How to ACTUALLY Worldbuild Cultures
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- čas přidán 10. 09. 2024
- Have you ever wanted to build a fantasy culture? Whether for a novel or a Tabletop Roleplaying Game (TTRPG) or a comic or even, just for fun? Well, you're in luck!
Come with me as I revamp my own fantasy culture, the Saegen people, and build a realistic and immersive culture for my multi-media world!
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Xizi wanted me to let you all know, in advance, that she doesn't hate you (she does) and she's sorry if any of her more extreme beliefs offended you (she's not).
As Xizi's handler, I don't take any responsibility for what Xizi says or does. If you have problems, you can file a complaint with the Board... I mean, yes, Xizi is ON THE BOARD, so she'll probably throw it away but... um... maybe she'll read it!
Xizi be looking adorable, maybe she just needs a cookie or whatever equivalent they have up in the north.
Or her sister to say "I love you" and not just bring her sliced mushrooms
@@Amaiguri awww, that too yes
I have a character much like Xizi. She's an absolute terror who fistfought a leviathan for fun. Blast to write - love her very much. If Xizi and Lumin are anything alike I know you're having a blast too. Hope you enjoy writing her!
As a newer character, Xizi will sadly have most of her screen time here on the channel and not in Untitled Yssaia Game (name wip). But I love her and I spent like $5 on her model, so I'll definitely do her more :D
Something I learned from Brian Sanderson is, in order to create a fictional culture complete with customs, traditions and taboos, you just need to take two cultures from ancient history and blend them together but never in equal measures. There needs to be a predominant, consistent influence from one of the two
Yes, that's one good way of doing it! Although, I always try to go for 3. Power of Three and all that!
Brandon Sanderson? Or is this an other Sanderson?
I stumbled onto this channel because, well, worldbuilding. Imagine my surprise that we're both working on Chinese Vikings! My world is very different though, but there is some cross-over in inspirations. Great video, lots of fantastic pointers. I love your illustrations, its amazing how much of a story you can tell with just a few lines.
When you mentioned their love for gold, that is such a nordic thing. It caught my attention because China is very gold/silver poor, and they used to trade silk in exchange for it, which is you don't see a lot of precious metals around to the same extent you do in other parts of the world. They did have red lacquer and of course jade for their wealth symbols instead.
Those last facts, I didn't know! That's super cool! That makes so much sense
I woke up and saw this on my recommended. That video came in quick. I gotta say, this was great stuff. Someone here’s a good teacher.
Thank you so much! I'm honored that you think I'm a good teacher ☺️ Please let me know if you have any questions or need advice! 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
@@Amaiguri anytime! Worldbuilding is fun but the problem with me is that I often create things on a surface level. I never consider the deeper implications of everything that I create. For example, I would make a desert world with an unusual orbital cycle but never truly consider the consequences to their full potential. I’d do the obvious stuff and then try to think of how this could lead to that but my mind can’t keep to it and think about it on a more detailed and deeper level. Maybe that’s because I’m doing too many things at once.
touching the endless ice to awaken magic is a cool idea
Thank youuu! I loved the ritual too 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
one thing you could develop is the music, since using regular Chinese music feels too on the nose considering the names, the pandas, the study hard, silk bamboo... this feels very very chinese so you could imagine them playing other kinds of music to balance it a bit.
Bamboo is good for flutes but it can also be used to make various percussive instruments, they don't have to use chinese instruments, why not end blown flutes like the quena or shakugachi, or even the panflute, its just a lot of reeds tied together, many cultures in our world played it. Also, underground? use stone instruments, gravel shakers, stone whistles, even the xylophone literally means stone sound. Ocarina are made of clay, think what materials they have and you'll find their music.
What scales do they use? try learning about diferent scales besides the stereotypical pentatonic one. In fact there are several kinds of pentatonic scales to choose from. Maybe they use 7 note scales like we do, try listening to Scandinavian folk music, not "vikijg music" like the Wardruna group, but actual Scandinavian folk songs, see if you find something you like about it. You can also pay atention to the rhythms of both cultures, mix and match stuff
This is all really good advice! Idk if you've seen my "Music Theory around Yssaia" video but the music that played at the beginning when Xizi talked is called "Rowchant" -- it's a sample piece my friend composed and it is 100% more what I want Saegen to sound like musically! But I only have stuff I've commissioned right now, so it's more just a matter of "I haven't commissioned more music yet -- this is what I currently own." I 100% agree I was the music to sound waaay more Northern European.
