CCC cultures - By Fri 2/28 - done, go vote!
Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 10:00 pm
All right, time to make cultures! I've put 9 days for this to encourage a fairly full description. If this is too long or too short, let me know.
I'm going to suggest that the CCC planet— which we might call the CCCP for now— is a little bigger and hotter than Earth.... bigger so that the squares on the map are precisely 1000 km at the equator (thus, the circumference is 48000 km), and hotter in accordance with Sal's suggestion, as hospitable for golems.
The existence of golems implies that there must have been a previous era of civilization— at least, one that developed a level of magic sufficient to create golems. This must have collapsed at some point and for some reason; let's say that it was several thousand years ago, long enough that no one's culture directly carries on the earlier civilizations. But legends and ruins may have influenced your culture.
Your culture should be primitive— think Sumer, or Shang China, or the Olmecs. It's before the era of large-scale warfare; states should be kingdom-level at most. It would be jumping the gun a bit to have iron-working, coinage, chariots, or large-tonnage oceangoing ships. You can stay uncivilized if you like.
Some questions you might answer:
- How do people support themselves?
- What social classes are there?
- Who are the leaders and how are they chosen?
- How do people reproduce? (Note that even golems do this, though not using sex.)
- For the non-golems, how do they approach sex and/or marriage?
- What are their spiritual beliefs?
- What weapons are used, and against whom?
- What are the most pressing problems?
- What do people fight or disagree about?
- How does your population differ from groups of the same species elsewhere?
- How do they deal with neighbors?
- If they have non-human abilities, how does that work out?
- If you have multiple species, how do they interact?
Let's say it's Year 1, and you have about 2500 years to play with. In terms of terrestrial history, Year 1 could be comparable to 5000 BC, around the time we see irrigation, cattle domestication, and copper smelting in the Middle East, but before urbanization, kingdoms, and writing— though all these might develop in the timespan you have. We end at the era of the first empires (2500 BC).
So, what happened during that period? (Of course, you don't have to be at the empire level or even civilized, especially if you're hard to get to.)
If you're close to other players, I encourage working together to decide how they interact.
The next stage will be developing languages, but you can start on this now if you like... at the least you'll probably want a name for your culture.
What's at stake: The next stage is the first empires— so, the winners here get to beat up on their neighbors.
(Exactly how that works out will be decided in the next stage, but it'll work like I described in the initial posting— the 'defeated' players can become a region of the empire, or a restive minority, or an exiled group, or can start over somewhere else.)
EDIT: The reward has been changed: the winning cultures will get more territory, based on number of votes. You can beat up on your neighbors only if they're close enough.
I'm going to suggest that the CCC planet— which we might call the CCCP for now— is a little bigger and hotter than Earth.... bigger so that the squares on the map are precisely 1000 km at the equator (thus, the circumference is 48000 km), and hotter in accordance with Sal's suggestion, as hospitable for golems.
The existence of golems implies that there must have been a previous era of civilization— at least, one that developed a level of magic sufficient to create golems. This must have collapsed at some point and for some reason; let's say that it was several thousand years ago, long enough that no one's culture directly carries on the earlier civilizations. But legends and ruins may have influenced your culture.
Your culture should be primitive— think Sumer, or Shang China, or the Olmecs. It's before the era of large-scale warfare; states should be kingdom-level at most. It would be jumping the gun a bit to have iron-working, coinage, chariots, or large-tonnage oceangoing ships. You can stay uncivilized if you like.
Some questions you might answer:
- How do people support themselves?
- What social classes are there?
- Who are the leaders and how are they chosen?
- How do people reproduce? (Note that even golems do this, though not using sex.)
- For the non-golems, how do they approach sex and/or marriage?
- What are their spiritual beliefs?
- What weapons are used, and against whom?
- What are the most pressing problems?
- What do people fight or disagree about?
- How does your population differ from groups of the same species elsewhere?
- How do they deal with neighbors?
- If they have non-human abilities, how does that work out?
- If you have multiple species, how do they interact?
Let's say it's Year 1, and you have about 2500 years to play with. In terms of terrestrial history, Year 1 could be comparable to 5000 BC, around the time we see irrigation, cattle domestication, and copper smelting in the Middle East, but before urbanization, kingdoms, and writing— though all these might develop in the timespan you have. We end at the era of the first empires (2500 BC).
So, what happened during that period? (Of course, you don't have to be at the empire level or even civilized, especially if you're hard to get to.)
If you're close to other players, I encourage working together to decide how they interact.
The next stage will be developing languages, but you can start on this now if you like... at the least you'll probably want a name for your culture.
What's at stake: The next stage is the first empires— so, the winners here get to beat up on their neighbors.
(Exactly how that works out will be decided in the next stage, but it'll work like I described in the initial posting— the 'defeated' players can become a region of the empire, or a restive minority, or an exiled group, or can start over somewhere else.)
EDIT: The reward has been changed: the winning cultures will get more territory, based on number of votes. You can beat up on your neighbors only if they're close enough.