[HASS]

[Drakon]

This may have been asked before, but I missed it. The T5 Cultural Extension are new to me. I am having trouble getting my head around it.

Homogenity is pretty self explainitory, and acceptance. But strangeness, and symbols I am not sure how to deal with. Using Lemish as an example, second survey says [988F]

"High strangeness is evidenced by unusual or outwardly incomprehensible actions, statements or response in the course of daliy activity. Low Strangeness reflects activities closer to interstellar norms." Since Strangeness is 5+Flux, it makes Lemishians (Lemishites? Lemishers?) 80% strange. But how weird is that?

Whatever makes the folks from Lemish so strange, it did not stop the Imperium from putting up a naval base or subsector capital, despite the tainted atmosphere. Tech level 12 Amish?

Symbols, I am afraid, I am completely lost. Do we have strange glyphs decorating all the buildings?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[esampson]

This may have been asked before, but I missed it. The T5 Cultural Extension are new to me. I am having trouble getting my head around it.

Homogenity is pretty self explainitory, and acceptance. But strangeness, and symbols I am not sure how to deal with. Using Lemish as an example, second survey says [988F]

"High strangeness is evidenced by unusual or outwardly incomprehensible actions, statements or response in the course of daliy activity. Low Strangeness reflects activities closer to interstellar norms." Since Strangeness is 5+Flux, it makes Lemishians (Lemishites? Lemishers?) 80% strange. But how weird is that?

Whatever makes the folks from Lemish so strange, it did not stop the Imperium from putting up a naval base or subsector capital, despite the tainted atmosphere. Tech level 12 Amish?

Symbols, I am afraid, I am completely lost. Do we have strange glyphs decorating all the buildings?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Well, let's see. . .

High homogeneity, strangeness, and symbols. That sounds to me like they have a unified culture that makes use of a lot of symbols and interactions that other people would regard as strange. Most likely the symbols would be recognized by anyone of the native culture regardless of where they might be (so the symbols are international rather than regional). You're also looking at a civil service bureaucracy with unrestricted invasion of privacy.

I could see a couple of interpretations of this. Most likely the 'strangeness' derives from the complete lack of privacy and I would imagine that the symbols are related to that.

It could be that the Lemish just don't seem to have a concept of personal privacy. Any doors exist for the reasons of insulation and animal control but wouldn't be locked. This level of 'openness' extends itself to the point where the Lemish use symbols to 'broadcast' information about themselves for anyone who is interested. It isn't simply wearing tags that say 'I'm a 43 year old merchant who enjoys quiet candlelight dinners and cheesy action movies' but instead is a sort of 'code' where the intent of the code is to convey information in a concise manner rather than obscuring it.

Alternately it could be that rather than the Lemish lacking the concept of personal privacy it could be that the civil service bureaucracy mandates it. It might be required that people wear and adorn the outside of their houses with a variety of symbols that make it easy for law enforcement to gather information about people in a quick glance.

Given that the culture seems fairly accepting of outsiders I would have to speculate that even if their symbology is mandatory they aren't overly upset by it. If they, as a culture, found such things discomforting they would probably react by being more insular.

Symbols is a pretty broad term here, by the way. I could definitely see it extended to include colors, haircuts, styles of dress, and methods of speaking.

Given the amount of information that the symbols could be passing along they are probably very 'information dense'. To a person who has grown up in the culture this isn't a problem any more than it is difficult for a person to learn their native language but to people who are outsiders it could be almost impenetrable. The moving of a piece of jewelry from the left side to the right side might be analogous to the change of spelling between 'Mister' and 'Sister' and they way people respond to a guy on the street is quite a bit different from how they respond to a nun.

These subtleties of symbology would probably also contribute a great deal to the 'strangeness' factor for the uninitiated. It could easily feel like you are living in a game of Calvinball. However the citizens of Lemish understand that the complexity of their customs makes it difficult for outsiders and so are fairly tolerant of the mistakes outsiders make.

