What are tips on making fantasy cultures?

I really can't stress how important foreign travel is when it comes to world building. Living in Africa for a while changed how I write.

Always have a warrior race.
Always give that race big, crinkly foreheads.
Always give that race's language harsh consonants, glottal stops, and really bad syntax.
Always make your cosplayers happy.

MDSchafer said:

I really can't stress how important foreign travel is when it comes to world building. Living in Africa for a while changed how I write.

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I don't think foreign travel is required for good world-building, but it can definitely give a writer useful new perspectives.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

Just remember to take any history you read with a grain of salt. Maybe look into some of the historiography in that specific area. Which in and of itself could be useful for world-building inspiration!

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Herodotus IS history with a grain of salt. That's why it's so great. It's as much narrative extrapolation as factual history.

SamCoulson said:

Herodotus IS history with a grain of salt. That's why it's so great. It's as much narrative extrapolation as factual history.

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Every historian has their biases. That's all I'm saying.

Historical travelogues are a good source of ideas too because the people who wrote them were concerned with the same questions worldbuilders are concerned with--where am I and how does this place work?

You can start with character and work backward - discovery method.

You can start with world and go forward - how does the literal world fit into it's solar system? What does the night sky look like? How did this planet develop? What is it made out of? How do these factors effect climate? How did your species and others evolve? What aspects of that evolution have become myth? Which are collective memory? What cultures do all of these factors naturally lead to? What major events - natural disasters, space ships landing - impacted the developing cultures? Have past species become extinct? Hopefully, you get the idea. This is the developmental what ifs from the beginning of time in your world.

Riffing on existing cultures with a social or economic twist, especially one driven by religion or a magic system, can go a long way to creating a believable, relatable fantasy culture.

Jacqueline Carey is my favorite example of this kind of worldbuilding, though she parallels actual Earth pretty closely.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

Every historian has their biases. That's all I'm saying.

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This would be why I listed Suetonius, who is a Big Big Liar.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

Read Limyaael's Fantasy Rants. If you still have questions, come on back.

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Thanks, I will have to check those out.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

The OP might also try Patricia C. Wrede's world-building questionnaire

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This is what came to my mind when I saw the subject thread. These are extremely comprehensive however, and to do them justice you will probably be spending days if not longer answering all of these questions thoroughly and with originality. If you find yourself writing only writing one sentence replies or angrily typing "See above!" or "Ask me later" or "I hate you Patricia C. Wrede!" it is time to take a break.

Jenkki said:

If you find yourself writing only writing one sentence replies or angrily typing "See above!" or "Ask me later" or "I hate you Patricia C. Wrede!" it is time to take a break.

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Been there. Back when I didn't have my own system for world-building.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

Back when I didn't have my own system for world-building.

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Hey, me too! What's yours like?

I start by finding something that's without form and void. Then I say "Let there be-

-- message terminated -- originating IP address terminated -- network rerouting past EMP damage --

I don't have any, world building has always been something I discovered.

I try not to think of it as "world-building" so much as "discovery." When I start working on a story, I normally have some basic ideas I want to touch on. (ex. "story about one man's struggle against the shadowy guild that raised him along with his transformation and growth." or "I like a lot of supernatural fiction. Vampires and werewolves are cool after all. If I could make my own rules about the supernatural, what would they be?")
Then I hit the ground running. In the case of example A with one man's battle, I just start telling his story. I have a few vague people and places in mind. I give each a name as it comes up and then keep working out. As the protagonist travels and gets involved in bigger things, he sees more of the world, so I have to start developing the next town, the neighboring kingdom, the next continent. If I decide the character is going to gain direction from a religious source, I need to know what the main religion for that area is, then keep that in mind for each area he encounters. Major religions are rarely world-wide. Make sure you find things that either separate one region from the next (one culture is based in the standard medieval fantasy variety and the other is a blend of Japanese and Egyptian) or find reasons why two regions are not so different ("Those bastards across the river? Was part of Ghalor until some baron or other got uppity 40 years ago and started this damn war. They live like they're still Ghalorans, but I'll be damned if I shake hands with anyone what don't bow to Queen Loryia.")
If a random idea comes to me, I always make sure to try it out and see if I can make it fit with the world as I discover it. If not, take it back out.
Above all else, feel free to dream the world you see. Uncover it through imagination so you can see through the fog of reality to find each piece of this place. Your world. And like dreams, never forget the two most important things: anything you want to find there can be found if you look hard enough, and it's always under your control.