One of my key influences that I sent my music theory people is the German band Faun? If I could just eat all their IP real quick, that'd be the dream 🤣🤣🤣
@@Amaiguri nice! now I've noticed the track, its a short one whith low strings, very strong sounding
The wheat vs rice theories for culture are so fascinating
TRUE!
Victor Hugo wasn't actually paid by the word he just did it that way for fun, He was paid the entire sum -an amount that was unprecedented at the time, translating to about 3.8 million today for an 8 year license- before the publisher even knew how long it was or saw any of it.
Listen Les Miserables is one of my favorite books, but I cannot defend Victor Hugo's tendency to over explain shit that didn't need explaining. He literally just did it that way because he's Victor Hugo and he wanted to.
And even if he was paid by the word, the amount he was paid is so much that to this day it's arguably the highest anybody was paid for a book deal. He could've made it shorter and been fine.
High school english failed me but you haven't -- that is absolutely fascinating
I'm so glad this showed up on my feed just when I needed it
I'm glad you liked it! :DDDD
@@Amaiguri I'm still coming back to consult this when I need to
Ahhhh I'm so glad it's been useful 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻
15:56 "Look at their hometown on the map here"
*does not show you map* 💀💀💀
So glad to have found your channel~ This video alone helped me a lot in fleshing out my thought experiment (honestly just knew what I was actually doing from you hahaha) Thanks for the vid~~
I'm so happy to be able to help! Enjoy your thought experiment!
:D great video, lots to think about
Thank youuu! I'm glad the content made up for the scuff
Found this rlly interesting! Thank you!
I'm so glad! My goal, as always, is to entertain :D
This is really good! I was actually working on a video about worldbuilding for my Dungeons and Dragons campaign and this is really expanding on the ideas about culture I felt I was missing. Thank you for this really informative video.
You're welcome! I am a big TTRPG and D&D player and I have a lot of friends who make these super detailed worlds but then they're not necessarily suited to D&D. It's so important to build the world to your actual goals! Good luck with your campaigns!
So I think I like worldbuilding as a thought experiment. I want to see if I can make a world, the process of making a world, and trying to understand how everything is intertwined.
Also, Saegan guns seem to work sooo similarly to how "guns" in my world work, which is pretty cool.
Also, "dirty telethenian commies" 🤣
Hee hee! Glad you enjoyed the video and I do love me a good thought experiment.
Also, yes -- Xizi has no regard for anyone who isn't better than her in the specific ways she wants
I think you may have gone a bit too hard on the Chinese influence for the saegan language, the norse bits (like the -heim suffix) seem a bit jarring to me. But that’s just my opinion and if you disagree that’s totally valid!
I totally appreciate your respectful critique! I'm honestly still working on it. It's weird cuz visually, it looks CORRECT to me atm but I'm still unsure how to pronounce (or mostly, tone it)
@Amaiguri tone is so hard, I try but just can't get even mandarin tones down, so I don't even try to conlang with tones lol. Saegan does look pretty close to being both, but I think the Chinese cadence and tonality shifts it further in that direction than the norse influence shifts it in that direction
"pastel goth chinese vikings" is officially a phrase i have never heard but am immediately intrigued by lmao
Something I'd add (I'm only 2/3rds done with video so you might say this) is that a lot of us build these worlds as an escapist fantasy where we can ignore the parts of society we dont like, but giving our "protagonist culture" a modernly seen negative trait is actually a really great idea to help build the flavor of a people in a grounded way.
I have 3 examples on this (im sorry this is so long lmao):
Gender Roles - We dont generally like writing about sexism and prefer to make our groups egalitarian by nature, but its important to understand that some stories simply cant be told if there are no struggles to overcome . One of my groups is a culture that focuses on artifice and arcana, and traditionally children in this culture will choose which field they'll study in at an early age. However, women develop earlier and will often grasp the fundamentals of magic faster than boys, which leads them to often pick arcana over artifice, and boys to pick artifice over arcana. And then within learning these arts there could be a philosophical change to the person being raised. For example, the people who teach magic will pit students against one another and challenge them by giving them a problem without explaining the solution. This will lead to the students (who are predominantly women) into becoming hyper individualistic and competitive, they might believe themselves inherently better than someone else due to their skills and that all problems can be solved alone. But the ones trained in artifice are taught to work collectively, and given long lectures as to why specific solutions work and dont work, which can lead to someone trained in this way (predominantly men) to learn to work together with someone else, or how to nurture and train someone who has less skill or knowledge than you. Once these two types of people leave school then this can have *dramatic* influences on society, what type of person goes into which type of position, who is expected to become the leader and who is bulldozed by a more dominating person.