 

[whulorigan]

Symbols

High homogeneity, strangeness, and symbols. That sounds to me like they have a unified culture that makes use of a lot of symbols and interactions that other people would regard as strange. Most likely the symbols would be recognized by anyone of the native culture regardless of where they might be (so the symbols are international rather than regional). You're also looking at a civil service bureaucracy with unrestricted invasion of privacy.

I could see a couple of interpretations of this. Most likely the 'strangeness' derives from the complete lack of privacy and I would imagine that the symbols are related to that.

It could be that the Lemish just don't seem to have a concept of personal privacy. Any doors exist for the reasons of insulation and animal control but wouldn't be locked. This level of 'openness' extends itself to the point where the Lemish use symbols to 'broadcast' information about themselves for anyone who is interested. It isn't simply wearing tags that say 'I'm a 43 year old merchant who enjoys quiet candlelight dinners and cheesy action movies' but instead is a sort of 'code' where the intent of the code is to convey information in a concise manner rather than obscuring it.

Alternately it could be that rather than the Lemish lacking the concept of personal privacy it could be that the civil service bureaucracy mandates it. It might be required that people wear and adorn the outside of their houses with a variety of symbols that make it easy for law enforcement to gather information about people in a quick glance.

Given that the culture seems fairly accepting of outsiders I would have to speculate that even if their symbology is mandatory they aren't overly upset by it. If they, as a culture, found such things discomforting they would probably react by being more insular.

Symbols is a pretty broad term here, by the way. I could definitely see it extended to include colors, haircuts, styles of dress, and methods of speaking.

Given the amount of information that the symbols could be passing along they are probably very 'information dense'. To a person who has grown up in the culture this isn't a problem any more than it is difficult for a person to learn their native language but to people who are outsiders it could be almost impenetrable. The moving of a piece of jewelry from the left side to the right side might be analogous to the change of spelling between 'Mister' and 'Sister' and they way people respond to a guy on the street is quite a bit different from how they respond to a nun.

The use of Symbols in this sense brings to mind something from Larry Niven's Fleet of Worlds novel-series (set in his Known Space Universe). In those books, there were humans who were descendants of an early Earth-Colonization mission who had been abducted by the Puppeteers. The Puppeteers had invented a culture for them, which included a high-degree of emphasis on both the style and color of the choice of clothing on any particular day in order to take the place of pheromones (which were part of Puppeteer biology/psychology, but not part of human biology, of course).


Also, LiminalMask made this observation about Symbols in another thread:

The text seems to imply symbols refer primarily to representations of knowledge, culture, religion and spirituality. (Idols and totems to 'abstract belief systems'). If we assume that a low Symbols digit means a "very concrete" symbolic society, then I interpret that as a culture that clearly labels and categorizes its beliefs into categories and/or representations. On the other hand, a "very abstract" symbolic society organizes its beliefs in much more fluid and implied ways. Think ancient Greek deities, each ruling over a particular aspect of human understanding (concrete) vs. a culture organized according to philosophical viewpoint, or one where a person's heritage carries with it a host of cultural assumptions that may not be obvious to outsiders (abstract).

I wonder if this is similar to "low-context" vs. "high-context" cultures and if this applies here, or at least, is one way to look at it. Low-context cultures rely on overt and explicit communication to convey meaning, while high-context cultures rely on unspoken understandings to communicate meaning. High-context cultures use words less, relying instead on the knowledge the communicators have of the context the words occur within to understand what is meant. Low-context cultures use more words and tend to be more direct and often overlook the context of the communication. Perhaps this is one way to look at it.

