Basing fantasy culture on real life cultures?

[D. Gray Warrior]

What are your thoughts on basing your fictional culture on real life ones? Like, having an icy kingdom to the far north known for its seafarers, coastal raiders and horned helmets? Or the desert land with nomads armed with scimitars and traveling with their camels. Don't forget the mighty empire that was destroyed by barbarian invaders, but whose legacy is still super influential with many other nations taking inspiration from them. This is what TVTropes calls fantasy counterpart cultures.

What do you think of such cultures, and how closely do you follow them?

On one hand, I do think it can be kinda lazy. You're telling me that a nation situated on archipelago just so happened to develop a samurai class, has ninjas and led by feudal warlords just like IRL feudal Japan?

On the other hand, originality is hard, and it's easier to use a real world as a base. Also, some resemblance will be inevitable as real world cultures developed the way they did for a reason.

There's also the issue of representation. It could be seen as cultural appropriation, and if you aren't careful, stereotypical.

I'm currently working on one setting that is based on Clockpunk, which uses Renaissance Italy as its theme. However, I didn't want to limit myself to that. So, I decided to make the main culture of my setting at least loosely Renaissance when it comes to aesthetic and technology (aside from the speculative tech found in various retro futuristic genres like steampunk) and less specifically Italian.

The Italian influence is mostly in the fashion and architecture as well as the anachronistic tech having a DaVinci-esque look. I've added elements from German culture as well.
Mostly that the military is German inspired such as the knights wearing Maximilian style armor and the infantry resemble Landsknecht. I've toyed with making the kingdom an elective monarchy like the Holy Roman Empire or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

What are your thoughts on using real world cultures in fantasy?

 

[ThinkerX]

The primary country in my main world was inspired by the AD&D 'Historical Earth' series. I became interested in the idea of a magical Roman Empire that was surrounded by nations of dwarves and elves, one that didn't collapse or was swiftly reassembled.

I borrowed extensively from the 'Historical Earth' series as I set about assembling Solaria (the name of my fictional Rome), with 'Charlemagne's Paladins' acting as a rough model for the rebuilt empire. The Roman sourcebook served as the core. The Greek one laid the foundations for Carbone, while the Celtic handbook became the rough template for the Avar, barbarians who'd taken over much of the western realm. Elements of the 'Crusades' handbook went into the province of Kheff, a sort of ancient Egypt holdover. The Vikings' book formed the underpinnings of Gotland, whose warrior aristocrats conquered a slew a fiefs across the ocean and founded the sprawling nation of Cimmar (old time Russia). The one book I didn't make much use of dealt with the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration, which is a tad ironic, as social change and a dawning industrial revolution are central to the stories. I then went and filled in the gaps with other sources.

Initially, all of this was for a game setting. The stories came long afterward.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I think some parts of it are unavoidable. The environment partially shapes the culture. So the moment you take a real earth environment and transfer it to your fantasy world, you will get certain cultural aspects with them. Yes, this is only the broad strokes, but a desert culture will evole differently and value different things than one based in the frozen north.

Then there is the human desire to see patterns everywhere. Even if you don't intend to copy an earth culture, people will still see a resemblence. They'll stick the roman empire on anything that even only vaguely resembles it for instance.

And lastly, I think it's impossible to come up with a culture so unique that it doesn't resemble anything we've had on earth. At least, one that still makes sense. Humanity as we would recognize it spans something like 10.000 - 100.000 years and the whole globe. We've tried most things you can think of at some point.

As for cultural appropriation, that always feels a bit selective to me. It's a no-go in some cases, but everyone's fine with appropriating the roman empire or british medieval monarchy. I just try to treat all cultures fairly and not worry too much about it.

In the end, I think most critisism comes from authors being lazy and reusing the same handful of cultures over and over again. Yes, if you copy the roman empire, or renaisance Italy, or medieval england, or samurai Japan, without even bothering to file the serial numbers off, then people will comment on it. However, there's a whole world out there to borrow ideas from. The meso-american cultures are rich and varied, with lots of interesting aspects that can play into your story. Or 4000 years of chinese history. Or sub-saharan africa. Or early medieval eastern Europe. Or whatever. Pick a random culture. Dig into interesting aspects of it. Borrow parts of it and color in the rest with your own ideas.

