Cultures: Mix n match or copy?

[James Holloway]

Currently, I'm only concerned with an area of approximately 25,000 square miles (64,750 sq. km) on one or more islands, so there wouldn't be a huge amount of variation within each race's culture.

Local customs can vary significantly even over very short distances, particularly in cultures which don't have much in the way of mass transport. Islands near the mainland are generally not too cut off from it either; the land is a barrier, the sea is a route.

You'll probably want to think of some minor variations for different sites, maybe including things like different wedding customs, inheritance rules, etiquette, whatever. Things which are about interacting with outsiders (hospitality or trade, for example) will probably be pretty standard.

[James Holloway]

And the other thing, of course, is that if you're concerned with cultural authenticity you need to pick what time period your originating British culture is, because things are going to be very different depending on when the migration happens. Britons fleeing the Romans in the 70s AD will be pagan, for example; Britons fleeing the Saxons in 450 AD will be Christian, and Britons fleeing the Vikings in 750 AD will be ... uh ... from Ireland.

I suspect that whether your culture is Christian is going to make a *huge* difference to how they interact with creatures from folklore.

[Wysardry]

Yes, there would be minor variations in customs at each town, depending upon differences in the landscape etc. but there would still be a common core. Each settlement would have some unique feature that affected behaviour patterns, but it would have to be something very unusual to cause major changes.


I'm not sure I agree with you that Britons fleeing the Saxons in 450 AD would necessarily be Christian. Although Christianity became tolerated by the Romans around 260 AD, it wasn't until 325 AD that they officially made Christianity the only acceptable religion in the Roman world and 391 AD before it was decreed that all pagan temples be closed and all forms of pagan worship and ritual be outlawed.

There were still pockets of Celtic resistance in Wales, Scotland and Ireland when the Romans abandoned Britain in 410 AD.

I think the most likely time for the exodus would be between 40 and 70 AD, as it was during this time that a large number of druids were slaughtered and sacred sites destroyed.

[contracycle]

Yeah but there's paganism and there's paganism.  Roman state religion is not the same as Celtic religious praxis, regardless of Christian conceit to that effect.

[James Holloway]

There were still pockets of Celtic resistance in Wales, Scotland and Ireland when the Romans abandoned Britain in 410 AD.

Yeah, but not too many Saxons in any of those places (I personally am not really a big believer in the concepts of either "Celt" or "Saxon," but that's neither here nor there).

On the other hand, the idea of the "Celts" fleeing the Romans makes for a good story, so let's say we go with that. I think it's very important to stress that there wasn't really much of a concept of "Celt" or even "Briton" with these folks. PCs will tend to regard themselves as a member of their particular tribe or kingdom when thinking about their ethnicity: "whaddayamean 'us Britons have to stick together?' This guy's Ordovician! You're not suggesting I'm related to him, are you?"

[Wysardry]

Yes, even the Normans had trouble advancing very far into Wales, which goes some way to explain why their language has survived.

The terms "Celt" and "Saxon" may be little more than a convenient way to describe a wide range of people, but each group was obviously different even to the most casual observer (assuming (s)he was observing from a safe vantage point and therefore didn't need to constantly watch for stray arrows and spears).

At the time the game is set, the Celtic tribal regions of Wales had all unified into a single group, so there is no reason why our smaller group would not also have done the same, especially considering they are the only humans on the new planet.

After all, they did cooperate long enough to escape together.

Clans/tribes would likely still be a feature, but they would be more like guilds/factions.

[Stuart Parker]

I think that there is something that has been left out here. In reality, there are at least two visions of any culture: there is the historical culture and there is the mythic past. Both of these things are real in that both shape how cultures function in the present.

Most people who have represented the "Celtic" past for the past thousand year have been uninterested in representing an historical past; they have been in the business of representing a mythic past. This becomes explicit with Geoffery of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain in the 13th century.

While creating a sense of verisimilitude for a world, there are very different challenges depending on whether one is representing a mythic or historical past. I think this should be clarified before proceeding.

Also, the historical past is only partially reachable; any interpretation of it is refracted through ourselves. So I have no problem with using our best guess at historical cultures in game -- it never gets old because the angle of refraction in this society is constantly in flux.

[James Holloway]

Also, the historical past is only partially reachable; any interpretation of it is refracted through ourselves. So I have no problem with using our best guess at historical cultures in game -- it never gets old because the angle of refraction in this society is constantly in flux.

As an archaeologist, this is a huge hurdle for me. I often begin to design historical games and then punk out on them because I feel like I don't know what X would be like. Strangely, the fact that nobody knows what X was like doesn't seem helpful to me. GMs less involved in the period bull right through because they just go with whatever they read in the big book of the sassanid persians or what they feel is best for their game -- which is obviously the smart thing to do!

Strangely, the way I cope with this is usually to call it a fantasy setting and then it works A-OK. I ran a fantasy game for a while where the setting was clearly Greater Greece in the 4th century BC. I just didn't call it that, so I felt "allowed" to do whatever I wanted with it. You can call it Guy Gavriel Kay Syndrome, if you like.

[GB Steve]

As an archaeologist, this is a huge hurdle for me. I often begin to design historical games and then punk out on them because I feel like I don't know what X would be like.

This also happens when an archaeologist plays in your game!

Actually it's a big hurdle for me too. There's plenty of information on kings, popes and the like, but when you want to know the difference between a Xth and XIth C peasant in terms of diet or attitude to religion then it's very hard to get anything near the amount of information needed to help the players be one or the other.

I found the RQ3 pamphlets, "what my father told me" were very useful in setting the cultural background, and plan at some point to do the same for Cthulhu Dark Ages.

[Wysardry]

The mythic past would have more of an emphasis than the historical past, mainly because the latter would not support the existence of magic, portals to other worlds or fabulous creatures.

Basically, the assumption is that the mythological tales are more accurate than historical documents, with the latter being distorted by subsequent invaders of the British Isles, and evidence being deliberately hidden or destroyed (as well as deteriorating naturally).

There is a certain amount of flexibility built into the storyline (such as it is) due to the amount of time which will have passed since the exodus (1000 years or so), and the fact that the Ancient Celts were not in the habit of writing things down.

[James Holloway]

As an archaeologist, this is a huge hurdle for me. I often begin to design historical games and then punk out on them because I feel like I don't know what X would be like.

This also happens when an archaeologist plays in your game!

*snip*

I found the RQ3 pamphlets, "what my father told me" were very useful in setting the cultural background, and plan at some point to do the same for Cthulhu Dark Ages.

I really liked "what my father told me" and wrote one for my (not yet) HQ game.

Mind you, the nice thing about no one knowing about the peasants is you can wing it a bit. So say some no-good historian/archaeologist type says "yeah, purgatory didn't really come in until the high medieval period," you can say "well, not as official doctrine, no, but people must have believed it before then," and then the other person can say "oh, yeah. I'm being pedantic again" and you can go on and enjoy being scared.