Cultures and Occupations

Forget race as an identifier.

I'm thinking of using only culture and occupation as identifiers for characters.

Cultures
Barbarian - You have grown up among who distrust civilisation
Fey - You have grown up among those who are inhuman
Military - You have grown up according to strict training and discipline
Nomad - You have grown up in many places, never for long in any one place
Rural - You have grown up in the farmlands
Slave - You have grown up under the ownership of another
Urban - You have grown up in the city

Occupations
Apprentice - You've earnt to make things
Courtier - You've learnt the arts of diplomacy
Merchant - You know the value of things and how to trade
Rogue - You've learnt to work outside the law
Scholar - You have knowledge about obscure topics
Student - You're on the path to becoming a mage
Wanderer - You know abut the spaces between civilised lands
Warrior - You know how to hit things

A character is basically an intersection between these two, and many characters might have a blend of cultures and/or a blend of occupations... but if they choose a mix of options they'll sacrifice specialisation for diversity.

The occupations are starting points for a characters journey, and they may end up in all sorts of strange places depending on where their path leads them.

That's where my head is at...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Guide to Geomorphs (Part 7)

Image
A working computer and scanner...that means it is time to get back to work on the geomorph sequence. A lot of the discussion in this set of tutorials has been focused around square geomorphs. They're the easiest for most people to wrap their heads around.  But my preferred form of geomorph is based around the hexagon, these tend to produce more organic and interesting shapes. This is true for natural environments, but it's no less true for urban environments. The example set of geomorphs above as a simple two-phase system. One edge type is plain, the other edge type has a road piercing the centre. There could be dozens of combinations and permutations for each of the two phases around the hexagonal edges, but a quick look at the variety of buildings and road shapes shows that there could literally be hundreds of possible options when drawing these map fragments. But you certainly don't need to create hundreds of designs for the system to be effective. Usin...
Read more

A Guide to Geomorphs (Part 1)

Image
After numerous requests to get back to map tutorials, it's time to start our new series. This time focusing on the concept of geomorphs, modular map fragments that can be mixed and matched. We'll start with a couple of theoretical tutorials before sinking into a few more practical posts. I'm predicting a dozen or so posts in this sequence, but let's see how long it lasts.
Read more