Working on my 5e setting I sort of found my self drifting toward some resemblances to a historical period and a particular region as well as the cultures in it. I personally don't find this to be a bad thing, we all borrow and steal liberally from what we know. However I have seen quite a few people over the years bitch about having game world cultures be thinly veiled copies of an actual culture. So where is the line here? At what point does heavily inspired by become "filing the serial numbers off"?

To my mind a good deal of borrowing from historical cultures is unavoidable for most of us. Most people don't have the time to sit down and really work this sort of thing out in a wholly unique fashion, which I am not even sure can be done in the first place. Even with settings such as Tekumel where everything is well thought out and seemingly unique with only an element of flavor coming from its historical inspiration there is still an element that can be recognized as having an obvious historical counterpart.

Even if creating an entirely unique culture for a game world was possible, would it be desirable? I mean how many players would really be interested in learning it? I struggle to find players interested in anything that is too far from the stock fantasy tropes, much less something wholly different.  

So I guess the real question here is, when it comes to borrowing from history what constitutes doing it right and what exactly is doing it wrong?

I am not sure there is a clear cut right or wrong on this issue except perharps bad taste (what I mean by that is mocking the culture you are borrowing from) and YMMV. Maybe players feelings on this are also important.

Ripping off existing cultures, and making the references obvious, is very useful for accessibility. Just tell the players "Scuthland is Braveheart Scotland, BUT with ancestor worship instead of Christianity" or "Jipang is like old Japan with samurai and ninjas, BUT it is ruled by a Bronze Dragon emperor", and players will have an immediate idea of culture, language, clothing, food, armaments and archetypes.

I find it easier to take a cliché, and then to add to it or substract from it or break it in a few points, then to brew a culture from whole cloth and then explain it to the players.

Quote from: Skyrock;784262Ripping off existing cultures, and making the references obvious, is very useful for accessibility. Just tell the players "Scuthland is Braveheart Scotland, BUT with ancestor worship instead of Christianity" or "Jipang is like old Japan with samurai and ninjas, BUT it is ruled by a Bronze Dragon emperor", and players will have an immediate idea of culture, language, clothing, food, armaments and archetypes.

I find it easier to take a cliché, and then to add to it or substract from it or break it in a few points, then to brew a culture from whole cloth and then explain it to the players.

Right it does seem to provide an easy references point when you have an obvious historical analog. My attempts at having cultures that were too unique have largely been met with disinterest from my group.

@Arkansan : The unique cultures you wrote about were made up or did you choose very specific historical cultures that few people know of ?

Quote from: yabaziou;784271@Arkansan : The unique cultures you wrote about were made up or did you choose very specific historical cultures that few people know of ?

I was much younger and was trying to make them entirely unique. In retrospect I can see historical influences on them but I was trying to be as "new" as possible. With an older and more critical viewpoint I don't believe a person could separate out any real world influences if they tried.

The correct answer is "know your audience." It's easier to adapt or improvise from stuff you already know. If your audience is just your home group, a few sketchy lines about each culture is enough for some groups; others want more detail. But if some of your players are part of a culture you plan to use, they might be offended by stereotypes. Ask them their opinion before developing something that might turn out offensive.

For a published setting, your audience is much larger, plus you're writing for people who expect to use your setting to save the effort of doing their own, so they may be offended if your cultures are obviously "ripped off from history" and show very little personal effort.

On the other hand "truly original" published settings are some of the worst pieces of crap ever made. So, it's a balancing act.

I'm reviving a setting I made 20 years ago, and it's full of 'X group (think Y RL group).'

It's more stylistic and to make it a lot easier to come up with a consistent series of terms and names.

So:
'You meet with the centaur commandant of the local Meißerbranheim expeditionary force, Reinhardt Vogel. His blonde headhair is closely cut under his gray uniform cap, brass buttoned gray longcoat over his torso and chestnut lower body. He snaps to attention and inquires, politely, what your party is doing so close to the border.'

Changing things for the same of changing things is alienating. Go with what your players are familiar with and then move them in the direction you want them to go. If you are in one new setting detail (one average) per setting, they won't even know they're learning. It will be as if they always knew about your world and the people, places and things within it.

But here's the tricky part: you can't presume too much of your players in terms of book learning. Even people in our hobby have huge gaps in what we might call their classical liberal education.

When I first came across the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying game I thought the unabashed pseudo-Europe setting with the whole transparent renaming of places like Kislev, Tilea, Estalia seemed really cheesy.

Now I think it's genius. I am a much more pragmatic GM now. I think anything that can concisely convey the flavour of the setting and cut down on exposition is a good thing.

Using a known culture and broad historic range as entry point helps a lot.

If you have to explain what xuvelbarb, zorbel and wingunhammer is before even the most introductory gaming, you might have an accessibility problem.

