World Building How to Create A Country [REDUX]

[BakaTheIdiot]

• Introduction
• The Name
• Geography
• Government
• Culture
• Conclusion

• 
  A while back, I made a thread called "How to Create a Country!" in that exact title. While it was a nice rough draft, I got some feedback, and realized just how poorly done that thread was. As such, I played a bunch of games and ran some simulations, as well as done a little bit of research, and have re-approached the issue with a new mindset, and a new way of doing things. Ladies, Gentlemen, Aliens, Hollows, and other metaphysical objects of RPN, I give you:
  
  Baka's Algorithm Mark II!
  
• 
  (This section is actually word for word from the original. I didn't feel too big of a need to change it.)
  The first part is the easiest: come up with a name!
  Now, if you for some reason have a hard time naming things, I got you covered. Here's a good link: Country and nation name generator
  
  (That being said, you can also add an official title to the name, like "The Republic of" or "The Federated Islands of," etc. to make it more relevant to your situation.)
  
• 
  (Once again, I didn't change this at all from the original. Why? Because it doesn't matter all that much. This is mostly filler, but can serve as a good reference for Culture and Government, as will be demonstrated later.)
  Ok, this is one of the trickier bits. Here's how I would approach the actual borders of creating a country:
  Step 1: Think of a country that already exists. This is going to be your reference. Like a drawing!
  Step 2: Think about the country you chose - what's it like? Is it an island? A mountainous waste? A desert? Use this to create the climate for the country you want to create. Don't like it? Think of the climate first, and then look for a country in that climate!
  Step 3: How big is it? How big do you want your country to be? The size of Russia? The size of Finland? Peru? Get creative!
  Step 4: Is it populous or deserted? Is this country bustling with people, or would you struggle to find a single face?
  Optional 1: Has there been a natural disaster as of late? That would help shape the actual country dramatically.
  Optional 2: Does it have neighbors? How big are they?
  
• 
  Governments are not, by any means, clear cut. There are hundreds of countries in the world right now, and none of them are remotely similar, not even on a governing level. In my previous algorithm, I had people assign some binaries to help craft a basic government, but that system is seriously flawed. So, here's my new approach: once again, I have some basic binaries that aren't necessarily limiting. Here are the binaries:
  
  Government Stance on Religion:
  [3---2---1---0---1---2---3]
  Secular / / / / / Religious
  Does your country's government actively sponsor/enforce religion, or do they take a hands-off approach?
  
  Physical Border Policy (Immigration):
  [3---2---1---0---1---2---3]
  Open / / / / / / / Closed
  Are foreigners allowed to become residents? If so, how restricted is it?
  
  Physical Border Policy (Emigration):
  [3---2---1---0---1---2---3]
  Open / / / / / / / Closed
  Are your citizens allowed to leave? If so, how restricted is it?
  
  Economic Border Policy (Trade):
  [3---2---1---0---1---2---3]
  Open Market / Mercantile
  Do you import products left and right, or do you try to maximize exports instead? How do you make your revenue in terms of trade?
  
  Information Borders:
  That might sound really confusing and complex; don't worry, you're right, and it is. Basically, an information border, from what I can tell, is how much information (about anything, really) comes into and goes out of your country. For example, is internet use restricted? Better yet, does information travel quickly? Can you access info about other places, or are you limited in what you can learn?
  [3---2---1---0---1---2---3]
  Local / / / International
  To clear up the definition, do you have access to only local information, or can you learn about topics on an international level, such as how things are in a whole different part of the world? Or is it somewhere inbetween?
  
  Foreign Policy:
  [3---2---1---0---1---2---3]
  Diplomacy / Deterrence
  Pretty straightforward question: do you try to solve your foreign problems with words, or with bullets? Or both?
  
  Governmental Stance:
  This isn't something you can reduce to a binary, as I've learned. Instead, there's this wonderful thing called a political compass! (Link: The Political Compass) I should say this now, though, it's far from perfect. Hell, it even says so when you take the test. Here's some clarification for some of the words:
  Authoritarian: Little freedom of choice, speech, etc.
  Libertarian: Great freedom of choice, speech, etc.
  Left: (economic) the economy is regulated in service to the people, rather than corporation.
  Right: (economic) the economy is unregulated, with little concern for the people and favors corporations.
  
