Last week I showed off a few races for Whack Pack Adventures now we are flipping the coin over so to speak and it is time to trot out a culture for you to take a look at. While the game will come with a handful of cultures to get you started there is also a tool for the GM to create their own.

To help facilitate that cultures  are broken down into a few different components: Environment Path to Power, Government Style, Foreign Relations and Diversity. In addition to these each culture has a favored weapon and a favored mount, or in some cases vessel.

Environment describes the sort of region where this culture is strongest and gives a bonus to a skill in the form of specializations. In the example below you will see that the Kingdom of Dwellin sits in a cold and barren part of the world. People growing up there will pick up a specialty in arctic survival, written as  Survival: Arctic.

Path to Power shows what sort of achievements this culture values most. Do they honor their warriors or their merchants, their scholars or their mages? Like Environment, Path to Power gives a skill specialization.

While Path to Power shows what is valued Government shows the style of leadership a culture has, again this is another source of a skill specialization.

The next two traits, Diversity and Foreign relations give you an idea of how a typical member of that culture will react to races and cultures not his own. This can be used to influence character perceptions but will definitely give you an idea of how well liked or disliked you will be when visiting this culture. These will also give a character any bonus languages they may get. The Kingdom of Dwellin is tolerant of its neighbors (for 1 extra language) but isolationist (which gives 0 extra languages) for a total of 1 bonus language of the players choice.

Favored mounts and weapons are another source of skills for players but rather than giving a specialization that covers a broad area these give a bonus with a specific weapon or when riding a specific mount.

Lastly a culture will give your charter their base languages.

Here is a sample culture, a civilization of cat people from the far north that ride polar bears and hunt with warhammers. Enjoy.

The Kingdom of Dwellin

Environment: Barren Arctic
Survival: Arctic
Survival: Forage
Path to power: Hereditary
Etiquette: Players choice
Government: Feudal
Specialty Craft: player’s choice
Foreign relations: Tolerant
Accepting: Neutral towards 60% cultures, friendly with 30% opposed to 10%
Language +1
Diversity: Isolationist
Racial makeup: Main race 94% secondary races 2% other 1%
Racial tolerance: All others low
Language 0
Favored weapon: Warhammer
Favored mount: Polar Bears

Languages

Felinoid
Common

Dwellin sits along the arctic circle far to the north. The cat people of the region are not isolationists by choice but instead little travel the distance to meet them. The Dwellin value the idea that they are not alone in the world and often encourage the younger members of their society to make the journey down into warmer climates to see the world and know that there is more than just ice and snow.

The myths and legends of the Dwellin claim that in the mountain beyond the hills they know lies dark temples where the gods that came before were worshiped. Sometimes they say strange dark things come across the ice and when they do the Knights of Dwellin are waiting for them.

Their young go out into the world not so they can know others have it better but to know what it is they are protecting.

Till next time stay whacky.