On the other hand, you have to shake of the shackles of you model eventually, at least if you want to keep my attention.
It's to easy to fall into slavish adherence to your inspiration or at least have players expectations fall into it.

I'm not interested in historical or mythic games, I want fantasy deserving the original meaning of that genre name.


Now, what I really do not get, is people creating some far of land in a setting and just get lazy, saying, yeah, that is fantasy Asia to the east, so, samurai, pagodas and a big wall and south there's fantasy Arabia and fantasy antique Egypt, blah, blah, blah.

Seriously, those are the far of, exotic areas of your setting where you can send expectations and accessibility to hell and that is where you get lazy and unimaginative?

Quote from: Arkansan;784258So I guess the real question here is, when it comes to borrowing from history what constitutes doing it right and what exactly is doing it wrong?

When it is fun and interesting, it's right; when it is dry and uninteresting, it is wrong. IMO

Write as much as you want to about the world and history and &c., but don't expect your players to 1) read any of it or 2) enjoy it if you bring it up.

Which is not to say "don't do it."  Rather, do it and only drop stuff in when it makes narrative sense. If they go looking for something, you can rest assured that you know if it's there and by what means one may get at that something.

I've actually been taking these discussions about theme and presentation to heart.

I'm taking a 20 year old campaign from college (thanks to a number of things, including the internet wayback machine... wow, that was a while ago) and revamping it to 5e.

And I'm going to work really damned hard to make something people will read _easily_, and not slap a stack of printouts of SOLIDWALLTEXT.

Among other things, I'm trying to make a layout that looks vaguely like the PHB and also making liberal use of artwork. People can turn their noses up at artwork in RPGs, but it _really_ helps communicate a lot of attitude, theme, and keep people awake.

The cultural cues help, too.

Quote from: Arkansan;784258At what point does heavily inspired by become "filing the serial numbers off"?

Even with settings such as Tekumel where everything is well thought out and seemingly unique with only an element of flavor coming from its historical inspiration there is still an element that can be recognized as having an obvious historical counterpart.

Even if creating an entirely unique culture for a game world was possible, would it be desirable?

So I guess the real question here is, when it comes to borrowing from history what constitutes doing it right and what exactly is doing it wrong?

I've struggled with the same questions my entire gaming life.

I've read it somewhere that Robert E. Howard created the Hyborian Age as deliberate historical pastiche (famously to the annoyment of his pedantic bestie H. P. Lovecraft) so he could set a Conan story in Ancient Egypt (Stygia) this week, and in Medieval Europe (Aquilonia or Nemedia) the next.

I think there's definitely a certain élan in playing a Dane or Swede viking raider, as opposed to a "Nordheimer" or "Skandian" or "Thuleman" or whatever generic fantasy equivalent you've come up with. In fact, this is one of the reason I'm psyched about AS&SH — they make it clear all human races originate from Earth. I think the GURPS Fantasy default setting (Yrth?) did something similar.

In any case, even though I am increasingly inclined to use "Earth plus fantasy" (or horror or whatever) rather than "fantasy plus Earth", I still feel there's room for calques like WFRP's Old World, D&D's Mystara and Cerilia (Birthright), Jack Shear's World Between and of course, Howard's Hyborian Age. It allows the player who wants his character to be a samurai, or a viking, or a knight, to have a hook inside the game world on which he or she can hang the desired character concept.

Also, you make a fair point; even "exotic" settings like Tékumel and Glorantha are, to a degree, grounded into historical counterparts. I think the difference lies mostly in presentation. But to me it's clear that Orlanthi are part Celts and part proto-Germanic plus fantasy stuff (Storm Pantheon, flying Runelords, etc.) while I see Lunars as a mishmash of Imperial Rome, Sassanid Persia and/or Mughal Índia, plus original fantasy stuff (the Red Goddess and her moon, the Crimson Bat, etc.).

Settings which don't use real-world historical and cultural inspirations tend to feel "flat" — lacking in depth — to me. Forgotten Realms is a setting I enjoy, but barring a few places (e.g. Calimshan) most of it feels very homogenous to me; I wouldn't know how a Paladin from Neverwinter differs from one born and raised in Cormyr. Which is what, half a world away geographically? But culturally feels very similar.

Nowadays, I usually ask myself whether "Earth plus fantasy" (or horror or whatever) — i.e. a given place and period in our own world, plus necessary fictional elements — will do the trick. If the necessary changes are too extensive, or if I want to juxtapose very disparate things like Tolkienesque hobbits and Tokugawa Japan, I'll go with a fantasy world with hand-picked elements from our own world, or "fantasy plus Earth" as I like to call it.

Or, more often than not, I run a published setting. Makes me sad, it does. But I'll get back into world-building one of these days,
I swear.