MUH HERITAGE

>>51926989
Yes. The Dunmer from TES are a great example.
But doing this is a lot of work and a lot of creativity.
Also people will desperately try to map real world cultures to fantasy ones even when there is no basis for doing so.

>>51926989
Not any published settings, no. But it is possible and quite easy to do. Just make stuff up.

For example: The elves are a society of nomadic tribes, but they pay homage to an elven king. Each season, a member of the tribe must report in to one of the king's elven fortresses.

The dwarves are ruled by a religious council that interpreds the earth and stone every week; as the dwarves dig deeper. Dwarves have strong family ties and will bury their dead in the depth layer the settlement dug out on their day of death.

Humans were a sea faring race that came from the west; their homeland lost to them and the sands of time. Now; most humans have settled in distinct city states with a particular niche, but many took to piracy or sailed ever onwards.

>>51926989
Pulling stuff from a vacuum is very hard though. Chances are you'll end up with something resembling a thing that's already been done, even if it's completely unintentional.

>>51926989
Why would you want to? Using existing cultures is a great shorthand for telling how the setting is without making them read long documents. If you say "the empire is like Romans except..." you can get into playing straight away, with everyone around the able being on board.

>>51927011
They are mix though. Middle East and Africa.
And the rest of the setting is as obvious as Tolkien kind of fuckery.
>>51927053
But what about visual style? Clothes, weapons, architecture. I just can't stop drawing parallels with our history.

>>51927096
You got my point.
It seems I'm always reinventing the wheel, and even if I try to be original, I still find that I copied something, even though I never heard about it before.

>>51926989
Yes, but your players will not appreciate it.

>>51927127
Again, it's not about political structure or social dynamics. I'm talking about culture, artstyle, etc. I want something original.

>>51927228
take psychadelics or something.

>>51927228
There is nothing original in this world, period. Everything has been already done, or is a derivative of earlier work. You don't want 'orginality' you want functionality in your game.

>>51927252
I did and still do, but it isn't how it works.
It is also about how people will perceive it. Cross is such a generic symbol, yet there is the very specific ties to Christianity behind its symbolism. So cross-bearing guys with any kind of religious system will be often viewed as something Christian-related.

The only way you can come up with a culture/race/etc not resembling a real world counterpart is to order a number of options to any little detail including politics, religion, family structure, etc, then randomize everything and then basically insert some paradigm shifts with the same method simulating large scale historical turning points and then contextualize everything you have come up with without real world or even other fictional references.

Some settings are delibiretly written in a way to allow such randomness, like eclipse phase with its insane habitats.

>>51927129
>But what about visual style? Clothes, weapons, architecture. I just can't stop drawing parallels with our history.
Well, parallels are bound to happen.
Actually, the lord of the ring happen to do a pretty good job at it. Rohan does have a sort-of celtic vibe, but it's pretty far fetched. You could say that the haradrims are touaregs, but it would be mainly due to their clothing, and it's a pretty logical way to dress yourself where the sun hits hard.

>>51927298
>It is also about how people will perceive it.

It's a battle you lost even before you started to write the setting. Anything you do will be approximated to real-life or fictional culture.

Don't try making things original. Make things make sense and then build from there.

>>51927129
Just make something up.

If we return to my examples:

>Elves
They wear mostly furs. Weapons made of wood with special stones being used instead of metal. They live in tents around old even ruins; which are simple and soft edged (domes etc).

>Dwarves
They wear long robes; use mostly spears and shields plus crossbows. Several ranks attacking at once. Their buildings are well decorated and massive. Odd colours that stand out from the bleak background of their subterran lands and many open fires. One dwarven family lives in their family home; which they expand if their family grows.

>Humans
Depends on the city state.

>>51927478
>They wear mostly furs. Weapons made of wood with special stones being used instead of metal. They live in tents around old even ruins; which are simple and soft edged (domes etc).
Okay so they're cavemen elves, got it.

>They wear long robes; use mostly spears and shields plus crossbows. Several ranks attacking at once. Their buildings are well decorated and massive. Odd colours that stand out from the bleak background of their subterran lands and many open fires. One dwarven family lives in their family home; which they expand if their family grows
Okay so they're Babylonians but medieval, got it.

>>51927528
Babylonians had crossbows?

>>51927141
Which is why this is a futile endeavor
Anything that humans IRL don't do/haven't done in any real civilization is probably a dumb thing to do that has no reason to exist. So anything you come up with that is totally unique is probably stupid and only unique because it doesn't make sense.

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>>51927096
>>51927141
>>51929907

Why this defeatism in a hobby we do for fun? Why is the unintentional copy regarded as inferior to the intentional one? It can't be because it is ahistoric or something, because you would normally mix and match for fantasy too.

I don't see where very basic shared patterns invalidate the creation somehow.

Maybe the answer is the environment? make some extreme environment that would require certain kind of buildings or clothes to be used. "If you dont make the building like this the special gas would stagnate and start exploding "
Why the people would live there? well maybe there is some important economic product related to this gas.

So basically make a problem and make the people living in contact with it come with ways to solve it, live around it or integrating it on their culture. If the problems are big enough maybe the "base culture " you had will change enough to become their own thing

In fantasy this is easier since you can go nuts, maybe some weird desert where it rains lots but The moment the rain touches the floor it becomes this antartic dry ice, so Houses are built to catch the water, in cities bigger houses practically steal the water from other ones building them in certain ways for some social conflict.
And since the rain is common and keeps becoming dry ice the altitude of the land increases and old cities would end in low altitude holes and abandoned ones buried. Living like this would surely have effects on how you build and behave, water could be equivalent to wealth or even currency if they are isolated enough.
And every being fate would be to someday Be buried in this same dry ice. Etc.

Originality doesn't exist, you take existing ideas and move them around into new combinations and mutate them slightly. Ideas are like animals, they evolve, they don't spring forth fully formed

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>>51930608
And jet the animals that develop aren't identical to those that came before.

What is originality if not a new combination of the very basest building blocks?

All we try here is increasing the differences to the elements that are most common in fantasy until we reach a subjective threshold were its not perceived as more of the some old.

But people act like this is somehow impossible. It would only be impossible if all possible combination of tropes or whatever were already done. Obviously they aren't.

>>51930369
That's a cool picture. Where's it from?

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>>51931922
Bay 12 Forums
It illustrates the story of Cacame Awemedinade, an elf that came to be king of the dwarves.

>>51926989
Yes and its easy as fuk
1-remove all species
2-gurps alien generator
3-generate an random alien
4-go to 2 until some condition is met

>>51926989
>mongolian orcs
I've actually never seen that before and it sounds pretty neat desu

>>51936472
Old Hobbit illustrations, style elements in Warcraft, Arcane Codex, some stylings in Might & Magic. Warhammer Fantasy has the goblin wolfriders in a bit of mongolian garb. I'm sure there are more.

People writing about their homebrew world: ~33%