Own it and make it unique, like your Renaissance Italy meets Clockpunk.

 

[Diana Silver]

Sounds like what everyone inevitably does... How could you possibly avoid doing this to some degree? Culture is definitionaly a human thing, so if you invent a fantasy culture, it's going to be reflecting human culture...

Originality, then, comes from the way you use story elements and tie them together with other elements of your story. Wherever you get the inital inspiration from.

Is my view.

 

[Gurkhal]

I do this all the time. Mostly because I love history and reading about historical cultures so I want to bring this to my stories.

 

[pmmg]

I dont care what TVTropes says (and would suggest this is a page you should never visit), or share any of the concerns of the opening post. Without out the example of real world cultures, we would have no examples at all. If there is a place where they fit in to the story, then in they may go. I doubt I could write human cultures and avoid all similarities to some culture some where, and many of the things that make up a culture tend to lend themselves to other aspects that would make them seem even more similar. A primitive culture with plate armor and war horses does not make sense in a world of swords and sorcery. To be primitive it would have to be not up to that technology level yet.

Give the story what it needs. Write what's in you. Don't apologize.

 

[Michael Terrance]

What are your thoughts on basing your fictional culture on real life ones? Like, having an icy kingdom to the far north known for its seafarers, coastal raiders and horned helmets? Or the desert land with nomads armed with scimitars and traveling with their camels. Don't forget the mighty empire that was destroyed by barbarian invaders, but whose legacy is still super influential with many other nations taking inspiration from them. This is what TVTropes calls fantasy counterpart cultures.

What do you think of such cultures, and how closely do you follow them?

On one hand, I do think it can be kinda lazy. You're telling me that a nation situated on archipelago just so happened to develop a samurai class, has ninjas and led by feudal warlords just like IRL feudal Japan?

On the other hand, originality is hard, and it's easier to use a real world as a base. Also, some resemblance will be inevitable as real world cultures developed the way they did for a reason.

There's also the issue of representation. It could be seen as cultural appropriation, and if you aren't careful, stereotypical.

I'm currently working on one setting that is based on Clockpunk, which uses Renaissance Italy as its theme. However, I didn't want to limit myself to that. So, I decided to make the main culture of my setting at least loosely Renaissance when it comes to aesthetic and technology (aside from the speculative tech found in various retro futuristic genres like steampunk) and less specifically Italian.

The Italian influence is mostly in the fashion and architecture as well as the anachronistic tech having a DaVinci-esque look. I've added elements from German culture as well.
Mostly that the military is German inspired such as the knights wearing Maximilian style armor and the infantry resemble Landsknecht. I've toyed with making the kingdom an elective monarchy like the Holy Roman Empire or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

What are your thoughts on using real world cultures in fantasy?

I have always found history, anthropology, philosophy, and languages interesting, and I think basing your world on real historical (or current) cultures is a good way to add texture to it. It is like intertextuality in literature. It also makes it more likely that the elements of your world will be mainly internally consistent. I have a degree in Asian studies, so I have a lot of experience in learning about other cultures (I'm a white Canadian of mixed European ancestry), religions, and philosophies.

 

[Toob Waysider]

My main setting is a small Connecticut town located on the "Notch", so I try to keep it as realistic to the actual towns surrounding it, but with several overlays of fantasy elements. But it also serves as the portal to a vast world which was built by a toddler godling, from land masses, peoples, animals, and cultures stolen from Earth. Once "stitched" into that world, those new countries are left to develop on their own, so that after centuries they somewhat resemble their sources, without slavishly imitating them. Best example of that would be in language. Those terrains and inhabitants "whisked away" from what became England happened long before 1066, so there was no influx of the Norman lingua. By the modern times, someone speaking the King's English would have difficulty understanding the Emperor's Onwish (spoken In Ὰnweald.) But the original influences of life there would still be recognizable.

 

[Kassandra]

I would say, do what works best for you. In my world, I've created completely fictional kingdoms, etc, but I've kept some information from our real world, such as having a colder climate in the northern and southern part of the world.
If you want to go overly creative, you can take the base of an actual country/nation and change some things to it such as a different climate that leads to a different vegetation, different food and spices, different eating habits, etc.

