Creating Interesting Societies

[zizban]

For the world in my upcomming novel, I started with the premise that a stone fell out of the skies, endowing the nomadic humans in the region with a readily available magic and also changing them so they lived a lot longer (3x times) longer than ordinary humans. Fast forward ten of their generations and see what happens.

What I got was the Enlightenment without gunpowder. The magic from the stone made diseases rare and usually curable and medical treatments easy. No need for gun powder since nearly everyone had magic anyway. At first everything was a little too easy for my world so I limited the influence of the stone to a certain radius and not everyone had magic. Also, only those descended from the original humans when the stone came got all the benefis of it. Humans who came after were just "normal".

The net result was a relatively stable empire surrounded by unstable "barbarian" human nations. Into this, my main character arrives, a normal human in a big empire of longer lived humans.

 

[DameiThiessen]

I juxtapose very different cultures. Just like with colours, if you put two opposite societies together they bring out each other's features. In my own story I made an anarchist society and a bureaucratic society join forces to defeat a common threat.

 

[Jabrosky]

For most of my worldbuilding career, each of my fantasy cultures would heavily draw from one real Earth culture, but lately I've been experimenting with the "combine different cultures into one" approach. Even then, I usually want the cultures I combine to be at least distantly related anyway. For example, I would more willingly combine ancient Egyptian and Yoruba culture than I would ancient Egyptian and Japanese culture.

 

[Hibana]

I normally base my societies heavily on real-world cultures (especially odd ones that few people do), often with some cross-over from other societies and my imagination (especially when there's limited information), plus logic (as in: if I have this, what, logically, would go along with or result from it?). I also like basing societies, especially non-human societies, on animal social groups (I have a fairly large culture based on bees...). The ones I play the most with are Mesoamerican, North American (aalbeit limted - not much information about the older ones), ancient Arabic, and ancient Asian (mostly Japan and the more remote areas of China).

I really like playing around with morals - one of my main characters is from a society that practices sacrifice (usually animal, but also human and other sentient species), and she sees nothing all that wrong with it (mostly because the gods/ major spirits tend to get mad if they don't sacrifice). Just about every culture practices animal sacrifice, or has a subset that does. (Historically, just about everywhere practiced some kind of sacrifice. Animal sacrifice is still practiced today, actually).

Most of my major cultures are currently mid-industrial revolution, or even on the verge of Rennaissance, although with aid of magic. There's also extensive trade despite no railroads or non-wooden boats, and there has been for centuries, because of 'leys', which are giant streams of magic that can be ridden/ sailed (basically scifi's concept of hyperspace, but on a much smaller scale) and can also move around... They also have areas where they tend to always pass through, and areas that it's easier/harder to get on or off, making for cities built in otherwise illogical places with highly migrant populations falsely inflated by high levels of trade flowing through them. There's a lot of exploitation of undeveloped countries by developed countries, too, and the major measurement of success is the number of colonies an empire has.

 

[Jabrosky]

The world I'm building for my current story (for which I've just written a new synopsis) is very Counterpart Culture-ish. Specifically, it has these cultures:

1. A Northern European "barbarian" tribe with Viking-style longships. The protagonist's male love interest is a warrior from this culture.

2. A Black African civilization inspired by ancient Egypt and Nubia. The story's female protagonist is the Pharaoh of this culture.

3. A desert-dwelling Middle Eastern tribe. The main antagonist is a sheikh/priest from this culture.

4. A heavily maritime and commercial civilization with an ancient Greek/Roman/maybe Spanish flavor. They function as minor antagonists early in the story.

5. A highly advanced Chinese civilization in a state of civil war that is the only culture in the world to have gunpowder. Another race of minor antagonists.

 

[OrionDarkwood]

So reading and thinking about the conversation in another thread about Creating Interesting Cities, it occurred to me that no city is entirely a bubble unto itself. It's a large and important cog in the broader society.

So how do you go about creating interesting nations and societies?

I usually look at ancient and modern societies and see makes them unique and what makes them common. I also ask myself can this concept logically exist. If their is a isolationist society then it has to have the raw materials in order to function and satisfy the needs of the public. One such nation I created was the nation of Tayor the nation had vast tracts of farmland well suited for growing cotton and natural dyes. Because of this was more or less the nations only valuable resource local and national rulers where chosen by the ability to create cloth-work from the cotton.

 

[mythique890]

I'm not a big world-builder, but I think the most interesting virtual societies start with a "what if" scenario and then present realistic ways it could have come about and how their past and present would make them different from what we're used to. Matriarchal societies, for example. They're so rare in the real world (though they do exist) that the idea absolutely fascinates me.

 

[Graham Irwin]

How old is your world?

How many chances for rebellion/world war/exploration have your people had?

Is there a one-world government, or nations, or city states?

Basically, what was the original motivation behind the settling of the city?
Also, has that motivation been usurped, or has there been a religious awakening or political idea that has changed the ideology of the town?

Think first of sociology, then go from there when constructing a city.

Next would be geography (for layout), trade, military importance, etc.

Read some history. Humans have created enough gradients of society to inspire a million fantasies.

 

[Xanados]

Depends on the terrain and the borders provided. I have to look at a map to really get a good feel, though it can always change.

The main thing to think of is how big it is, has it been bigger before or is it on the verge of being absorbed or dissolved. As with all societies and cities; there is a growth, stagnation, reduction, rebirth cycle to keep in mind.

Go for the history of the society first and let it dictate what it is at the current moment and what it will be in the future. You never know what you'll come across when you take a snippet of history.

"Go for the history of the society first..."
Well said, Leif. I'm currently at the planning stage of my narrative and I'm writing pages of information on the history and culture of the society into which my protagonist was born. My story is essentially a war-effort, and it feels necessary to go into detail on such things because of that.