What are the coolest cultures to steal from to worldbuild?

lmgtfy.com/?q=bronze age
The copper age is also interesting.

Too few mythos live up to the absolute insanity that is Hindu.

well no shit. i didnt mean surface level information. I know plenty about it in general.

I was asking if you had any specific sources i should check out

This.

Also, I honestly steal a lot of shit from African/Indian cultures. As long as you stay away from the super obvious stuff and names everyone knows, all of it seems super exotic and fantastic to folks.

Skim the References, Further Readings, and maybe External Links on Wikipedia pages for better surface level information.
Once you've got the jist of it, read (not skim) their Works Cited.

Are you just starting High School, or something?

god that kinda annoys me
Seems like it either arises out of a deep insecurity with their history (and a deep lack of knowledge of it too) or a need to be the superior over all peoples.
Neither of which are mutually exclusive
india is a fucking interesting place full stop.
research isn't as taught as well it ought to be.
I suggest a Cambridge companion, and just then skim the citations of the articles you find the most interesting.
I mean that's really the best you can really do, You've got such a large stretch of time and space that you can't really start specific i'd reason

PYRAMID CIBIVILZATION

the roman/greek mythology

just like how one of the most satisfying sets in MTG is Theros, when a story takes from the classics and morphs them into the interacted scenario it feels so clean
especially considering how EVERYONE knows about it so the refs are going to be caught by everyone

meanwhile if you add in some weeb shit or norse mythology lots of people arent going to be getting that

>dope ass
Stopped reading there you children lead to learn how to write without sounding like retards

Theros was rubbish and everyone knows it.
Kamigawa had effort put into the setting.

theros had the most noticeable lore and talked about mythos, the only people who even think about kamigawa past "shit block with a few upstart cards" are weebs

Remember to include temperamental volcano goddesses with competitive sledding streaks and romances with tattooed rain gods.

>Seems like it either arises out of a deep insecurity with their history
What's known about real African history is pretty fucking interesting too. Weird fractal towns, trannies, shamanism, divination, alchemy, gold all over the place, dindu qts, the list goes on.

Remember that time when a black warlord donated so much gold to a place that he crashed the economy.

>What's known about real African history is pretty fucking interesting too. Weird fractal towns, trannies, shamanism, divination, alchemy, gold all over the place, dindu qts, the list goes on.
yes
which is why i put in brackets (and a deep lack of knowledge of it too)
these have to be everything in history.

Mansa Musa was just one of those people, ya know?

The weebs hated Kamigawa. It wasn't superficial enough for them.

I really hope you know about Glorantha, if not check it out

Sparta

Anything Roman related.

I love Dominions for taking inspiration straight from history and mythology rather than conventional fantasy

So you stopped reading one word away from finishing the sentence?

>missed spelling
>no punctuation

Okay, guy.

Best setting for tabletop rpg, wish we worked on it

I like ancient assyrian, I think it was, mythology.
The gods are such huge dicks, especially ishtar.
Ishtar is the original fucking embodiment of "don't stick your dick in crazy".
Like a vengeful seductive zeuss.

>history and mythology
>also lovecraft books
>also dawn of the dead
Look, it has some historical bits, but let's be honest with ourselves.
It's just a high quality kitchen sink.

Norsemen, particularly their cultural view of northern courage in the face of "knowing" that they're already doomed.
Ancient China for their bureacratic, convoluted and bandit-like infighting with each other.
Several branches of Chinese and Japanese buddhism, particularly the Naraka hells and their view of Amitābha.
Hellenes for their philosophical insights particularly Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle.
Aztecs and Hindus for their fucked-up theology.
Ancient Egypt, Aztecs and Incas for their off-beat architecture.

see Agreed, Dominions seems good on "the game" but the moment you make it an rpg It will be a mess

kitchensink is awesome for the game though, more you know

>steal from to worldbuild
If you don't build every culture in your setting from the ground up and actively try to avoid any correlation between them and real life cultures, you're doing it very wrong.

Go jack off in the river with dionysus

This. All my settings are inspired by the pre-collapse bronze-age.

Tell me about one of your entirely original cultures in less than half a page of text.