+1 for what Tyler mentioned. My 'worldbuilding' is much more a process of discovery and extrapolation. It helps to have gossipy characters who like to overshare. Much of the time I'm developing back story, I feel more like a journalist or a historian - even though I know perfectly well I'm handling both sides of the exchange.

Filigree said:

+1 for what Tyler mentioned. My 'worldbuilding' is much more a process of discovery and extrapolation. It helps to have gossipy characters who like to overshare. Much of the time I'm developing back story, I feel more like a journalist or a historian - even though I know perfectly well I'm handling both sides of the exchange.

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Heh... I'd call mine "discovery" too, but it's more like I'm always asking my characters, "You did what?!?"

Usually followed by "Dear God, not again" and "How much trouble are you in, now?"

And on the seventh day, I rested...

Filigree said:

Usually followed by "Dear God, not again" and "How much trouble are you in, now?"

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At which point my MC gripes, "What are you blaming me for? You're the one who dumped me in this mess!"

I've done both kinds of world-building, depending on what type of story it is.

For epic fantasy stuff, I prefer to be a bit more methodical, since there are often tons of plot threads to tie up by the end, some of which may not happen on the page.


For something like a standalone heroic fantasy or similar, discovery can be very effective and keep me from getting too caught up in the back-end instead of actually writing the thing.

Angry Guy said:

One of the big problems with D&D is that it's almost all predators. You wander around the countryside, and pretty much everything wants to eat you. Or worse.

I was once in a game where we got attacked so many times by so many things, I ended up calculating that to feed all these beasts when there were no players wandering through, you'd have to be six feet deep in rabbits!

Point being, there are certain basic rules of logic. You shouldn't have an ecology that's all predators, you shouldn't have a school filled with traps that would kill students on a regular basis (not naming any names...), and the society shouldn't be so dangerous that all the peasantry would be dead or gone in a week.

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Sounds pretty much exactly like a typical wilderness in Africa or Australia where the number of animals than can eat or kill you, and will not hesitate to do so, goes well into the dozens. So that is hardly unrealistic. The key, I imagine, would be to carefully research various environments in all the populated continents and figure out which ones most closely match what you are going for as s starting point.

If you can find a copy, Lin Carter's Imaginary Worlds I've found to be very useful.

Buffysquirrel said:

Don't fall into lazy stereotypes like making females automatically inferior, being gay automatically taboo, and so on and so forth ad infinitum.

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Well there goes my novel.....*flounces*

Appropriate like there's no tomorrow, just don't appropriate from fiction.

Assuming the players in your story are human or mostly-human-like, I personally like to take a current stereotype of today and flip it on its ear, then build a culture around it.

Here's an example:
Stereotype: Families start with one man and one woman.
Flipped version: Families are bonded groups with at least five adults being bonded.
This being the cultural norm for my fantasy culture, the trick is to then figure out why this system developed. A possible reason is that the conditions of their world are so harsh that it makes more sense to work as a clan than as individual pairs. The result would be a complete lack of understanding of the concept of jealousy within the bonded group. It's the social norm to have more than one partner.

Another flipped version: Families start with bonded pairs that are same-sex. These pairs don't necessarily have sex, but they do raise the children, work as a team, etc. Expanding on that, sexual matters aren't necessarily limited to the bonded pair--so basically, the bond is more a matter of partnering up for survival, and they can go to whomever they like for sex. Makes for an entirely different cultural feel than the one we live in.

All of this goes along with playing the 'what if' game someone mentioned.

Things get even more fun when the people you are playing with aren't exactly our version of human.

What if the world developed around the use of magic? How would that change the dynamic? Who would be in charge? How would the government be arranged? (For high fantasy writers, this might easily come into play for the elves.)
If you want to mess with the male-female dynamic on this, what happens to the balance of power if only women are traditionally able to use magic? What happens when a male is born who can use the magic? (I'm kinda leaning on Romany gypsy tradition here. Using the tarot and having a third eye is traditionally only for the female.)

Anyway.... you can see how it constantly expands. Pick a dynamic from the existing culture that interests you and set it on its ear somehow.