The Play's the Thing, Part IV

Originally published June 18, 2014

In my continuing series, I discuss The Play's the Thing, a player advice column by Robin D. Laws that ran in Dragon Magazine in the early years of D&D 3rd edition. As before I'll be providing my thoughts on the player advice it provided for improving your characters and your gaming experience.

Get Yourself Some Sub-Culture

Issue 286, August 2001

Sometimes you like a specific race or group in the campaign setting your gamemaster (GM) presents but at the same time want something a little different. Other times, you have a character concept that requires a background different from what the standard society would suggest. Perhaps you want to play a Halfling who grew up with an extended family of wandering merchants instead of Tolkien's stay at home Hobbits. Or perhaps you want your Vulcan to be tattooed and interested in mystical pursuits. A potential solution is to work with your GM on customizing the species or society and inventing a subculture that supports what you are looking for.

Realistically no large group of people, whether they are Elves or Klingons, are going to be all the same. In the real world, humanity has create thousands of different cultures, each one subdivided into regional, class, and interest specific variants. The further you drill down the more diverse we become. The United States has a different culture than the whole of Western society. The South differs from the Midwest. Those in rural areas have a different way of life than city dwellers. Counter culture has spawned numerous subdivisions from Beatnik to Goths.

So creating a group that is an exception to the general trend of society is a reasonable request. Even so you should ask your GM politely. You are seeking to carve out a bit of their world for your character. Now that said, I think most GMs would be amenable to the idea, especially if you offer to write up a little bit about this subculture for them. Collaborative world building adds immensely to a game, enriching the world with multiple perspectives and spreading out the work load of building the setting.

Clearly this concept is less setting general than other in this series. Not every game will possess the wide open spaces for you and your GM to populate with cultural variants. Thus creating a subculture for your character is most appropriate for far future or fantasy campaigns where there are a variety of cultures or species to choose from in a world that is not as fully defined as ours. Fundamentally it is about finding a good fit for the character you have envisioned and while making them a part of the world the GM has created.

The process of creating a subculture is straightforward. First look at what you want your subculture to be like. What are their beliefs and general personality? List out the major aspects of the culture. Next compare them to the standard culture's beliefs. See how they differ and how they are the same. A subculture should have a mix of these. In some cases they will be directly opposed as the subculture tries to exert its independence while on other matters they might be perfectly in line.

Remember that you are making a sub culture. There should be some similarities between the two groups. Also make sure that the group you are creating has some reasons to work with the other player characters. An insular tribe of ninja warriors might seem fun but if they never associate with the samurai the other PCs are playing, you have just removed yourself from the game. When you are done, you might write up a short description of the culture based on your notes or at least provide those notes to the GM to refer to in play.

In Play

This sort of collaboration is something I enjoy seeing from my players. I'll happily let people carve out bits of my setting. It might be more accurate that in the past I've let them build what they want and that then I built the world around them. Thus they became the exemplars of their race or their rebellious nature defined what they were rebelling against. Some examples include the elves of a game I called Law vs. Chaos, where the character's posturing of nobility, led to the elves being an aristocratic society reigning over the common races. In another game, a paladin went with a knightly title of Sir which I then made a common usage within his order. In my space game, I allowed my players to define the nature of their home culture the Federation, resulting in it being a corporate meritocracy.

Unfortunately I can't think of a case where they created a whole subculture but I wouldn't be opposed something like that. Have you ever tried something like that or seen someone else do so?