I like stealing things from vikings/pagan germanics, greek/romans, mongols/turkics and from time to also medieval china and muslim western africa.
If I need a multicultural empire I generally steal from the ottomans.

I'd play a dominions game, though it kind of sucks a lot of the cool races are locked behind being holy.

Of course. Tarrasque and illithids are straight D&D stuff.

Everyone has magic or you'll try to somehow make magicless "meatshields" work?

I expected to see a frog before picture loaded. Guess no frog means you were joking. I'm tired of this shit too.

What about that vocation in particular?
If it's the raiding and pillaging then you might also like the sea peoples during the Bronze Age collapse. They also nailed the fantasy look.

>the Byzantine Empire which were the remnants of the Roman Empire (and considered themselves Roman, albeit spoke greek!)
Spotted the troll.
The Byzantine Empire was the ERE. The label 'Byzantine' wasn't contemporary but something that later historians used to differentiate them from earlier epochs of the roman empire.

That Sherden in the middle has far too short a sword, and no shield. 0/10.

I found the ancient world-podcast really helpful in that regard, it is what opened my eyes to the fascinating history of the pre-hellenic world, and in particular the Assyrians.

>Mansa Musa was a petty Warlord.

>What are the coolest cultures to steal from to worldbuild?
If this is the way you are "world building", then none.

>Implying the role of mansa wasn't exactly that - the "main" warlord of the area.
I mean I'm not questioning this dude wasn't great for Mali Empire. But mansa role is to organise military into single body and keep settlements connected. That's literally it.

This sorta shit is like a sad version of "THE EGYPTIANS WERE REALLY WHITE!" type pseudohistory.

I don't really blame people who had their past destroyed by slavery for trying to push themselves into history as much as possible even though this shit is total nonsense.

I feel like norse/viking stuff is overdone. While I really loved it in the past its been everywhere since Skyrim and even before.

I'd recommend looking up some middle eastern cultures since they are rarely used in western popular culture. The Mughals, Mamluks, Timurids, ancient Iranian empires etc.

The sword is normal size for a bronze weapon. And his shield is presumably on that leather strap he has over his chest

He was also the leader of the Mali Empire which meant he presided over the council consisting of Representatives who voted on issiea regarding the economic, political, military, and religious interests of dozens of ruling clans. He also made great contributions to educational institutions in the empire.

He was just a capable leader in times of war and richest dude in the planet on top of that.

He wasn't just some guy they called on when it was time to suppress a rebellion or collect taxes.

Wouldn't you have to be all of the following and more, at an expert level, to do that?

>Anthropologist
>Geologist
>Geographer
>Climatologist
>Meteorologist
>Paleontologist
>Archaeologist
>Historian
>Linguist
>Etymologoist
>Agricultural scientist
>Botanist
>Zoologist
>Virologist
>Actuary
>Theologian
>Hydrologist
>Astronomer
>Astrophysicist
>Thermophysicist

This. Vikings even have their own show now.

>Consusing Mansa Musa, a person, with title of mansa
It's like you are retarded and can't fucking read

>middle eastern cultures
>Out of 4 listed, 3 aren't from Middle East

That's a myth. Widely believed but still a myth.

I thought diogenes did his jacking off in the market?

>dionysus
Oh.

lot of people tend to go the Roman route for their old fallen/decaying empires, but I like to use the Ottomans as a base for mine

recently had a campaign based in a Europe analogue populated by variety original / hackneyed rip off cultures who until recently had been under the thumb of essentially Ottoman Empire Elves, forced to submit to their laws and gods, now the smaller kingdoms and tribes are breaking free and reasserting their own cultures and gods

so ive got armies of Mamluke Elves and half-elven Janisarries trying to maintain order while humans, orcs, lizardmen, halflings and hobgoblins try to free themselves of the oppression

Not-ottomans are one of the bigger threats in my setting, that and time traveling lizardmen.

My ottomans arent one specific race tho but an empire with several different races including high elves, hobgoblins and bird people and of course humans, usually paired off against Lizard, Human, Troll austria

But Mansa the title does mean more than organizing the military and keeping settlements connected- as is evident by the guy who had the title and was empowered to do a lot more than that.

President Washington/Lincoln/Roosevelt? Not saying the guy wasn't great, but all the President does is lead the army in war time and enforce the laws made by congress.

