice them with new, unique experiences with each new location they visit.
Thanks so much for taking the time to check out this part of my homebrew campaign creation series! I hope that you’re enjoying the series thus far and have been able to use it to improve your own homebrew world. If you do enjoy this series and are learning from it, I’d love to have your support! The best way to support me right now is to subscribe to my YouTube channel, which I’m trying to grow. Additionally, you can follow me on Social Media! I’ll have those links down below.
Thank you again and, until next time… bye!