Just because I thought of it, I read a story once that illustrates a high-context cultural communication exchange. I forget which society it was, but it was an Eastern one, which tend to be high-context. Two young people fell in love and wanted to get married, and the man's family invited the woman's family over for dinner. Among the dishes served were rice and star fruit. Everyone enjoyed their meal, had pleasant conversation (never once talking about the marriage one way or another), and left in a friendly manner; yet at the end of the meal, everyone there knew that the marriage would never take place. Why? Because in that culture, you never serve rice and star fruit together. 'These two things do not go together.' For those in the culture, the message was clear in the context. Outsiders of the culture, however, would likely miss the meaning altogether. I know I would have.

 

[Drakon]

Well, let's see. . .

High homogeneity, strangeness, and symbols. That sounds to me like they have a unified culture that makes use of a lot of symbols and interactions that other people would regard as strange. Most likely the symbols would be recognized by anyone of the native culture regardless of where they might be (so the symbols are international rather than regional). You're also looking at a civil service bureaucracy with unrestricted invasion of privacy.

I could see a couple of interpretations of this. Most likely the 'strangeness' derives from the complete lack of privacy and I would imagine that the symbols are related to that.

This is so bloody brilliant. I was thinking that one had no sense of privacy with respect to the civil service bureaucracy. But then there has to be a culture that would be accepting of such lack of privacy. The new baron is somewhat security conscious so there is some dynamic tension.

It could be ... the Lemish use symbols to 'broadcast' information about themselves for anyone who is interested. It isn't simply wearing tags that say 'I'm a 43 year old merchant who enjoys quiet candlelight dinners and cheesy action movies' but instead is a sort of 'code' where the intent of the code is to convey information in a concise manner rather than obscuring it.

Like a vest with badges all over it, that would tell a story if you knew what all the badges represented.

Given the amount of information that the symbols could be passing along they are probably very 'information dense'. To a person who has grown up in the culture this isn't a problem any more than it is difficult for a person to learn their native language but to people who are outsiders it could be almost impenetrable. The moving of a piece of jewelry from the left side to the right side might be analogous to the change of spelling between 'Mister' and 'Sister' and they way people respond to a guy on the street is quite a bit different from how they respond to a nun.

Would this handicap Lemishians in dealing with outsiders? If everyone is, in effect, wearing their Facebook profiles on their chest, would that make them better or worse at reading outsiders?

If it did handicap them, the Lemishii would probably be less trusting of outsiders. It is even possible that older Lemishians could read people in a Sherlock Holmes kind of way.

These subtleties of symbology would probably also contribute a great deal to the 'strangeness' factor for the uninitiated. It could easily feel like you are living in a game of Calvinball. However the citizens of Lemish understand that the complexity of their customs makes it difficult for outsiders and so are fairly tolerant of the mistakes outsiders make.

The annual Calvinball championships are actually quite... enjoyable.:>

Traveller wiki tells me that in Milieu 0, Population, law and government level were all 1's. Page 436 of the BBB tells me a pop 6 world is in "The initial steps of creating a colony"

 

[Drakon]

The use of Symbols in this sense brings to mind something from Larry Niven's Fleet of Worlds novel-series (set in his Known Space Universe). In those books, there were humans who were descendants of an early Earth-Colonization mission who had been abducted by the Puppeteers. The Puppeteers had invented a culture for them, which included a high-degree of emphasis on both the style and color of the choice of clothing on any particular day in order to take the place of pheromones (which were part of Puppeteer biology/psychology, but not part of human biology, of course).

So, girls would say, wear red when they were feeling receptive?

The bit about rice and starfish is quite fasinating. There could be a whole way of communicating without communicating. Both of these posts have been very helpful.

 

[whulorigan]

So, girls would say, wear red when they were feeling receptive?

That was exactly how the concept was utilized in the books, actually (thought it was "bright flamboyant colors").

 

[esampson]

This is so bloody brilliant. I was thinking that one had no sense of privacy with respect to the civil service bureaucracy. But then there has to be a culture that would be accepting of such lack of privacy.

I'm kind of extrapolating from their slightly higher than normal acceptance of strangers that they are comfortable with their own restrictions. I would imagine that cultures where so much openness is forced on them would be more resentful of their lot in life and than in turn would lead to lower than normal acceptance of outsiders.