Slavery - almost no one wants to talk about the trauma of slavery, completely understandable, but if you work with the concept in a palatable way then it too could lead to a very interesting culture. Again, example from my story, theres a group that mimics the atlantic slave trade but the key differenence is that the slavers dont have the same technological advantage over the enslaved, so this evens the playing field dramatically. An *event* occured (not here to talk about my world, so leaving it at that) which gave the children of those original slaves an opportunity to escape and free themselves, when they did they took over a large fraction of the slavers navy and then became a pirates. Over time they eventually create a society, one where individual freedom is prioritized, where vertical hierarchy is rebuked, institutional power is either non-existant or rarely used, and the needs of the collective always outway the wants of the individual. So anarcho-communists. And while you could have a pesant revolt have a similar outcome, peasants are likely to try to just reinstall the same power they were raised in but slightly different, if you use a foreign people who were raised in a society where they fully and thoroughly understood the flaws of this system then they have a much better chance to create one that likely wouldnt have been born otherwise in that period if time. Struggles like this are what create economic and societal change
Ignorance doesn't mean dumb - there is a modern belief that people today are smart, while people yesterday were dumb, but yesterday people were people. A lot of writers will do the thing that colonizers and western anthropologists did where they disregard a people's historical practices as stupid fairy tales that have no basis in reality, when in actuality a vast majority of religious or social practices were based in as of yet not fully understood facts. For example; making a sacrifice to the gods by burning down a field fixes the nitrogen and carbon of that area, or that whistling at night invites evil spirits when.. well it does, whistling does attracts potentially hungry predators to you. Or that vampires are afraid of garlic so you should smear it all over your house, well its because garlic has antibacterial properties and helped kill some bacteria. You don't know how your smartphone works, but you probably also dont know how to fire pottery using cow patties, not knowing doesnt mean you're stupid, and these little quirks of ignorance can REALLY bring out a culture.
I'm glad you liked the video! And I agree, I prefer my worldbuilding to be fun to be in from a story perspective, not fun to be in irl. I actually changed the Saegen culture in part because it DIDN'T feel like a culture I care about as much and I want to care about all my cultures in Yssaia :D
Thank you for watching and leaving such thoughtful comments, by the way! I appreciate it so much!
I have a ttrpg my sibling designed, and I do worldbuilding for! I have one adventuring party, and I record their adventures in a story as my post game notes. It is the only time my world building actually comes up. In game, I am chasing children through sewer systems while they make potty jokes.
I had to take a break(for naps), but I'm back. Thoughts are fungi are always too good to be true, I love them. And rabbits are one of the only livestock animals that produce a closed system; so the land needed to grow the food they eat can be entirely fertilized by their poop, they also always have to be eating(because they don't have the ability to turn of their stomach, like if we're not hungry it stops producing acid, theirs does not), and they can be used to spin yarn. There are types of rabbit that produce wool, and you are supposed to just put them gently and spin the yarn, because they get scared if you brush them!
Awww! That's kinda how TTRPGs go but it's still such a fun time!
And YES! ANGORAS! Omg that's so smart though... I might have to do that
Excellent content- thanks for posting & also
YESSSSS Keith Baker and Eberron supremacy 🪄🔮✨️
You mentioning rimworld got u a automatic sub from me
I am an avid Rimworld enjoyer. I don't have that many hours in it myself, but I think I've listened to a bajillion hours of Rimworld design talks and watched a bunch of streamers. It's truly the next step on the Dwarf Fortress formula
I saw your stuff on Tumblr ages ago and then I find you on here…I am so happy I found you
Omg hi! What's your Tumblr? 👀
@@Amaiguri stardust-fury
I will follow you back :D
@@AmaiguriAlso, you aren't the only one who has issues with Fourth Wing, it's just an absolute mess of a book and it could have been something amazing. The story is so bland, the worldbuilding is worse than a primary school pretend fantasy game (I should know, I used to play those all the time), and the characters were just boring as heck.
Ahaha! I'm sure the author is doing her best. But it definitely wasn't to MY tastes
One thing I always struggle for (and I'm struggling at the moment) is to know to what measure/extent use the culture of reference when creating a new one. Else I create a quasi-ripoff, else I created something so strange that feels alien...
I want you to know that I've been thinking carefully about my answer on this... it's definitely hard to describe how to find a healthy balance
I think my secret is usually specifics. Like, for example, China, Japan, and Korea all have community-focused cultures that like wearing silk and eat rice. But if you were to say they were "a ripoff" of each other, you would be lambasted (and rightfully so!)
