Creating some interesting, immersive details for your fictional culture is the easiest thing in roleplay – just fish* something out of the obscure parts of the real world.
- Lily is in charge of embellishing Bogovian culture (why? More on that, on this Thursday’s RPG post). She asks Nadav which real-world culture is closest to the Bogovian people’s. He says, anything eastern European, something with dark forests and long nights.
- Lily searches Google for Hungarian Folklore. She has Hungarian heritage, it’s where her mind went automatically.
- Lily finds a very relevant Wikipedia article.
- Lily doesn’t have all day, so she skims the text for something that catches her eye. “Heroes, legendary beasts and gods” – promising.
- Lily takes something out of that list: Bába (creature) Meaning “old woman”, that was once a good water spirit. Well, spirits aren’t really a thing in the world of Crystal Heart. And anyway, she wants something cultural.
- Lily keeps that in mind and goes on with her life. A few days later she watches Moana; the heroine’s grandmother says something that catches her attention, “I’m the crazy old lady, I’m allowed to say whatever I want”. She almost says it as if it’s a position in the village. Well well.
- Lily adds the two things together, searches Google Images for Hungarian Shaman to get an aesthetic direction, and creates the baba. Bogovians are so superstitious and strict, they need a special person in charge of letting the crazy out, releasing the pressure valve for all of their sakes.
- The end. Credits. After credits scene.
Actually, in making this page, it was a bit of back and forth – first I skimmed the wiki page, then I saw Moana, then I went back to the mythology page in search of something to fit the crazy lady idea.
*”fish” is the neutral-connotation form of “steal”. You don’t actually steal your gaming ideas out of Wikipedia, and furthermore, there’s nothing wrong about it, quite the opposite. So you fish, instead: looking around in a large pool, and grabbing something you want.
For some further thoughts about how this page wasn’t originally supposed to happen, check out our subreddit.
Related RPG article: Creating Cultures Collectively
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