No, it did have an impact on the economy of Cairo, but it was just not as significant as it is portrayed, as it was a fairly temporary spike in inflation.

>no shield
Gee, I wonder what the circular looking thing on his back is then.

Central Asia pre-Turks/Mongols.

How did you do the story in such a setting.
I guess players would want to take the side of the freedomfighters instead of the empire.

Kitchen sink isn't necessarily bad for a setting though. It just means there's a wide range of scenarios and matches that can play out

Proto indoeuropean culture and mysticism!

youtube.com/watch?v=BS4D95ejpl0

more stuff

theres something awesome and spoopy about how all the different mythologies line up.

Like you feel a mystical connection somehow

Invoking that feeling in a setting would be very cool

youtube.com/watch?v=ODaCrCttS1U

They weren't necessarily doomed. They were just a little less afraid of death. They could still doom themselves by making choices like dying dishonorably in battle, getting captured or just being a coward in general. Only the worthiest of the worthies managed to get chosen by the Valkyries.

Sherden specifically used fuckhuge swords for the time. Even the most modest depictions show them with meter-long swords they used for killing charioteers.

This dude's pronunciation is surprisingly good.

>tries to post a picture of Sargon of Akkad
You know this is gonna turn /pol/ as fuck

Big Daddy Sargon is best boi.

That's Nebuchadnezzar II, not Sargon of akaad.

This. I actually do what that guy describes and make up cultures and languages from the ground up and it's a pretty great way to learn a lot. When I'm really going for it, it becomes a full-time job. Constantly I'm forced to go back and change things that I realise don't make sense. Really not worth it for a game of DnD.

Fractal towns? Go on.
Elaborate.

bump

>sargon of akkad
he's a joke on /pol/
he's a mulatto raising another man's child

Eh, pol is so full of infighting that saying generalized is a bad idea.

Veeky Forums can't even agree on d&d and there's at most a thousand of us. Pol is huge.

>Stopped reading there you children lead to learn how to write without sounding like retards
You first.

This seems more reasonable to me.

Back to your grave, Tolkien.

>What are the best parts of those cultures?
I'm fond of germanic/nordic peasants and pastoral scenes

Like: the goodwife Hilga baking bread when the adventurers come by the farm-house asking for the way to the ruins. She has a few vicious dogs to keep her company and her husband returns to the farm-house when he hears them barking at the intruders.

She feeds them some potato dumpling stew with saurkraut from the pot bubbling on the fireplace for the last two days and tells them to wait until her husband Lars comes home for dinner, he can tell them all about it.

Maybe they get to sleep in the barn overnight and set off in the morning, the farmer tells them about the strange damage caused to his outlying field by some sort of large burrowing creature that he's never seen.

If the adventurers investigate the field damage and do anything useful then Hilga will bake an extra couple of loaves and foist them on the party with a jar of saurkraut and a little lard.

Huns

What little we know about them comes from the people they fought and slaughtered. Still, the picture is a gruesome one that comes out to be a very interesting culture and people. They shaped their skulls via binding. The men scraped and cut their cheeks from a young age to produce a very scarred face with a ruthless appearance. Riding horses so often gave them a funny stance with an even odder gate. Skin tanned from long rides under the steppe's open sky. Hair black and little facial hair to speak of between their many scars. I'd like to believe the teeth filing that the Huns apparently did, but that sounds a little fishy.

Their confederation took on many groups they encountered. Alans and a fuck ton of Goths are honorable mentions. With these conscripted soldiers they actually overran many Roman cities that had not seen bloodshed for centuries. Attila enjoyed entertaining foreign emissaries even while at war with them. Seems like a good way to invite assassins into your presence, but the Hunnic way seemed to be one of showing off your power at all times. They valued their oldest sons as treasures, like many cultures around the globe, and drank wine from conquered peoples. The Huns used horse archers as their main method of war, but their adopted conscripts added flavors such as foot soldiers and siege equipment. They were brutal in war. As were the Romans too, but here is a good scene I can recall from Priscus

>When we arrived at Naissus we found the city deserted, as though it had been sacked; only a few sick persons lay in the churches. We halted at a short distance from the river, in an open space, for all the ground adjacent to the bank was full of the bones of men slain in war