Under Sleeping Suns: Breaking down the Monoculture

Something that I've long railed against in Fantasy RPG's is this idea that only Humans get to have cultural diversity without also going through racial polymorphism. The idea that Humans are the only playable race in a Fantasy RPG that gets to have different cultural and societal types without having first generated "offshoots" of their own species is something of a staple - and it's also utterly ridiculous.

Consider - In The Forgotten Realms, arguably the staple sandbox on the playground of D&D games around the world, an Elf is an Elf is an Elf. Unless, of course, it's a High Elf, in which case (these days in 4E) it's actually an Eladrin. It could be a Wild Elf, in which case it's actually still an Elf, but it's now a sub-race of the "original" Elven race (The Sylvan Elves), with different statistics, cultural cues, and social mores. And So On for Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes, and the rest. In order for a cultural shift to occur or in order for social mores to change in a non-Human player character race, the species must undergo some manner of polymorphism - it must branch away from the "True" nature of its race. And once it's done that, it gets its own culture, its own designator, and in some cases, its own language.

This manifests itself in the creation of the Racial Monoculture so typical to the games we all love to play. If I said to you "I am playing Ulfgar Rockhammer, son of Rorick Rockhammer, Grandson of Strom Rockhammer. Ulfgar is Fifteenth Stone of the Hearth City of Opal's Deep, bearer of the Axe of his Fathers," you would almost certainly incline yourself to understand that I was playing a Dwarf - and some manner of Dwarf with no small martial prowess and pride in his deep-rooted heritage at that. It is safe to say (in most settings and games), that if the race "Mountain Dwarf" exists, that a Mountain Dwarf from the Eastern Gold Range will be functionally and culturally nearly identical to a Mountain Dwarf from the Southern Silver Cliffs or a Mountain Dwarf from the Great Western Ridge Walls. If you want to get a different kind of Dwarven culture, make a Hill Dwarf. The same holds true with Elves - if you want something other than the standard Sylvan Elf, play a Wood Elf. Or better, yet, play a Wild Elf. They get different stats, you know.

This isn't so of Humans, though. I can count a half dozen culturally and socially different nations in the Realms off the top of my head, and if you give me another few minutes, I can make it an even dozen, easily. Humans, in Fantasy (and many Science Fiction) RPG's, are, as I like to call them, the ones who make sense. It seems that for Humanity, the normal methods of developing societies and cultures are not thrown out the window. For Humanity, factors such as commerce, religion, geography, politics, and gender composition all influence the communities and nations that they form into. There is a general understanding that among Humanity, you can find it all. There are no "River Humans" who differ from the "Desert Humans" so vastly that their physical and mental attributes go through some strange transmogrification and end up making them a specific sub-species of some "True Human" progenitor.

The same holds true in just about any other Fantasy RPG, honestly. Sure, there are some notable exceptions (Warhammer FRPG, immediately springs to mind, for instance), but by and large, this is so.

And I can't stand it.

I think it's because I spent so long studying history, politics, civics, and economics (along with art and philosophy and languages!) in college. I learned what causes people to do the things they do in terms of societal and cultural clustering. I learned how cultures, religions, and societies actually form, and what it takes to shape them and the role they play in a larger world. Why, for example, a devout follower of a particular religion might pay absolute heed to the words of his or her holy book, yet ignore the blatant disconnect between what the book says and what his or her culture does. Or, oppositely, why some religious and political viewpoints so closely cleave to the long-standing cultural mores and traditions of the regions they spring up in. This is evident all over the world - My culture does this, even though my religion says not to, but it's always been done this way so why stop it now?

My biggest problem with the Monoculture issue in Fantasy RPG's is that it is very clear that rather than attempting to solve the problem of "What role do these Non-Humans play in the (generally) Human Dominated Game-World?" that the writers tend to take a tack of "What sort of brush-stroke can we use to handle all these Elves?" And that makes sense on a lot of levels! It's a quick, easy, and easy-to-adapt-to method of dealing with such things. You can pick up nearly any RPG in existence, and take a few minutes to read up on the various races, settling on the one that plays like the character race you're most used to. "Oh, the Shleb-Ula are like Elves? I can play that! Let me get my Haughty Tree Hugger ears out of my game bag!"

