So I've been wanting for a few months now to come up with a fractalling system for developing fantasy cultures/societies. But fractalling culture is a huge undertaking, and after emptying myself first on the Intense Race-Fractalling System and then on my 8,000-word Mythica post, I just didn't have the heart to tackle something that big so soon. Add to that the very nebulous nature of culture, and you get a really daunting picture. So, I've decided for my sake and for yall's to tackle Culture-fractalling in small-bites instead of one frighteningly gargantuan undertaking.

In my Beyond Behavior post, I described an approach I came across that looks at culture as being composed of four successive levels: Behavior (what is done), Values (what is viewed as best), Beliefs (what is viewed as true), and Worldview (how they view reality), with Worldview being the very heart of the culture. So, it made sense to me to approach the task of fractalling culture by taking it layer by layer starting from the deepest levels of culture and working outward. Part of the reason for this is because most people I've seen tend to focus on the outermost level (Behavior) with little-to-no thought about the other layers. It's all well and good to know what your races do, but for a real, breathing culture it helps to know why they do it. So, we'll start with the heart of the culture and then save the behavior side of things for later, similar to how the DCFS saves the external appearance of your character till the end.

The tricky part is that further inward you go, the more nebulous and hard to define things become. That goes double for Worldview. Not even a PhD in Anthropology could ever hope to fully understand what exactly comprises a worldview. So I would be a pretty big fool to try and do so myself. However, there are a few key components of a worldview that I've been able to identify and so we'll work on those. The first part we're gonna look at is the nature of reality, which I just finished a few minutes ago and will be posting as soon as I'm done here. This thread is going to serve mainly as an index for the system as a whole, as I finish each piece. Below is rough outline of things as I see them, as it grows and develops, I'll fill it in more thoroughly. As I post things, I'll add the link to the corresponding point on the outline.

Phase 1: Worldview
 Step 1: The World
 Step 2: Cultural Identity
 Step 3: Nature of Reality
 Step 4: Humanity…welll…sorta…
Phase 2: Beliefs
Phase 3: Values
Phase 4: Behavior

*stalks this group of threads now*

*subscribes*

Culture development is hard for me to do, so I'll follow these.

Sounds like a good way to go about it.

Stage one is complete!
Only three more monstrous stages to go!

Wow, and I thought the character fractalling was intense. I'll have to take a look at this, though, as I'm preparing to start developing a new world for my next series.

*Nearly dies*
*is insanely jealous of the time some people have*
*sighs and prints step one*
This is wonderful and difficult and terrible and helpful and painful all at once, Seer.

My thoughts exactly!

*can't wait to see all of this stuff become blog posts *

This system isn't going to be posted on the blog until after it's fully completed. And at this rate, I might die of old age before that happens

Go, go, you can do it! If you can't do it, no one can!!!! *cheers *

*also cheers*

You two! *shakes head*

And the post for phase one is up!
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=7011

Yippeee!!!

Very nice.