Their acceptance is only slightly higher, howerever, so I would guess that you probably have a fair number of things like 'teens in rebellion' where they refuse to wear symbols, wear the wrong symbols, or else do things to obfuscate their symbols and make them difficult to read in an effort to be 'cool'.

Like a vest with badges all over it, that would tell a story if you knew what all the badges represented.

I would think they would use something more overt such as badges if their society had a lower strangeness. They would still be heavily using symbols but it would be a simpler matter for people to learn what the symbols mean, hence not as strange.

Given their high strangeness I would imagine that the symbology is fairly difficult to learn. They might use badges, but their could still be a lot of context that makes reading the badges difficult (similar to how the letter c can have either a hard sound as in 'care', a soft sound as in 'cirrus', or a plosive when followed by an 'h' as in 'chair'. Same 'badge', different 'meanings').

Would this handicap Lemishians in dealing with outsiders? If everyone is, in effect, wearing their Facebook profiles on their chest, would that make them better or worse at reading outsiders?

If it did handicap them, the Lemishii would probably be less trusting of outsiders. It is even possible that older Lemishians could read people in a Sherlock Holmes kind of way.

It is possible it might hamper them, but I think it unlikely. For one thing the Lemishii are a bit more accepting of outsiders than the average. As you said if it handicapped them it would probably make them less trusting of outsiders.

Additionally the symbols can really only convey certain information. Dealing with people who are using the Lemish symbology would mean that lots of information that is normally exchanged during introductions gets immediately passed on when the Lemishii first meet without the need for verbal exchange. It wouldn't be able to pass along a lot of incidental information such as 'I'm a little sleepy right now' because if their symbology covered a lot of such variable bits of data then your average Lemishii would be in an almost constant dance of adjusting their clothing and whatnot as they become sleepy, hungry, happy, sad, etc.

I'm sure that the Lemishii probably also have to deal with the occasional 'liar' as well. Even if it would be absolutely against the rules of Lemish society to wear symbols that are deceitful there must be criminals among the Lemish, just as among any reasonably large sized group.

This isn't to say that a Lemishii wouldn't find it awkward living outside their culture in a land where no one 'speaks' their symbol language, but the awkwardness probably wouldn't be any greater than it would be for any other person removed from their culture and placed into a culture that they do not share close cultural connection to (i.e. they would probably have about the same difficulty as an American in a non-western European country). At least that's what I would think.

 

[Drakon]

Breathers

One thing that occurred to me is that with a dense, tainted atmosphere, people require breather masks when outside. It is possible that Lemishers decorate their breathing masks and encode many of theis symbols into the design.

And the vest idea is not going to work for the reasons you mentioned. The symbols need to be more subtle.

 

[esampson]

One thing that occurred to me is that with a dense, tainted atmosphere, people require breather masks when outside. It is possible that Lemishers decorate their breathing masks and encode many of theis symbols into the design.

And the vest idea is not going to work for the reasons you mentioned. The symbols need to be more subtle.

I wonder if you could make something of the heavy use of symbolism and the respirators. Certainly at least some of the cultural pressures for the symbology could be because the respirators made it difficult to identify people. Perhaps in the past the symbology was more along the lines of clan/familial markings similar to a tartan pattern or a Japanese mon. Families, especially larger lines, may have evolved some sort of additional symbols so that if you met a distant member of your family you would have some idea how they ranked within the family. From there further 'common' symbology might have emerged that allowed for quick communication of certain facts with people outside of the family line. Facts such as profession, whether someone was married, and possibly even basic medical information such as blood types and allergies could have been highly useful during the early settlement of Lemish.

 

[Draconian]

Could symbols be pop-culture knowledge? If they have a piece of pop-culture, let's give it a totally random name and call it Breaking Bad, they derive expressions from it, sayings from it, and metaphors (like those aliens in STAR TREK Picard had to fathom which spoke ONLY in metaphors accumulated from centuries of myth). They also wear necklaces with little gas-masks on them. They would be totally mystifying to outsiders.