So, I think the specifics are where you get your differentiation. Specificity is your friend.
Also, really dig into your geopolitics. If you didn't make a map identical to earth, then you won't get cultures identical to earth -- cuz culture is a reaction to environment, right? So, if the environment isn't earth, the culture can't be identical either
Good luck finding your worldbuilding voice in all this! 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
@@Amaiguri hmmm, so... may I consider I'd be fine in most scenarios, considering it'd be extremely difficult to completely copy paste a culture? Or should I add some new things? hehe
Now that I think, I guess my main issue lies with names/words just taken from its original culture. Like... I don't know how appropiate would be just using syllabes/words/pinyin from mandarin, since it would probably mean something already existent in this language 🤔
(also, thank you for the response!)
The way I sorta try to avoid this is by taking inspiration from cultures that are very different from each other! Like, mixing Celtic and Tlingit culture or Polynesian and Kenyan. Sometimes you could also mix more than two if you wanna get something really unique! That’s my way of dealing with this issue, but I’m not sure if it’s a proper way of going about it 😅
See, this is why I just construct entire languages to avoid this issue OR I just use the language in which the work is written, to give it that "work in translation" vibe
This is also how I do this -- Thuillean is Japano-Franco-Irish. Saegen is Sino-Nordic. Svanihk Russo-Indo-Mongolian. Telethens is Anime Plato's Republic + Communism if it worked. And then my fantasy races just have more fantasy elements cuz they're inhuman!
This was a lot of really good advice that I'll be chewing on for a while!
I also wanted to asked about your Ao3 since you mentioned a Fontaine fix-it fic? 👀
Ahhhh I don't actually have an AO3 -- I'm not a fanfic writer/reader usually! So this was just something I was doing in for fun in my own docs. And to be clear -- I ADORED Fontaine, easily my favorite chapter, but I had such specific expectations for what I wanted it to be, so I was still sad they didn't do that.
But if you're curious, I wanted Fontaine to be ALL underwater -- like the Fortress of Meropide or the new Remus-Kingdom-whatever area. And you'd go in, and there would be HUGE crime problems, despite how much everyone talked about justice, and they'd have all these gang wars. And you'd do a series of Murder Mysteries -- Phoenix Wright/Danganronpa style -- as you got to know everyone. But the murders would all be tied to the Murder of the Last Archon.
Unrelatedly, but Lyney and Lynette would introduce a new character/weapon type that was a puppet where you'd have one character be the "thing that take damage" and the other character also on the field would be the one that dealt dmg. Idk exactly how it's work but I've seen a few good puppeteers in fighting games and stuff, so it isn't impossible. Maybe one of the murder trials would be for a puppet -- so it was charging someone with attempted murder but the puppet would be fine.
And then, for the climax, you put Furina on trial for murdering the last Archon, and then she would be found guilty and had a good reason to do it -- something to do with stopping the prophecy of everyone drowning. And then you'd unite all the gangs to stop the prophecy for real and Furina gets off scot free because this is a Hoyo game in which don't hold our hot girls accountable lol
And that's the story!
I liked the discourse format, also as an aspirant writer and passionate Dungeon Master the fact that you considered various media is not a common thing.
P.s. Fouth Wing has really big plot holes, I agree 😅
Thank you! I love how much media and interactions change an audience's experience, so naturally, I gotta bring it up whenever I can!
Also, everyone was telling me it was a "not perfect but fun!" and so I expected it to have like... some plotholes that could be ignored because it was cool. But then I did not vibe with the characters nor the setting nor the disability rep nor the smut so then I was like "Why am I here?" 🤣🤣🤣
@@Amaiguri My god, the disability... A bit of "training" than forgotten. And let's not start about how the MC is described as "Really smart" than proceeds to miss every clue around xD
OKAY YEAH I DIDN'T WANT TO TOTALLY SHIT ON IT IF YOU LIKED IT BUT AGREED IT HAD PLOTHOLES BUT YEAH, WTF?
The disability rep was just like "here is a book about winning because you listened to your internalized ableism" BABYGIRL NO. STOP. GET HELP. I know the Yarros HAS EDS too so Idk how we got here...
Also, her joints only dislocated in battle and not-during intercourse? Sounds fake >_>
The Sherlock Trick is not that hard and I don't know why we didn't do it for "Violence" (💀💀💀). It can be annoying when done badly, but I'd prefer that to telling us she's smart but then she is unaware of anything happening around her 🙃🙃🙃
@@Amaiguri totally agree!
How did you get your job if you don't mind me asking?
