Underutilized Cultures

[Sindri]

What are some cultures that you think would provide good inspiration for societies in RPG settings but tend to be underutilized? Ideally specific cultures, rather than general groups.

Suggestions
Aleuts
American northeast with Iroquois and Algonquin peoples
Ancient Ethiopian Civilizations
Balkans
British Raj
Byzantine
Caucasus
Dravidians
Finnish
Head binding cultures
Hong Kong Underworld
Indian Subcontinent
Indigenous Siberian tribal cultures
Indonesia
Indus River Valley
Inuit
Italian Rennaisance
Khmer also, but more broadly that whole swathe of Cambodia/Laos/Thailand/Burma,
Korea
Maylay
Mesopotamia
Nepal
Nepali
Non-Egypt Bronze Age
Phonecians
Poland
Polynesia
pre-Christian Middle Eastern
pre-Islamic Arabic
Reconquista Spain
Russian
Scottish Highlands
South American Indian, especially Arawak
Tibetan
Turkics
Ukraine

[ericthered]

The biggest struggle here is suffcient familiarity with the less known cultures. It is not trivial to know enough about a culture to build an RPM setting out of it.

That said, my two favorite niches are Polynesia and the Maylay people. I think I understand enough about about Polynesia to run a setting in it. Maylay cultures are a different matter though.

My other thought is byzantine culture. I don't know if that's really under utilized -- its close enough to enough places that its hard to tell if someone is basing a setting on it or if they are just urbanizing the middle ages. Either way, they could do a better job---

[Anders]

Russian and Finnish.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anders

Russian and Finnish.

Pretty sure that Russian is used quite often. Kislev of Warhammer, Ariadne of Infinity are the first two off the top of my head. Ussura of 7th Sea.

Now, Finnish does seem rarer.

[Daigoro]

Turkics and their Tengriism form of shamanism, of Central Asia, definitely. I think I only saw them once in any fiction, since becoming aware of them at least, and they were mainly incidental, in Neal Stephenson's Cobweb.

Khmer also, but more broadly that whole swathe of Cambodia/Laos/Thailand/Burma, which were pretty almost the same culture in the medieval period.

I mention those 2 because I ended up doing a fair chunk of research on them for some of my characters. Something else came up recently, but I can't think what it was at the moment.

[jason taylor]

Reconquista Spain

Scottish Highlands

Indian Subcontinent

Poland

Hong Kong Underworld

Caucasus(might be a bit difficult to find information though)

Italian Rennaisance

Balkans

[Edges]

Maybe not underutilized, but I've been trying to convince players to join one of my many Mayan-themed campaigns for years.

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Reconquista Spain

Scottish Highlands

Indian Subcontinent

Poland

Hong Kong Underworld

Caucasus(might be a bit difficult to find information though)

Italian Rennaisance

Balkans

Huh...I've GMed exactly half of those but don't even know what the other half would entail.

[vicky_molokh]

Personally, I remember being disappointed about pre-Islamic Arabic culture being not all that easily learned about.

Also, another issue with underutilized cultures is having ways to quickly (e.g. in 1-2 A4 pages) learn enough about it to figure whether you want to study it further for your game/etc.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Edges

Maybe not underutilized, but I've been trying to convince players to join one of my many Mayan-themed campaigns for years.



Huh...I've GMed exactly half of those but don't even know what the other half would entail.

Which half?

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Also, another issue with underutilized cultures is having ways to quickly (e.g. in 1-2 A4 pages) learn enough about it to figure whether you want to study it further for your game/etc.

Yeah that can be a really significant stumbling block. A related difficulty is how hard it can be to pick a culture out of a general culture group to investigate. Certain areas have a very high cultural density and it can be difficult to know which of the dozens or hundreds of cultures to check out first.