On Making a Civilization 2: Culture and Cause

Nirrum has a programming board for rituals, a library, and students.

I, On the other hand, have barely functioning limbs.

We both have 8 constitution

If you've read the previous post, you should already have a place with a basic semblance of civilization ready to go. You're ready for your players to go there and when they get there you realize that all of your houses are empty, all of your people have neutral accents and have the same dialog from the previous town. Your people are all the same color, the same race, and all wear the same clothes. You see where this is going? Today we're going to go through a basic tweak list of what should be considered for a civilization that'll make it seem that much more real.

Urban Stylization

Here we'll talk about some SRD-style descriptions of your civilization and how it should appear from any given angle.

The houses

Provided your civilization's members actually have problems with the elements as a whole or don't want their stuff blown away, they probably have constructed some sort of nanoclimate regulation structure. Most frequently these structures have some sort of roof and often, walls. Houses come in many styles and mean many things to different people and they are often built to accomodate their cultural lifestyles. A human in our day and age does not need very much at all to live. A single 3m by 3m room, somewhere to poop and somewhere to cook is a comfortable minimum. For a family, that room needs to get a lot bigger. Historically we have seen houses for entire villages down to single room dwellings for single room individuals. Our largest buildings are frequently massive living complexes, filled with rooms for people to sleep, frequently with a few rooms for eating, and a great many for pooping and washing. 

Start by describing the average family dwelling, Their amenities should echo the civilization as a whole, Where the food, water, poop, and a place to be are all taken care of. Always remember to ask where these people go to party, whether that's their neighbour's kitchen or the local club scene. Few civs have a place to party in every home, but they should all have a place to chat

The Neighbourhood

What does the biggest house in town look like, and who lives there? What's an ideal place to live? What's the worst? Depending on the size and age of your civilization, you'll probably have a couple of trends. The first house set up is always the most convenient when viewed in isolation. Handy to water, a decent path to the nearest road, A nice plot for everything they need. Over time this land might become less convenient but still a large property. The further away from these conveniences, the worse the neighbourhood. Eventually, as the civilization develops and properties get rebuilt and upgraded, this flips, and rich houses don't need to be near their resources because they have the opportunity to have things done for them. Thankfully, none of this actually matters. Just make sure that you have a bad neighbourhood, a good neighbourhood, a best Neighbourhood, and that one recluse who just has to be different. Protip: The places where people work and trade are never in the noble's district but also rarely in the poor zone.

Describe the basic differences between someone's experience in each neighbourhood. Poor places tend to be more violent, but can also be far more welcoming. Rich Places might be safer but the traditions may lean toward being a shit. Noble districts are almost always where the party is.

The sights

Your civilization will always have something to do in their downtime. The harvest has just come in, the trade's been done, the laundry was just dried, the floor is swept and the animals are fed. Boredom is not something people tend to be complacent with so let's address that with anything to do at all. Narratively speaking, this is usually where you'll find the start of adventures and the most interesting people in town. This is the inn, the temple, that one guy's living room, that cool waterfall where everyone goes to swim, The mystical university, that cave where teenagers have been going to party since the first goats grazed the rocky hillside. The quality of these entertainments usually either depends on the environment or the economy.

No one wants this place to be ruined or in trouble, that's why it's the best place to threaten. One guy's house is one guy's house, but the pub is THE pub. Sure a kid got kidnapped but they got kidnapped from THE swimming hole. That means it's bigger than one person.

Don't forget to describe the civ's infrastructure. You don't need to describe it until it becomes relevant, but you do need to know it's there.

You don't want to need to move a critical building to make place for a watermill or an aqueduct

The Environment

People don't tend to have control over the greater effects of mother nature, With that in mind, there's always going to be some environmental effect that's worth noting, even if that note is its conspicuous lack of poor weather, especially when that sort of boon often causes an abundance of ants.

