Culture

Culture is a wide scale concept that describes the customs, artworks, social institutions and evidence of a society's achievements — as well as the assembly of laws and expectations that define acceptable behaviour among a given people. Designing such from scratch would be an act of folly. We are products of our own culture; everything we do and say reacts to the culture we were raised in, not to mention the culture to which we're trying to adapt. Should we attempt to write a narrative that steps outside this norm, we might succeed because we control every action and every statement that the characters within take and say... but to expect players to collaborate on such a venture, given the restraints of their culture, is both unrealistic and a recipe for disaster.

Therefore our goal is not to design a culture, but to perceive how the culture of our game setting must function so that the players can engage with it intuitively. We must start by understanding how the setting has to reflect the players' core beliefs and values. These values aren't arbitrary — they have been imposed upon the actual human beings playing. Their fundamental truths about survival, morality and success, if discounted, will produce conflict and resistance, no matter how earnestly we want them to adhere to what the culture of our game setting stands for. We must discard any notion that the campaign stands apart in this regard, merely because it is fictional; the instincts of the players are what they are; if we as dungeon masters wish to have any understanding of player psychology, this immutable fact must be accepted.

This should be explained to the players... not in terms of what the players believe, but rather in what the non-players of our setting consider to be cultural norms. We should tell the players that persons of industry and property, outside of criminals and those with political power, are reliable, loyal and honourable, because it would not occur to them to be otherwise. We should explain that we're giving our word on this, because we want the players to perceive accurately the world they visit... that an ordinary grocer, farmer, teamster, boat pilot or even a soldier's word can be taken as an utterly authentic representation of what that person believes, in their heart.

Continued on The Higher Path