Worldbuilding 101 Part 2

Mare Kuntz · 2000-09-17T14:55:20

Building Culture and Sociobiology Part 1 of several No man is an island, alone unto himself. Everyone is born into a society that teaches its members a system of ethics and a model of how the world works, which information these members use to decide how to live their lives. And each society is a product of the actions of previous generations, who were in turn products of earlier versions of society, and so on, back to the dawn of intelligent life. When you create a single character and their assumptions, beliefs, and personal philosophy, you to some extent also need to create the whole of this history. The exception is if you are doing a near-present Earth setting, because your player will already be fairly familiar with these. But games in the story-dependant genres (RPG, action RPG, adventure, strategy and FPS campaign, and interactive fiction) are usually set in cultures other than that of modern reality. So it follows that you will need to sketch this new culture out for your players as part of your story. You have neither the time nor any real necessity to tell the player the whole history of your civilization, of course. The most important things to describe are those which affect the plot events, characters’ motivations, and characters’ patterns of reaction. It will generally be necessary to describe or imply the culture’s prevailing moral beliefs at the time your game occurs. (E.g. do they think theft is a social pastime or a soul-destroying sin? Or is the concept of theft impossible because they don’t have the concept of property?). Players frequently enjoy a direct statement of a culture’s beliefs, especially if in the form of a ‘traditional’ chant or poem that you have invented. An example from Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness: Light is the left hand of darkness And darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying Together like lovers in kemmer, Like hands joined together, Like the end and the way. This works best when the chant is foreshadowed by an ‘ignored assumption’ in your characters’ comments. Thus instead of relating a boring piece of exposition, you have satisfied the reader’s curiosity. An ignored assumption: Character1 says, “The flurbing should be better than ever this year!” Assuming that the reader doesn’t already know what flurbing is, he/she will think the following: “Flurbing happens on a yearly basis; the character thinks flurbing is a good thing; that flurbing is getting better may be an effect of the way(s) the culture has been stated to be changing.” The one of these that’s an ignored assumption is that flurbing is good. It’s an ignored assumption because the reader will assume this solely because the character thinks so. When the reader finds out what flurbing actually is, he/she may think it’s a terrible idea. So what information are you conveying through your ‘traditional chants’ and other miscellany? The stage of cultural evolution your society is at, the kin group patterns your society is organized around, the type of economy your society uses, and the stage of technological evolution your society is at, for starters. If your world has magic that will need to be explained too, and you probably will want to say whether your world just evolved or was and is home to one or more deities. According to Elman R. Service’s book Origins of the State and Civilization all civilizations that arise spontaneously and free from the influences of previous civilizations go through the following phases: hunting and gathering, incipient agriculture, formative, regional florescent, initial empire, dark ages, cyclical conquests. Now admittedly this is not a very strong generalization because he had a sample size of only 6 spontaneously occurring civilizations throughout the Earth’s history. (These being Mesopotamia, Egypt, N. China, N. Peru, and Meso-America.) But we might as well assume that this generalization is solid so we have something to work with. So what do those phase names mean? Supposedly the first hominids were similar to modern-day bonobos (a type of chimpanzee). They lived in nomadic bands on the plains of Africa and fed themselves by scavenging and browsing. They communicated simple concepts via a few grunts and motions. The only ties they acknowledged were mother-child and friend-friend relationships, and the only ways they controlled each others’ behavior were by physical force and favor exchange. Then something changed in our brains and we began developing language, and through language we cooperated to develop tool-use, food-storing technology, and cooperative hunting. Persuasion, rules, and taboos were invented, and we tamed fire and learned to cook. This was the hunting and gathering period. This is where patriarchality started to overcome matriarchality. Superstition had also been invented, so some tribes, when their members died, buried them with food for various reasons. Some of this food was grain and tubers, and these were observed to sprout from the grave next spring. Thus agriculture was invented, spontaneously in each of the six civilizations. The problem with agriculture was that you couldn’t take the plants with you; the solution was to live in a cave or village near where the plants grew best, usually a river valley or delta. But giving up nomadism meant reducing your chances to mix your genes with another tribe. The solution to this was recognition of a more complicated kin system and a primitive type of arranged marriage. Settlement in one area also meant that there were some resources a group just didn’t have access to and some that the group could get very easily (specialization), and an organized barter system evolved to even out the distribution of goods. Animals were domesticated somewhere in here too. All this happened during the incipient agriculture period. Keep those comments coming folks!

Writing for Games Game Design

Started by sunandshadow September 11, 2000 10:20 PM

11 comments, last by sunandshadow 23 years, 7 months ago

sunandshadow

7,435

Author

September 15, 2000 03:10 PM

Chai Peddler: I agree that technology cannot change people, but ideas can. It''s amazing how different the self-concept of the average person in the middle ages was from the self-concept of the average person now. And differences in self-concept, ethical system, etc. produce changes in individual and societal behavior.

I''ll probably check out Ishmael, thanks for the reccomendation.

quote:Original post by ahw
Sunandshadow : there is one thing I can''t stop wondering about : what do you mean by sociobiology ?
Are you saying something like Ethnoanthropology ? (study of ethnical and physical evolution of humans ... mmm, something like that )

Sociobiology, acording to my SOC030 prof, is basically trying to assess the effects of that which is biologically inherently human and that which is not in the development of societies.

Oh, FYI I probably won''t have any more of this to post for a week because I just hauled home 15 books on patriarchal vs. matriarchal societies. Please, feel free, though, to make more comments on this and/or the other pieces; I''ll continue to work comments into the part I have done.

I want to help design a "sandpark" MMO. Optional interactive story with quests and deeply characterized NPCs, plus sandbox elements like player-craftable housing and lots of other crafting. If you are starting a design of this type, please PM me. I also love pet-breeding games.

Chai Peddler

122

September 17, 2000 11:47 AM

sunandshadow -- Yes! Sorry... that''s what I meant by "people change themselves," though I failed to specify how people change themselves. New ideas, new experiences, etc.. I think it will never come to pass that a human being will say "I now know everything" and be correct.

By the way, I apologize if I came across as preaching... I''m not in a good place right now, and am letting it get to me. But things always change.

I must remember to laugh. All of us must laugh!

CP

"Can't you see it's only life! We can laugh about it!" - Seal

Joviex

250

September 17, 2000 02:55 PM

quote:Original post by ahw

homo sapiens CroMagnon man (when we started the gathering/hunting lifestyle). It''s interesting to note that according to really recent discoveries, CroMagnn had some pretty good abilities in Herbalism, Medicine, and even Surgery.

Just thought it would be interesting to point out that a recent show on Discovery points to the theory (which is supposedly being embraced [GASP] by most anthropologists) that we did not evolve from CroMagnon man.

He was another who species that developed from early primate, as is shown in his skeletal structures. Thus his affinity for Herbalism, Medicine and Surgery was a blessing due to his sheer mental ability (which was greater in capacity than our own from skull analysis).

"Five passengers set sail that day, for a three hour tour, a three hour tour...."

Worldbuilding 101 Part 2

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Worldbuilding 101 Part 2

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