Weather and Climate

Set your slide-bars up for some basic factors here and you're usually good to go. Ignoring the gross meteorological inconsistencies that are most fantasy settings,  You can usually just consider weather and climate along these lines

• No Precipitation --- Lots of Precipitation
  How often do things fall from the up to the down? Snow, rain, meteors, Ghosts. This will dictate a lot of thematic aspects, such as vegetation and  clothing styles
• High Temperatures --- Low temperatures
  This will change the precipitation, the clothing and the vegetation to suit. 
• No wind --- Windy
  I live in a place that has an area known as the Wreckhouse and for some reason, people keep trying to build there. I have no idea why. This changes how those people go about hunting, farming, and building.

Combine these three factors and you should get plenty of variable weather, especially if you just grift with real-world climates and abundant Google searches for "trails" in countries that you've probably never been to. Gotta work with what you've got

Terrain

The geography of an area can have some incredible impacts on how it is imagined or presented, not to mention the effect it has on people. If you have fond memories as a child of a certain terrain where you lived, congrats, people feel that way around that terrain. You can possibly even convey that feeling by using that terrain. Trekking across landscapes like this can get across feelings of desolation, briefly, at least. We'll talk about that in another post. Forest entrances like this can really mark the change in setting. The terrain will be the biggest real change to the story while not really affecting the people that live there much at all. They'll change their buildings to suit but they'll find a way to live there. For your civ, this is just Fluff setting, but it matters for how they make their livelyhood.

• Rocky --- Earthy --- Swamp
  This one is actually incredibly important for determining how the land reacts to the weather. And since most races people will write about tend to be terrestrial, you should really know how hard farming is or how likely you are to fall down a hidden pit. Many plants in harsh environment have to come up with interesting methods to stick around and many times, people make use of this abundance.
• Scrub --- Forest --- Extreme Forest
  Really this is about vegetation height. Save the extremes for special occasions!
• Dense Vegetation --- Sparse or No Vegetation
  Desolation? Claustrophobia? The inability to farm because of the overabundance of Ents? Your people will heat their homes with wood or cow shit depending on what's on hand. They'll hunt Caribou in the woods or raise cattle in the fields. 
• Coastal---Riverside---Inland
  Your People's proximity to water has been mentioned before. To us humans, the water is life. It's easy transportation, filled with food, and hard to hide on, and transperitidal predators are Thankfully rare. You can escape from wolves in the water and from sharks on land. But if you can find a good resource inland and secure trade and water, you're pretty well set.
• High elevation --- low elevation
  This doesn't really matter much but will make more sense with the next one
• The final point is how rapidly those features change. Most (but not all) of the pictures linked so far have been from my home. The same chunk of land, the same altitude, the same weather. Ask how often an aspect of the environment is going to change from step to step. Thankfully, we're able to shortcut this in ways like "Bogs between mountains" or "desert oasis" as defining terrain

Ecology

Look up the environment you want to have, look up what animals live there. Copy. Paste. Once you're done that, if you're dealing with a fantasy world or fictional setting, you should not only alter those creatures in a unique way to suit the setting. Bioluminescent deer aren't a thing for a reason, but maybe without large predators, they can be! Give the goats forward facing tusks to root up wild tubers that are inedible to humans, give the fish new patterns. 

When you're done with the base biology, throw in some extra fancy. In my case, as a dungeon master, this means running through the Monster Manual and seeing what belongs in this biome and changing things that aren't normally so that they can be. Keep a basic biomass tree intact if you can but use a change in that tree for drama if you need to!

This is how your people will hunt and also be the dangers they face in living here.

Government

I cannot possibly hope to clarify government as easily as CGP Grey does in his video "The Rules for Rulers" and "Death and Dynasties." Watch these videos and take notes. 

Economy

Economy, thankfully, is far far easier to set up. Set up a supply chain which is an aggregate of the information you already have so far. 

1. Talk about where the food comes from, including more exotic goods. Like chocolate to an Englishman or Moose to a Arab
2. Talk about what they export
3. Talk about what they import
4. Talk about any tangible tax rules
5. Talk about where the government spending goes
6. Talk about reasons to move to or from this place
7. Talk briefly about the inefficiencies in this system when talking about corruption.

