How do I make a fantasy culture that feels unique? So often I

>>52015694
Be creative and use your imagination

Don't base them off of one culture?

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create fauna/plants/animals that are strange and unique in that area of where your culture comes from. Read books on customs and laws from various cultures. and yeah, like the last poster said, use your imagination. think outside of that cunt of a box

don't use already existing human cultures as a base, which is why it's so rare to see anything outside of that, because it's really hard to create entire cultures that also feel believable and is not based around a single gimmick (i.e. "these dwarves are competely unique, because they worship FIRE, and live in a volcano, because FIRE, and they got orange hair because FIRE and their booze is names FIREliquid (get it, not firewater, because they hate water because FIRE) and they love dragons because FIRE"), if you want to make a to be completely unique so would you pretty much need to start from scratch and build it, from where it started existing, and keep location, living condition, social hierarchy, religion (which most likely would enforce aforementioned things) but most likely unless you're very careful just feel like a mess for the players(or audiences) because unless you take a lot of time to explain, most people will not have the same vision for such an alien place.


tldr: why do you use "human cultures" for fantasy? because it's easy to believe, imagine and use

You're starting from the wrong place to begin with, OP. Your thinking is all wrong and you are facing the wrong direction.

Stop thinking about what other people are doing entirely.

Think about what you want them to represent in your setting, what effects you want them to have on it.

Lie down in bed with your eyes closed and use your fucking imagination. Don't worry about what's traditional or marketable.

>>52015860
>"these dwarves are competely unique, because they worship FIRE, and live in a volcano, because FIRE, and they got orange hair because FIRE and their booze is names FIREliquid (get it, not firewater, because they hate water because FIRE) and they love dragons because FIRE")
I mean, this is what Avatar did and it worked pretty well

>>52016730
first of, it's not a gimmick, it's part of the premise of the entire series, a gimmick is something very superficial just to set one apart from others, without really adding something of value (like making fire dwarves just for the sake of not having traditional dwarves) . secondly, all avatars cultures are already based on "real" cultures (fire nation is based on southern china, earth kingdom slightly more mainland china, water tribe on inuit and other native cultures, air nomads on tibetan monks and other buddistic cultures, foggy swamp tribe on florida etc, etc) thirdly, you can see that it's very carefully built up from the ground to make sense (something that korra more or less lacked

Just make shit up.

A lot of people argue that you should use logic and consider the environmental and political situation to derive the culture from first principals. The problem with this is that culture develops based on such complicated and layered logic that no-one can possibly hope to replicate it fully. The real world is absolutely full of cultural norms that you would never guess just by looking at the environment. They only make sense in retrospect.
>so these people throw gold artifacts into deep ponds
>so these guys believe poets and blacksmiths are bastards and deserve to be shunned
>so these guys worship small dome shaped rocks with faces carved into one side

A people and their land are intrinsically connected. So work on making a cool land, which you should be doing anyway. The culture of the people will be based on what they need to do and have done in order to thrive and survive in their environment. Then of course there is historical patterns to consider. Where did these people come from? Have they always been in this land? Did they come from another land? Have they had contact with other people from other lands?

There's a lot of shit to consider, so basically in a nutshell my advice is to keep asking yourself questions like that.