The strangest culture I read about was in the story "The Moon Moth" by Jack Vance. The people there always spoke to musical accompaniment, and had to learn to play several miniature hand-instruments: the slobo, the ganga, the hymerkin, each socially appropriate to someone else depending on whether they were friend or stranger, or of a different social class. Oh, and their musical scale was quarter-tone and they had to embroider their speech with poly-rhythms, counter-rhythms, and chordal progressions. Their culture believed a man should not be constrained by the unchanging face they were born with, so they wore a succession of elaborate masks from creatures of myth, again based on their mood and social conventions. To an outsider, it was maddening to try to fit in, especially the music-practice where they very quickly lost the concept of music as a source of pleasure.

 

[Drakon]

I wonder if you could make something of the heavy use of symbolism and the respirators. Certainly at least some of the cultural pressures for the symbology could be because the respirators made it difficult to identify people. Perhaps in the past the symbology was more along the lines of clan/familial markings similar to a tartan pattern or a Japanese mon. Families, especially larger lines, may have evolved some sort of additional symbols so that if you met a distant member of your family you would have some idea how they ranked within the family. From there further 'common' symbology might have emerged that allowed for quick communication of certain facts with people outside of the family line. Facts such as profession, whether someone was married, and possibly even basic medical information such as blood types and allergies could have been highly useful during the early settlement of Lemish.

It could even include the various makes and models of respirators. Delgado users live mostly on to the north, while Ling sell pertty good in the southeast. And you can always identify those tourists by the brand they use as well.

 

[GypsyComet]

Nothing wrong with overt symbols, per the mudras used by the people of Zelazny's "Lord of Light", or the mentally/cybernetically controlled pictors used by Greg Bear's Hexamon (from "Eon"). Both are adjuncts to spoken language.

 

[GrayPennell]

If you want to learn about symbols read up on visual cultural, or cultural geography. In general symbols inform us about the local cultural. When someone learns the symbols they interact in the community. This can be called going native. When you have a hard time interacting with symbols you are experiencing cultural shock. With 80% strangeness there are strong differences and most people will experience cultural shock.

In game mechanic terms I would work this into a modifier for Personal and Trade rolls. If you assume we all feel strangeness from time to time I would say the base Imperial Strangeness would 50% you have gone native if strangeness is less than 50%. I would give a 1+/- modifier for every 10% deviation from the base and apply it to Personal/Trade rolls.
There is a chance to grow familiar with a culture with exposure. You can do this through blocks of time and or number of visits. For example maybe a -5% to strangeness per visit or per month. When a person moves below 30% they are the people who you want showing you around or know that really great tea house with great food.

Another approach is to look at the difference between the players homeworld's strangeness and the new world's strangeness. To get the total strangeness maybe subtract the two and give modifier for each 5 pts difference to the rolls. For example the players homeworld strangeness is 30% and the new world is 85% thats -35 0r 7 dm.

You can also use the deviation as a guide to the differences. Maybe 1 difference per 5% from the base. So you are looking at 6 things to describe and throw at the party.

• Dialect/Accent,
  Use of odd colors,
  Different foods,
  The filter mask idea,
  Few children,
  Health craze

 

[Drakon]

Thank you

I just wanted to thank everyone for great ideas.

GrayPennell: Comparing one's homeworld's cultural extensions, with Lemish, gets interesting. The new baron comes from a smaller populated, more diverse and average world, but less accepting.

I am not sure about the "few children" idea. It seems to me a colony without children is a colony that is going to die out. The rest of the list should be interesting to work.

Drakonis: It seems with such a small population, most pop culture will be imported via the star port. As far as musical strangeness, being somewhat tone deaf, this would be a nightmare for me.

esampson: Thanks for many of your ideas.