Unfortunately people do tend to make comparisons and connections in their minds, so if one of your cultures is the same as one from the real world, people may compare all of what you say to the culture they've connected it to. In that case, you may need to have an author's note at the beginning of your book explaining that you were heavily inspired by X and X culture, but the events in your story do not represent or characterize these cultures in any way, shape, or form.

 

[ST Ockenner]

What are your thoughts on basing your fictional culture on real life ones? Like, having an icy kingdom to the far north known for its seafarers, coastal raiders and horned helmets? Or the desert land with nomads armed with scimitars and traveling with their camels. Don't forget the mighty empire that was destroyed by barbarian invaders, but whose legacy is still super influential with many other nations taking inspiration from them. This is what TVTropes calls fantasy counterpart cultures.

What do you think of such cultures, and how closely do you follow them?

On one hand, I do think it can be kinda lazy. You're telling me that a nation situated on archipelago just so happened to develop a samurai class, has ninjas and led by feudal warlords just like IRL feudal Japan?

On the other hand, originality is hard, and it's easier to use a real world as a base. Also, some resemblance will be inevitable as real world cultures developed the way they did for a reason.

There's also the issue of representation. It could be seen as cultural appropriation, and if you aren't careful, stereotypical.

I'm currently working on one setting that is based on Clockpunk, which uses Renaissance Italy as its theme. However, I didn't want to limit myself to that. So, I decided to make the main culture of my setting at least loosely Renaissance when it comes to aesthetic and technology (aside from the speculative tech found in various retro futuristic genres like steampunk) and less specifically Italian.

The Italian influence is mostly in the fashion and architecture as well as the anachronistic tech having a DaVinci-esque look. I've added elements from German culture as well.
Mostly that the military is German inspired such as the knights wearing Maximilian style armor and the infantry resemble Landsknecht. I've toyed with making the kingdom an elective monarchy like the Holy Roman Empire or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

What are your thoughts on using real world cultures in fantasy?

I think if you're going to do this, with the real-world cultures and their stereotypes, it would be better to be more interesting about it. For example, instead of having "desert nomads with scimitars and camels," you could have a kingdom of ziggurat-building, highly urbanized river-valley people (Sumerians-Iraq), who live adjacent to seafaring forest people (Phoenicians-Lebanon) and a kingdom of mountains, meadows, dusty plains, rolling hills, deserts, and forests with pyromancer wizards that worship a god of good that opposes a god of evil (a super simplified ancient Iran)
Maybe instead of the coastal raiders with horned helmets, you could research Norse cultures, and have a civilization of seafaring storytellers, known for both their hygiene and their prowess in battle.
Perhaps you could have an Ottoman-empire analogue in the Renaissance, who rule over a vast, varied dominion, with a lot of goats, that were originally descended from steppe nomads to the east.

Personally, I prefer to just make up my own cultures; I find it more interesting, both as a reader and a writer, but if you are going to use real-world cultures, maybe don't use them to tell the same story that literally everyone else has told...

Edit:

After reading some other comments, I would like to clarify: if you do decide to go the route of creating new cultures, that doesn't mean you have to build them entirely from scratch; look at cultures from similar climate zones around the world*, and take elements of those, then elements you made up; tie in your world's magic system to the metaphysics and beliefs of their religion!

*i.e. if they're set in a heavily forested, wet, temperate Oceanic climate, you could draw elements from the Celts, the Maori, and the Mazanderanis, look at how they adapted to their respective regions, and create a totally unique culture from that!

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

You'd be surprised at how much real life culture peeks into fantasy culture, especially if you dig into cultures of video games. (barring things like pokemon)
It's not always 100% accurate (developers like to avoid religion for numerous reasons) to the real thing, but if you book up on the topic and study some games closely enough you can see the inspiration. I'd wager that there's even a few Anime that have things grounded in real life culture but with a fantasy twist in them, it's almost never a carbon copy though.

I will echo the voice that others have said, if you're going to do this at ANY level, you are going to want your research and references to be accurate to the culture you're emulating.

There's a youtube channel I frequent called Gaijin Goomba who covers real world Culture in Video Games. His videos aren't always in depth but he usually covers the basics of whatever topic the video is about.

 

[Bracokey]

I think if you deep dive into history you'll see there's a lot of stylistic differences but there's also alot of parallel or shared culture. have a look at Robert E Howard's Hyborean Age. Good stuff.