Something important to think about when worldbuilding is cultural style- even big empires have regional variations, and the town just over the hill is always just a little different from the place you're familiar with.
So differences in dress, jewellery, makeup, and hairstyle can all be used to identify cultural values- hair tied to the right might mean "looking for a partner" but to the left might mean "recently widowed, please leave me alone". Knowing the differences in these styles, and what the unwritten but important rules are, can help to mark someone as being a local or a trespasser. So if you can, find some images like the ones above, and think about what these particular styles might mean (if they mean anything, other than self-expression). Another important thing to think about is the person's level of freedom of expression. In our real world, for example, laws or customs would often restrict what hairstyles a slave could wear. This means that people whose ancestors were enslaved are fiercely protective of their freedom in this regard, and will find anyone outside of family and close friends even touching their hair to be a grave affront. For cultures where some kind of similar effect exists, like Dwarves' beards, it may be useful to consider why it is that they find trespass to their beards so important. (Be careful when drawing a parallel like this, however, as you do not want to disrespect the lived experience of any of your own players or friends) I vividly recall reading a book about ancient Greece as a child, and finding a picture something like this depicting the various dress and hairstyles of the period, as seen in sculptures and paintings of the time. To this day, I find this much more educational than just learning the heroic stories of the era, and I'm hoping you can learn something similar from it, too! Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 24 September 2020. Comments are closed.
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AuthorI'm Luke. He/him pronouns. Archives
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