Arts and Culture

I have been thinking a lot lately about how to use art and culture in D&D games. Or, maybe, in fantasy writing - but this has some of the same issues attached. World building, and what part the arts might play.

It should be there in D&D: there are whole classes built around art (bards), backgrounds (entertainer, at least.) And it you extend it to mean culture, in the sense of arts, technology, education and knowledge - even more elements of the game come in. The Sage - the Acolyte - the Guild Artisan - all do, or can, relate to cultural elements. How can it work? Part of what I am thinking about is the generic world building issues: what is the nobility system? what ranks are there, for real, in this world? What are the religions - not so much the deities, as the religions, the institutions, organizations, their sacred texts and images and how they function in the world? Technology - what is available? or maybe, what can you play with? Some of this, too, lurks in the corners of the game - gunpowder, notably, is one fo those things that is there to play with, though not quite part of the official game, quite - how do you deal with it?

I find this stuff much too fascinating. It can suck me up into wikipedia and YouTube and actual books to find out what happened in the world, so I can use that in a game or a story. Lately I have had a binge of obsession with art - painting, how it develops and evolves, the forms it might take, how it varies across a world. Which leads you to history 9leads me to history anyway): how did painting evolve? how was Italian painting int he Renaissance different from North European painting? how did influence flow? what subjects were common where? how did the markets work? There is a lot there to play with, even if so far all I have ended up doing is grafting real world trends onto a fantasy world. It's there. And then add other things - maybe technology - maybe printing. Where is this world technologically? do they use printing? what kind? woodblock? etchings? do they have moveable type? is it metal or something more fragile? is it common? where does it come from? Is this technology emerging in the core area of the game/fiction? or does it come in? (Like technologies imported from Asia to Europe, and vice versa.)

There are lots of stories there. How technology, or even just artistic styles or media are perceived. If someone invented moveable type, how would it be received? as magic? as something supernatural? how does it relate to the general perception of technology? How would all this change if it were imported from somewhere else? Somewhere friendly vs somewhere hostile? What if it was invented by someone dangerous? a strange cult? a political rebellion? someone magical? what if it was used to print propaganda for revolution or a strange religion or magical scrolls - how would that change it? D&D gives you additional questions - what if printing is associated with dwarves? gnomes? drow? githyanki?

The best version of this I know of is in Terry Pratchett - this is probably the major theme of his work after the late 90s: he played with it in the earlier books (Moving Pictures and Soul Music), then started to develop it with the middle Guards novels (Men at Arms, Feet of Clay), then seemed to take it as the major theme about the time of The Truth and Going Postal. It is very lovely: the good and bad of technology, the importance of where it comes from - things with dwarvish origin take different forms than other kinds of technology - who uses it. The spread of technology, the way it changes the dynamics between groups, countries and so on - all that is in there, and endlessly fascinating.

I like the idea, very much - it is something I want in D&D games I play in, especially if they are going to be made into campaigns, if you want some kind of real story arc. Especially set in cities. It is an opportunity - to play with technology; to play with different kinds of cultural ideas; to play with different art forms - music, theater, literature. It creates story opportunities - backstage dramas, lost manuscripts (think The Name of the Rose), lost artifacts of course (Indiana Jones), but even non-magical knowledge sometimes sparks that kind of story. Playing with technology, art, types of writing, suppressed literature or artworks creates chances - industrial espionage! secretly publishing banned books! art theft and the art market! Sumptuary laws! possibilities for blackmail, advertisement, slander; invention of newspapers, communication technology, etc, on and on. All this can take fairly standard D&D forms too - think, of all things, about A Night at the Opera - rivals for control of an opera company, and rivals for the love or a girl, clash , and one group proceeds to sabotage the other to force them to give in - right? Lots of derring do and hijinks and blows to the head and music, all of it while the show is in the process of going on - potential!

All good. I don't know quite what I want to do with this, but it is something I like. I like writing about it, so it crops up in stories a lot - but it could make some interesting game situations too. It also makes for interesting world building - a way to distinguish cultures (or the feel of places, cities or kingdoms.) I am thinking about that too. It is, in other words, another of the things crowding my brain that I should post about but haven't as much as I should...