Projecting Cultures Forward

[Sindri]

So I'm working on a setting that involves colonization of a world by a wide variety of groups. In part because of the influence of Unnight, as one of the inspirations of the setting, the colonists come to a disproportionate degree from endangered ethnic groups. Contact is lost and a variety of unfun events happen to help knock people down in TL and reduce their transmission of knowledge of the past.

What I'm looking for specifically is advice, tips and tricks regarding taking a culture and projecting it forward especially in a low-tech context. What general scale of time are we looking at before a culture only retains the most general similarities to it's past? What modern beliefs will be maintained to "anachronistic" levels for low-tech societies? What's the mean time to happen of significant relgious schisms? That sort of thing.

This is for GURPS, but it's not terribly connected to actual mechanics thus Roleplaying in General.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Sindri

So I'm working on a setting that involves colonization of a world by a wide variety of groups. In part because of the influence of Unnight, as one of the inspirations of the setting, the colonists come to a disproportionate degree from endangered ethnic groups. Contact is lost and a variety of unfun events happen to help knock people down in TL and reduce their transmission of knowledge of the past.

What I'm looking for specifically is advice, tips and tricks regarding taking a culture and projecting it forward especially in a low-tech context. What general scale of time are we looking at before a culture only retains the most general similarities to it's past? What modern beliefs will be maintained to "anachronistic" levels for low-tech societies? What's the mean time to happen of significant relgious schisms? That sort of thing.

This is for GURPS, but it's not terribly connected to actual mechanics thus Roleplaying in General.

I think you'll have to get much more specific to find any useful patterns.

There are many factors.

For example, which cultures are you using, and what are the conditions like on the various colony worlds? How many people in each initial colony group? How homogenous were the groups sent out? How long was the trip and was everyone in freeze tubes or were they active in transit?


There are situations in history that might match, in a very rough way, what you describe, but they very nature of the decline and collapse of the settlements involved tends to preclude detailed records. We don't know all that much about latter years of the Greenland colony, for example, or even what precisely happened to the last colonists. We have several hypotheses based on archaeological evidence, some scanty written records, and a lot of speculation.

[Sindri]

I had a suspicion that more detail would be asked for, but I don't really have a lot to offer, I'm still in rather early stages of world building.

The trip there involves active people in transit during fast FTL followed by setting up of sealed areas on a partially terraformed world which relatively soon after gets maaagically terraformed to completion. Groups are perhaps around a couple thousand each which is large for the late TL 10ish automation. Groups are comprised of an intersect population of people interested in maintaining their culture or seeing it how it develops on a more independent basis and interested in space colonization and typically have rather easy requirements to qualify to join and are lenient of different philosophies regarding the colonies exact direction. Many groups have a lot of baggage from dominant cultures but the groups are normally organized by fairly traditional people who have exerted something of a founder effect on the community and the colonies are generally organized to avoid immediately losing sight of the goals.

The point though isn't my world specifically and I don't want the thread to focus in on back and forth discussion of details that I'm still messing around with, I just felt like giving context.

This sort of process is pretty common in world building and I'm just interested in how people go about it. Aside from extrapolating numeric trends how do you decide what happens to societies 20 minutes into the future? Or in alternate histories how a society changes after it would have collapsed? Or in a fantasy world what happens when you put a society heavily based on one from Earth into contact with things it's analogue never encountered on Earth?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Sindri

This sort of process is pretty common in world building and I'm just interested in how people go about it. Aside from extrapolating numeric trends how do you decide what happens to societies 20 minutes into the future?

I have two answers to that:

The first is "what does the plot demand?" within the limits of plausibility. Since I'm pretty good at rationalising things, that isn't a huge constraint.

The second is "where does the story want to go?" Given that I have part of a story already developing, where does its course lead? What are the opposing groups or forces?

However, I tend to set myself a lot more constraints within the setting than you have here: a whole new planet and the founding of new societies, even leaving out the magical terraforming, is so unconstrained that I can't see what the problems to be solved are, or what sorts of solutions are obviously unacceptable.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Sindri

So I'm working on a setting that involves colonization of a world by a wide variety of groups. In part because of the influence of Unnight, as one of the inspirations of the setting, the colonists come to a disproportionate degree from endangered ethnic groups. Contact is lost and a variety of unfun events happen to help knock people down in TL and reduce their transmission of knowledge of the past.

What I'm looking for specifically is advice, tips and tricks regarding taking a culture and projecting it forward especially in a low-tech context. What general scale of time are we looking at before a culture only retains the most general similarities to it's past? What modern beliefs will be maintained to "anachronistic" levels for low-tech societies? What's the mean time to happen of significant relgious schisms? That sort of thing.

This is for GURPS, but it's not terribly connected to actual mechanics thus Roleplaying in General.

Unfun events that are sufficiently severe to knock people down in TL and destroy their records will automatically revolutionize their culture so it depends on the scheduling of the events.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Unfun events that are sufficiently severe to knock people down in TL and destroy their records will automatically revolutionize their culture so it depends on the scheduling of the events.

Right, if the events were that catastrophic, the culture would need to change in some way to adapt and survive. A TL drop is in itself a significant cultural change, because technology is very much a part of culture.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Unfun events that are sufficiently severe to knock people down in TL and destroy their records will automatically revolutionize their culture so it depends on the scheduling of the events.

There's also the propensity for creating time capsules and knowledge depositories to take into account. Once such ideas have cropped up, as these have, what are the odds that any preserve-our-culture expedition will fail to carry along a few such cultural (and technological) "rossetta stones"?


Hans

[tantric]

This is central to my current project: moving subSaharan Africa into the industrial age. The key, I think, is preserving the heart of the culture and not making it just a clone of others at the same TL

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by tantric

This is central to my current project: moving subSaharan Africa into the industrial age. The key, I think, is preserving the heart of the culture and not making it just a clone of others at the same TL

Sounds cool.

If you feel like dropping any of your learning/ideas/suggestions onto my embryonic GURPS Space setting, please do.
It's got a major ''star nation'' with roots in multiple SubSaharan African countries.

[tantric]

The only thing I have that would work for that is a kind of ancestor veneration->world religion with a canon, syncretic tradition, etc. It's meant to be able to 'withstand' Islam or Christianity.