[Roleplay Guide] Culture in Lord of the Craft: A Helpful Guide

[Ibn Khaldun 7729]

  

Spoiler PREFACE: Please note that the following guide is NOT intended to manage or regulate new or existing cultures founded on the Lord of the Craft. This guide IS intended to provide advice, ideas, and reflections for those either maintaining an existing culture or interested in creating a new culture in the current iteration of Lord of the Craft. Also, sorry for any formatting issues - I'm trying to use two-column layouts. This improved-upon guide is intended for the Guides subforum with the permission of CT member Amayonnaise.   CULTURE IN LORD OF THE CRAFT   Culture, in the real world, tends to be an inscrutable term that conjures different definitions for different people. The term ‘culture’ can include a people’s conventions, cuisine, dialect, dress, language, rituals, values and helps us differentiate the human variety that has emerged on Earth over thousands of years.   Cultural Roleplay, in Lord of the Craft, is a simple affair. Cultures are one of the means that players have to introduce variety within specific races & sub-races while being free from most oversight by server management. Cultures only instill cosmetic and behavioral differences whereas races & subraces can offer mechanical differences such as height, strength, and other attributes that is regulated by server management.   In the following guide, I will divide my content between Out-of-Character & In-Character considerations:
OUT-OF-CHARACTER CONSIDERATIONS   Culture in Lord of Craft can be one of the most powerful tools of fictional creation. A number of cultures have existed since the beginning of the server and multiple cultures have waxed and waned throughout the server’s duration. The following points should be taken into consideration for existing and would-be authors of cultures in LotC:   + The origin & inception In crafting a new culture, one should consider a viable origin story. Both in terms of creative mythology and in connecting this new culture to present conditions in-game. This builds plausibility that may attract other players to participate with you and you enter into this new culture with some sense of how your characters may interact with the present game-world.   + The quality and interactivity The quality of a culture is only limited by the author’s (and co-participants) quality of creating, disseminating, and enacting a culture’s elements both in writing and in roleplaying. A balance ought to be struck between making a culture too elaborate that gatekeeping may occur between older players and newer players and too simple that the lack of imagination has an effect on attracting new players and interest in other groups interacting with yours.1   + The camaraderie and cooperation Cultural groups tend to be smaller than racial playerbases and nation playerbases. This should allow for a tighter-knit sense of togetherness among your players. It is important, both for the sake of avoiding stress and for easier interactions, to set the tone early on so that all players involved can feel at ease with one another and to have clear goals that everyone can align with.	IN-CHARACTER CONSIDERATIONS   Cultural groups fit a tapestry of other various roleplay groups who interact based on proximity and motives. Your culture will both affect others based on your values, conventions, characters’ goals and agendas and be affected by others. The following pieces of advice pertain to how you might make a great impact in the game-world:   + Values dictate Interactivity A culture’s values help shape the in-group’s mindset, worldview, and opinions. At least, in the beginning, values can take the steering wheel to guide how you interact with the game-world and its other groups. Please note that I am not opposing a player developing a ‘mind of their own’, but that should be a development that takes time whilst the values are your starting template. These values can color a worldview that can produce organic conflict, prevent staid roleplay where you interact the same with every single other player, and can also create potential roleplay that affects others.   + Cultural Barriers This is an unique perspective, one that I know may be met with disagreement. Different cultures, with their variety of languages, dialects, and custom, may create roleplay by way of providing ‘barriers’ for other players to figure out how to handle. One such example of the ‘language barrier’ that may be presented between two players - this can be conducive for more roleplay (though I personally advise folding the barriers in front of new players to the server).

FURTHER ELABORATIONS

 

1. The age range of those playing Lord of the Craft varies widely, so this addendum may not be particularly interesting for some. I usually encourage players to read and learn more about world mythology and cultures to both observe the breadth of variety that one can imagine and to understand the more abstract values and morals of said cultures. I personally recommend reading ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ & ‘The Power of Myth’ by Joseph Campbell. One of the less appreciated, but really appealing premises of cultural roleplay is the ability to demonstrate both creativity and practical understanding of how culture operates both behaviorally and expressively.
    
2. There is a matter often associated with cultural roleplay that is divisive in the community: the act of replicating real-world entities in the game-world. Generally, the usage of names in particular isn’t an entirely serious matter as naming conventions in a fantasy setting tend to be eclectic as is. The usage of more than just names, such as a real-world value systems, language, or dress, is not restricted by the server, but one should remain mindful that any culture in the game must coalesce with the game-world and not with real-world entities (ie: humans in-game based on medieval Europe must recognize and interact with Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs, and not with an al-Andalus, the Doge of Venice, and the Norsemen for example). Deriving some degree of content from real-world entities will remain a subjective matter with some finding the derivation intriguing while others will tend to not participate in such derivations.
    
3. After having a conversation with a friend, I think it is worth mentioning two examples to illustrate the importance that your culture originate from some time and circumstance in the game-world as opposed to starting something completely anachronistic or ill-adapted to the game-world. I will use two of my own created cultures/groups, the successful Teutonic Order and the not-so-successful Subudai. The Teutonic Order developed out of roleplay circumstances whereas the Subudai simply emerged without a backstory or any in-game circumstances that explained the emergence.
    
4. New Addition: I find that giving your culture some way to impact the "tangible" Minecraft map in some way usually goes a long way in giving players motive and opportunity to continue playing characters part of a given culture. I will use an example from yet another culture I've written for LotC, the Cingedoz/Cingedos - the placement of runestones across the map containing translatable sentences from the group's conlang to Common [OOC English] & the recordings of deeds, treaties, & other interactions. Players will feel more fascination being able to leave a mark on the map for others to see, to interact with, and from prospective roleplay to generate from.
    

• Please feel free to submit further points of importance to me privately via Discord or the forums. Also, don't be afraid to bounce ideas off of me if you are interested in improving on an existing culture or looking to create a new one.

 

[Liam5232 342]

:D