I went to college for game design, which got me my internship at Wizards of the Coast. At WotC, I told them I wanted a job, and one of their producers got in contact with their network... and then voila.
Also, I DID just get laid off so like... take all my job-hunting tips with a grain of salt
@@Amaiguri Thanks for the reply :) Game design in a video game sense? I might want to look into this. I've been worldbuilding a setting for a novel and for games and visual art since 2020 so I'm always looking for channels like this to inspire me. Thanks for the content.
I do both video game and tabletop games. The skills are relatively interchangable.
If you're interested in doing game dev yourself and you haven't started already, I highly recommend watching a couple of game devs talk about how they made games on CZcams -- just to get a sense of how the whole process works -- and then just dive into it. No experience like learning hands on, honestly! 🎮 It's daunting but if you like doing lots of different things all the time, you'll always be doing something new
@@Amaiguri Awesome, that sounds cool. The only thing that seems daunting for me is the coding aspect of game dev, I'm more focused on ttrpgs and haven't ever really considered video games (when i said a setting for games i meant a ttrpg) but it is definitely something to consider.
Good video thanks
Thank you!
Also, I forgot to say this but I love the saegan revamp! And you remembered the Japanese pitch stuff 😮, I still remember when we had a short conversation about that. How do you pronounce the Saegan X by the way? And I’m curious which sounds were removed and added. Even though I’m a fan of harsher sounds, having this Chinese-Norse hybrid is pretty fascinating. Chinese Vikings is something I never considered.
The Saegen X is Shhhhh, like in in pinyin??? Like in Xizi's name!
I'm still tweaking the pronunciations myself in my mouth but hopefully by the November Conlang Showcase, we'll have figured it out!
@@Amaiguri I think I understand. Fun fact, although you probably know this already, Chinese pinyin X is like trying to make an English “Sh” sound while the tip of your tongue is down, below your lower front teeth. The middle of your tongue then should rise to the roof of your mouth to make the sound. Chinese q sounds like adding a “t” sound to Chinese x to make q kinda like how you add a “t” sound to english “Sh” to make “Ch”. A better example for how chinese x sounds like is basically saying sh in sheep but more y-like as in a very quick "shy" like *shy*eep. I hope im not coming off as rude or anything, I dont mean to tell you what to do on your conlang. It's just that i've spent alot of time looking up asian languages including mandarin and I love sharing this stuff.
@@Amaiguri pretty awesome to hear, I’m super excited for next conlang showcase.
Also the way you implemented the pitch system is interesting in the final results. I don’t know if you remember when I talked about it but your take on it does give off a certain unpredictable vibe to the saegan language especially in Xizi’s accent when she’s speaking English and how she emphasizes word syllables.
Hey, great content.
💜💜💜
Sun in the morning and evening, but not the day?
Yes, I'm a dumbdumb and I forgot to show the map when I referenced it. But imagine a table outside in an open plain, okay? And then put a cup under the table. At high noon, the cup will not get light. At dawn and dusk, the cup will get light.
This is how it is with Saegeneime
Rabbit
🐰🐰🐰?
Americans sometimes struggle when it comes to culture. They have to travel to see one.
I disagree -- we have a very distinct culture, but some people hate it because it's newly formed, unified across the country, and not "high brow". We have:
- Jazz
- Hollywood
- Fiddle music
- Marching Bands
- SO MUCH CHEESE
- AAE taking over the internet
- ✨️CAPITALISM✨️ (and no PTO)
- Our VERY SPECIFIC and contradictory version of what freedom is
The USA's culture has benefits and drawbacks, like every other culture, and I'll agree we aren't high brow, but we've got culture and I won't stand for US slander :P
A god saying "no shellfish" is a spiritual phenomenon. A religion claiming their god said "no shellfish" is a social phenomenon. And the jewish god hasn't been demonstrated to exist, so it mught have been more accurate to say "social" instead of "spiritual".
Perhaps but I'm a random, non-Jewish CZcamsr so like... it's really not my place to have opinions on other people's spirituality
@@Amaiguri That’s only if you’re looking at it from an outsider’s lens. If you’re within a given culture where their god is real to them, then it absolutely is a spiritual phenomenon. Context like that matters if you’re shaping a narrative (I am a Jew and this is a bad example anyway because Judaism fundamental doesn’t mean you believe in a literal god)
Thought the title said cults :(
Oh wait you already made that video dnbfkd
I was about to say -- I DO have a cult video, yes! This one puts the -ure back into cults!
@@Amaiguri I love cults, slowly building my own
Lololol exciting! Don't do anything illegal now, girlypop! 🥰