  Let me reiterate: this system I have provided for you is far, far from perfect. It's just an improvement over my last system. Hell, I might even change it even more in the future. Binaries are not the way to go, but for a beginner, it makes decisions easier.
  
• 
  "the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group. "
  This is the definition of culture, in a country sense. What do the people in your country do? What have they achieved? What are their traditions and arts? Do they dance, sing, read poetry, kill heretics, what do they do?
  This is one of those questions where you can get really creative. Think about your government: how long has it had power? How did it obtain this power? What was life like before then? Lore is especially important here, and it makes the skeleton of your current culture.
  
  It's also worth mentioning that culture is, bar none, the hardest thing about making a country. Especially if you're making it from scratch. Honestly, it's ridiculous just how diverse a culture can be, and while I appreciate it in real life, making a guide around it for beginner roleplayers/countrymakers is a gigantic pain in the ass. So, here's what I recommend you do, and this is honestly the only advice I can give you for this: (Thanks, Idea )
  
  Be consistent. Start with the state of the world: what's it like? What kind of RP setting is this, exactly? Fantasy? Dystopian Horror? Science Fiction? From there, think about how much has happened; how do your people interact with others? Is language a barrier? Is there a workaround? Does it work? There are so many things that go into making a civilization, let alone a culture for one, that it would take months to list them all. At the end of the day, however, you can cut yourself a little bit of slack with one simple trick: being consistent. Don't talk about advanced technology in a fantasy setting, unless it actually fits. Don't talk about knights in shining armor in the year 4192. I could go on. Don't just make everything arbitrary and pick options at random, put real thought into how your policies chosen above impacts the culture here.
  
  Long story short, culture is hard to do. If you're really struggling, look at your own culture: what is it made of? What is your culture based around? Use that as a guide, changing things to set the standard for your own country. Outside of that, good luck.
  
• 
  I will say this again and again if I have to: this algorithm is not perfect; far from it. It's just supposed to serve as a blank slate for someone else to make beautiful. I encourage anybody using this as a template for their country to put real thought and effort into it, and use this only as a model of structure. A reference. Will I change some things in the future? Probably. Will this ever be perfect? Of course not. Why do you think I offered for people to tear it apart? To be honest, I am the least qualified person to make a guide around building countries, but that's exactly why I wanted this guide to exist: it's really, really hard. It's deceptively hard. To limit worldbuilding guides to a single forum post doesn't do it justice, yet, here we are. Until somebody smarter and more qualified comes around to try and make something meaningful out of this holy mess of a guide, for now, you can use this. If you don't like something about this guide, don't use it, or better yet, change it! If you have a better solution, a better guide, I strongly encourage you to post it. It would help all of us.
  
  Until then, we have Baka's Algorithm.
  
  Special thanks to Idea , adrian_ , and Lorsh for helping to mold this into what it is now.
  

 

[The Pattern]

I had a few criticisms that I wanted to express, but a lot of that algorithm is really good.

The naming I disagree with. I normally come up with the name last or halfway through, as really it should represent the whole country. Say you have a country of people famous for trading and negotiating who live on the coast in a very stormy area of the continent, the Tempest Trader's Empire or the Kingdom of the Lightningtongues definitely grabs your attention a lot more than say Uplaye as the country and nation name generator would suggest for me. Base it on the people and or possible stereotypes about the people. Have a nation of people infamous for warfare and living in mountains? Rockstriker Kingdom or the Ironbreaker Confederation.

The Geography part's very good, but landmarks could be a very useful part and if you have a general idea you should really twist the geography to fit it. If the Lightningtongues are traders then they will need to be near the centre of the continent and or have access to the ocean. A bunch of traders in a valley area surrounded by volcanoes around the edge isn't going to work, but traders surrounded by nice flat floodplains and by gentle sloping beaches makes sense.

