Our characters come from a wide variety of backgrounds, cultures, and experiences, and these things often shape them in ways that are just as important as the adventures and campaigns they complete while we're at the table. However, we often hand wave away this part of their stories, leaving them vague and open-ended when we can often end up making our characters far more interesting by digging into that part of their story.
Which is why it's worth taking a moment to ask what traits your character's culture valued and reinforced, which traits they suppressed or avoided, and why that was the case? Because those things can often tell you a lot about a person, and what they consider normal... even if no one else agrees with them.
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| Night painting emphasizes clear sight, and smooth dexterity. |
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What Was Your Normal?
Take a moment and think about the culture you grew up in, and what it told you was desirable, and normal. As an example, I'm American, Caucasian, and I identify as male. I was born into an upper middle class home, and I come from a military family. The messages I received growing up were that height was a key component of my attractiveness, and that I should be strong and muscular. I was told that having a high sex drive was a key component of masculinity, as was a willingness (or ability) to commit violence in appropriate situations. Going to college was very important, and the hallmarks of good grades, social activities, etc., were encouraged to help make that happen. As someone who got into gaming, LARPing, and light historical reenactment, long hair and a well-kempt beard were also seen as desirable, fashionable things for me to have alongside creativity and the ability to sword fight. Speaking other languages wasn't encouraged or valued overmuch in my circles. Emotional vulnerability was sometimes encouraged, and other times strongly discouraged. Physical affection with other men was often unacceptable, and even with femme-presenting folk it often came with a slew of caveats.
The list goes on, but you get the idea.
You could take almost any of these traits, values, cultural assumptions, and find other cultures and locations where if I moved I would have had relatively little to unlearn or change. For instance, I could likely move to Canada, and adapt fairly quickly. I could probably do the same with most places in the United Kingdom. However, there are other cultures and locations I would have been about as comfortable as a fish in the desert. Whether it's the language barriers I would have come across in France, the expectations of gender roles that would have thrown me for a loop in Spain or Greece, or even something as relatively simple as the (to me) complete lack of personal space between people in Russia, all of these things would have thrown my differences into a rather stark light.
Now ask what those differences might be if we were in a fantasy setting where there are at least as many cultures among humans as we have in the real world, but where we also have magic, monsters, and a dozen other species of intelligent creatures that we share the world with, and you can see just how unique this exercise can become.
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| Things might get... complicated. |
Consider for a moment how long archery was the national sport in England. How everyone no matter their age, sex, or even skill, at least understood how to operate and use a bow, with regular practice deemed a normal part of social life. Someone who was "average" under those conditions might be considered one of the best archers anyone had ever seen in a culture where that sort of practice was just not a part of public life. This is similar to how
Glima, the wrestling martial art of the Norsemen, led to a not-inconsiderable population that were (by and large) more skilled grapplers than other places that didn't practice a fighting style so commonly. It wasn't some strange, genetic disposition or inherited viciousness; it was just that training in a martial art was often done from a young age, and it was often practiced far into adulthood.
It's all about what is considered normal for you, that is decidedly not normal for other people... and why that is the case.
Let's look at Archbliss: The City of The Sorcerers (available for
Pathfinder Classic and
DND 5E) in my Sundara setting. It's a floating city in the sky ruled over by an aristocracy of sorcerers, and where a majority of the population has access to magic. Even if an individual cannot use magic themselves, they would still have grown up with it constantly available to them, and an important component of everyday life. As such, an education about magic, spellcasting, proper use of magic items, and other such skills and abilities, would be emphasized for those who were raised there. But if these people left Archbliss, they'd find that many other places don't rely so heavily on magic. While mastery of it may still be useful, a person born with no inherent spellcasting, and who may lack the intelligence to become a wizard, wouldn't be shunned for that "failing". After all, to their eyes, only one in a million people might manage what would be considered an everyday feat in Archbliss.
Or consider the Malisus, a unique elven people who live deep in the ground found in Species of Sundara: Elves (available for
Pathfinder Classic and
DND 5E). The Malisus's cities are often built from stone and bone, and while this is a matter of practicality (since trees don't grow underground), their faith is centered around the rituals and acceptance of death. As such, their outlook is often macabre to outsiders, and they are extremely comfortable near corpses, bones, graveyards, and other such things that would be considered taboo to other cultures. The Malisus value grace and quiet, as being able to move stealthily is a necessity of survival in the underground, and those who cannot see in the dark are often looked on with pity. If they were to move among peoples who are loud, brash, and (to the Malisus) unobservant, it might seem as if these dark elves simply appeared from nowhere, because "quiet" to an overlander is like stomping through the undergrowth to the finely-tuned senses of many of the Malisus.
Lastly, consider someone steeped in the culture of Moüd, The City of Bones (available for
Pathfinder Classic and
DND 5E). The City of Bones is a place deep in a blasted desert, lorded over by a guild of necromancers, and whose very existence is made possible by use of the reanimated dead. So while some cultures might consider necromancy a great taboo, or an outright evil art to practice, in Moüd it would be an honored profession. While there are certainly moral and ethical concerns if the art is used improperly, the culture of this city typically views the use of this magic in service to the living as an overall good. So while a person raised here might not be pressured to become a necromancer themselves (though it would be considered a prestigious skill set and career), they would be quite familiar with the undead in general in ways that other people simply wouldn't be. The idea that particular duties that were previously done by the living dead (cleaning the city streets, patrolling hostile wastes, handling various menial tasks, etc.) would be done by living people might even horrify them... especially if those living people were kept as slave labor because the job still needed to be done, and that was the solution another culture found to the problem.
Sometimes It's The Little Differences
While the examples above highlight some pretty stark differences where a culture or people might be very different, you don't need the differences to be that large. For example, did your character come from a society that valued logic, reason, and scholarship, considering brute strength and violence to be a sign of a failed mind that one would be shunned for if used to win an argument? If so, were debate, legal trials, and so on considered proper ways to settle public differences, possibly watched with the same enthusiasm others might feel for watching sporting events? Or was dueling with blades the way differences were settled where your character came from, and every free man or woman was expected to carry a knife on them at all times as a sign they were neither a child or a slave?
Once you know the norms, traditions, and so on of your character's culture, you can then ask how they fit, or didn't fit, those norms. For example, if tusk size is considered a mark of attractiveness among the orcs of the high valley clans, does your orc carefully polish and clean their teeth before going into town, perhaps putting on silver or gold caps? Or is your orc sensitive about the relatively small size of their tusks, considering it a punchable offense if someone brings it up to their face? Was speaking multiple languages and traveling considered a normal part of your life growing up, and a sign of intellect and experience, or do you come from an insular society where such things are discouraged, and where outsiders are rarely encountered?
All of these things can make a big difference in who your character is, and what they believe about the world around them. Even if they've since left the cultures they grew up in or were shaped by, and they've experienced other walks of life in other places with other peoples, these formative views, taboos, beliefs, and traditions might say a lot about the forces that shaped them. From how your character dresses, to how they talk, to what they believe is attractive or unattractive, to what skills they learned, or even how they think of themselves, you can find the answer to all of these and more in the culture that first shaped them.
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