I've got a few objectives this week, namely 1. Bulking out a country for worldbuilding, 2. Updating my biographical information on the site, and 3. Writing this blog post. Considering this list was created last night during our weekly 'staff meeting', I'm pretty damn impressed that I'm jumping on this so quickly.. but I digress. As it's absolutely no secret by now, we're in the process of building out worlds for future games, and with that comes the ever-so-fun task of getting cultures off the ground. Myself, I'm the kind of guy that likes to learn about broad concepts, like what sets different groups of people apart. These can be concepts like geography, major ideologies, technologies, those kinds of things - when tasked with deciding on minute details, I get a bit fuzzy. Fortunately, I've got Farran and Mr. Bond to prod me continually so I actually make useful content, but even more fortunately, I'm driving myself so far.
So what have I done? Outside of having Farran post a useful worldbuilding document for us to consider, I've taken the existing content for this particular country and the world around it and started molding some characteristics, namely a personality for the country I chose. As mentioned, I enjoy themes and concepts more than details, so I figured I'd start with how I wanted the country to come across to the rest of the world: well-educated, refined (in a world that's difficult to appear refined as of yet), industrious, and most importantly, humble. I wanted this country to be approachable in times of need, to be lucrative in trade, and to be able to contribute strongly to the fine arts throughout the world. In short, my country is a shining example of people achieving their best without being jerks.
Yes, I realize that's a bit meta, but once I had the concept down, I started coming up with fun quirks for them to have: an utter delight for symmetry, amazement in shiny objects (not necessarily currency, mind), a ravenous hunger for compelling rhythm, and a curious fascination with hidden passageways. Introducing elements about this culture that weren't readily visible from the outside was something I strived for, and I think I got that down fairly well. While this country's people are hospitable and open, they like to keep their quirks hidden until the time's right to share.
Once the feeling and quirks were out of the way, it was far easier for me to relax into more rigid structures, like religious/spiritual philosophies, government style, education provisions, and the like. Mentioned above, my country is very trade-worthy, though its resources are a bit limited, so I sought to export useful (mostly refined) objects and import those that were more base components, like textiles, particular foods, leather, and the like. While this country would need those base supplies, it would provide the world with objects of more refined ken, making trade not only an economic affair, but also a means of melding cultures with its neighbors. In short, it should help establish a positive role in the world.
Seeing as I have only the very skeleton for a country and barely any culture on those bones, I have quite a bit of work still cut out for me, but I'm very pleased with what I've got so far, and am very excited to continue! As this will be my focus for the next month or so, I'll continue writing about my creative process in the next weeks!