In practice, Economy is extremely difficult to actually emulate or form theories on because we honestly don't have enough data and/or aren't smart enough. One of my favourite examples comes from "The Story of the Hero and the Demon King." A mindbogglingly mediocre show if it were not so fantastically intelligent with how it handles and deals with its conflict. In one scene, after the protagonists set up a new nation, banks, operating without government oversight, decide to purchase nearly all of the grain harvest from one country. This lead to widespread famine and economic collapse in one country while the new one is unharmed but has to institute tariffs so that their country doesn't tank as well as people try to escape their misfortune in the collapsed territory. Money is a salable good, and what it has in granularity, it lacks entirely in practical use short of its material components. A few, independent citizens simply did what they were allowed to do legally (Buy grain and not sell it) and not only did it make them ludicrously rich, it allowed them to control an entire economy to the detriment of the established government and its people (for the better, as the case was). Being aware of this, we can patently ignore it. If we are unaware, we will be caught unawares, but if we are aware, we can have the handwaved response of "the government has instituted such laws that the destabilization of the economy is not the present issue" ... Unless it is, of course. For the purposes of most stories, know the seven points above and assume the rest is kosher, because this leads us into our penultimate point

Political alliances

Did you know, for the first half of the second world war, America knew Stalin as "Uncle Joe?"

Alliances can change at the drop of a hat, and the definition of those alliances can be exceptionally hard to maintain. If you want to experience how cutthroat poltics are, set up a game of Diplomacy. Incidentally, I highly recommend Matt Colville's Running the Game Series. I have never found better advice for dungeon masters and seldom found better for writing as a whole.

There's a simple and basic formula that's worth having in the description of your Civ, and I use it for every political faction, down to the gangs, in my writing.

• Allies
• Ally 1 
• Ally 2
• Ally 3
• Enemies
• This one
• that one
• Probably this one too
• Controlled by
• Any faction that has any power over your faction
• Sneaky treaties
• Extortionate pirates
• The local Necromancer
• Controlling
• Any Faction that your faction has power over, even if they're on the previous segment, which they frequently are
• Satellite territories, Distinct treaties
• Really, what the hell is America doing with Puerto Rico?
• Keys to power
• As seen on CGP grey's video, your faction needs a reason why it hasn't been subsumed into a larger faction 
• They should also try to have as diverse a power portfolio as possible

Fill in the chart and if refer to it if you need a poltical reason why someone isn't doing something. You might notice my approach to this involves a lot of side-eyeing a bunch of difficult to investigate phenomena that your player or reader might have questions about. You'll look really smart but in reality you've just got a formula. A formula which culminates in

Sociological notes

Your people now have a place to be, a reason to be there, someone to answer to and a way to (on average) not die while they're doing it. They've got a place to be and if they've been there long enough, they've probably got stories to tell about it. Here's a neat list you can fill out now that your civ has some ground (probably) to stand on. 

• What language do they speak, Do they have a special Dialect or accent? When they speak the language your audience speaks, what does that sound like?
• What's entertainment 'round these parts? How do your people spend their downtime. If they go to one of the local sights, what's there to do? 
• What's the healthcare like. Small villages might have the Local Herb Hermit, but bigger civs might have a hospital or some analogue thereto 
• Who enforces the law and how are they viewed? How professional are they?
• How are outsiders viewed? Does this vary from Neighbourhood to Neighbourhood?
• How close are they to the dangers of war and battle? Who has the best memory of the most recent conflict?
• What do these people aspire to? What's a job their parents would approve of?
• What are premature mortality rates like?
• If there are multiple races or Phenotypes, which one is the most common and how are the others treated? Who has the worst time in this society, despite not having a choice in the matter
• What is the population density like? How far apart are dwellings and how many people dwell there?
• How happy are the people with their lives?
• What would cause a riot?
• What would cause a panic?

Most importantly is the following

• How did the people of your civ adapt to challenges posed by any of the previous features of terrain, weather, or difficulties in obtaining supplies?

Fill this out and You have an excellent city setting. Later, I'll be talking about some nitty-gritty fluff, conveying tone in a medium that is prohibitively kurt, and how to manage a sudden overabundance of high-value treasure in such a way that you don't actually need to change anything. Keep your Diamonds at the value your spell requires them to be and I'll write more later

Mishali, Betlys'u'lo- Nirrum