Let's be clear, here: Nearly every game that does this is drawing upon the great-grandfather of all RPG worlds - Middle Earth. Numenoreans. Rohirrim. High Elves. Hobbits. Dwarves. It had 'em all, baby. And only Men, of all the races, had more than one culture to draw upon. For whatever his reasons, Tolkein drew in tiny enclaves of culture and isolated them into the bases for the various races of Middle Earth, firmly cementing them in place in our nerdy consciousnesses.

So today, you pick up a game book, and you say "I want to play something like this," and your GM nods and says "Play the blue skinned aliens. They're just like Halflings."

Bam. You're set.

Playing to the lure of the Tolkein-esque Monoculture is, therefore, something we're all used to. And it's not bad! There's nothing wrong with it. It's fun and I admit that I play into it quite frequently. I just don't think it's something that a game needs in order to be fun or interesting.

The thing about cultures is that they develop both independently and co-dependently with those of their neighbors. Cultures and Societies and Religions spring up based around geography, politics, the availability of foodstuffs, population growth rates, and gender diversity. When crafting Under Sleeping Suns, I approached the idea of world-building from these perspectives, trying to keep in mind what happened, and to whom, in order to develop certain aspects of the cultures of the world. The first thing I did was closely tie the two Non-Human races (the Haran and Ulehu) in with the history of Humanity.

Rather than having these two companion species rising up and separate from the race of Man, I decided early on that their fates would be woven back into the beginnings of recorded history. Although Man clearly came first, the other two weren't far behind. They've lived in Man's shadow for thousands of years, being pushed to the side, trodden on, cast as slaves, chattel, and worse. They've been equals under the eyes of the Gods in one age, and driven to the brink of extinction in another. But they're always there. They live in and among Humanity, taking part and place in Man's world, but never fully being accepted into it. Realizing this, I managed to come up with ways that the Haran and Ulehu have, by being within - but not of - Man's culture, actually further shaped that culture in their own ways. Rather than giving them their own separate Monocultures, one for each Race, they have in fact contributed to the various cultures of Man they find themselves in. And it comes out pretty neatly, if I do say so myself.

The other angle I played up was that of National Identity. It's something that you don't really see very often in what I refer to as "low-altitude games." These are the most commonly played games: an adventuring party going out and righting wrongs, kicking dragon nests and seeing what falls out, all that sort of thing. In high-altitude games - the "Kingmaker" style of game, complete with world-building sandboxes where everyone gets their own nation to build - you do see this, but only at a macro-level. Players are encouraged to delve into the politics and culture and religion of their chosen nation. It's rare to find a game in which you'll see any kind of diversity in these topics within a single player's nation. It's rarer still to find a game in which that diversity is actively encouraged. And that's kind of sad for me, because I think you can do a lot of good in a game by playing up National Identity as a factor in player character motivations.

I own a lot (let me emphasize that - I own a lot of role playing games), and I have only rarely seen a game in which the idea of a National Identity entered into the lives and attitudes of the characters. It happens more in Science Fiction and Modern-era games, as most of those draw upon the Real World We Live In, and so we naturally expect them to exist. But in Fantasy RPG's, this is almost unheard of (Iron Kingdoms is a really good example of National Identity done right, in my opinion). Given that you can have two vastly different (yet still vastly similar) cultures between two cities in the same Nation, I think that this is something that needs some examination and advocacy in RPG's. What happens when a well-meaning ally from just over the Northern Border inadvertently insults your King? What sort of differences exist between your home city - fifty miles and several days South of here - and this one; and what sort of trouble will you get into if you misinterpret that particularly fetching lass's use of the Language Of Scarves?

National Identity can serve as the "over culture" for a particular region of the game world without turning it into a Monoculture. By providing an umbrella of similarities and traditions; i.e. - a consistent system of government, economic principles, and a common history - the National Identity can tie together the various sets of geographic, religious, and ethnic groupings that make up the various cities and regions of that same nation. This still allows for a great deal of individuality and region-specific idiosyncrasies, yet ties it together into a larger whole, providing a feeling of a larger picture to the game and the world it takes place in. And it does it without resorting to the concept that only Humans get to have diversity in what sort of societies they build. A nation made up of Humans, Elves, Dwarves, or whatever-other-race-you-prefer, bound together through history and culture and love of King and Country is a lot more interesting than yet another game world where the Elves live in their forests and the Dwarves live in their mountain halls and only Humans get the cosmopolitan ports and backwater river-towns.

Just my opinion, mind you. But I plan on showing my work and putting it all on the table when this is all done. I hope I do it justice.