The Government part is really good, especially the scale. All I'd recommend is List of forms of government - Wikipedia though. Just so you can tie a government to a name for people to recognise. It's easy to say the Tempest Traders are a plutocratic kingdom and it'd give people roughly the right impression as to what they are: a society ruled by merchants who have a monarch.

I agree with the culture section to an extent. But culture's influenced by geography heavily. If the society exists before aircraft or advanced vehicles then a society on a mountain will be isolationist and separated from everyone else as it's easy to cross a field with a horse but you'd need some kind of tamed mountain goat and a hell of a good saddle to get down a mountain safely. But it would ruin your suspension of disbelief to have isolationists live in the centre of a continent with multiple major rivers flowing from it and ocean access as well as a lot of neighbours. You're telling me all those roads and all those canals never get used? Why have them?

Basing it on government is a very good point. If the society's militarist and secular (army-loving and not religious) then they'd love learning about new weapons and promote science to get that edge on their mortal enemies. Wouldn't their police be armed normally and more of a home guard or like state troopers then regular cops? Instead of visiting the local museum or the local café a citizen in a militarist society might go to the arena to watch a fight or two, even in sci fi. Watching genetically engineered supersoldiers fight alien abominations or prisoners of war from alien empires in an arena could be an incredible thing to see or read about, maybe it's not even real but in VR. If they are religious then would they practice rituals before going to war or go the full Greek/Roman and worship a specific God every time they did something. So pray to the God of the Hunt when you're going to get the family's dinner and so on. Also, view it from the family. Is the dad the leader of the family or is it the mother? Does the eldest have say or do they decide together? What do the breadwinners do for a job or fun? What do the kids learn? How are the old treated? Do the elderly get the Eskimo treatment or the Japanese treatment?

 

[BakaTheIdiot]

I had a few criticisms that I wanted to express, but a lot of that algorithm is really good.

The naming I disagree with. I normally come up with the name last or halfway through, as really it should represent the whole country. Say you have a country of people famous for trading and negotiating who live on the coast in a very stormy area of the continent, the Tempest Trader's Empire or the Kingdom of the Lightningtongues definitely grabs your attention a lot more than say Uplaye as the country and nation name generator would suggest for me. Base it on the people and or possible stereotypes about the people. Have a nation of people infamous for warfare and living in mountains? Rockstriker Kingdom or the Ironbreaker Confederation.

The Geography part's very good, but landmarks could be a very useful part and if you have a general idea you should really twist the geography to fit it. If the Lightningtongues are traders then they will need to be near the centre of the continent and or have access to the ocean. A bunch of traders in a valley area surrounded by volcanoes around the edge isn't going to work, but traders surrounded by nice flat floodplains and by gentle sloping beaches makes sense.

The Government part is really good, especially the scale. All I'd recommend is List of forms of government - Wikipedia though. Just so you can tie a government to a name for people to recognise. It's easy to say the Tempest Traders are a plutocratic kingdom and it'd give people roughly the right impression as to what they are: a society ruled by merchants who have a monarch.

I agree with the culture section to an extent. But culture's influenced by geography heavily. If the society exists before aircraft or advanced vehicles then a society on a mountain will be isolationist and separated from everyone else as it's easy to cross a field with a horse but you'd need some kind of tamed mountain goat and a hell of a good saddle to get down a mountain safely. But it would ruin your suspension of disbelief to have isolationists live in the centre of a continent with multiple major rivers flowing from it and ocean access as well as a lot of neighbours. You're telling me all those roads and all those canals never get used? Why have them?

Basing it on government is a very good point. If the society's militarist and secular (army-loving and not religious) then they'd love learning about new weapons and promote science to get that edge on their mortal enemies. Wouldn't their police be armed normally and more of a home guard or like state troopers then regular cops? Instead of visiting the local museum or the local café a citizen in a militarist society might go to the arena to watch a fight or two, even in sci fi. Watching genetically engineered supersoldiers fight alien abominations or prisoners of war from alien empires in an arena could be an incredible thing to see or read about, maybe it's not even real but in VR. If they are religious then would they practice rituals before going to war or go the full Greek/Roman and worship a specific God every time they did something. So pray to the God of the Hunt when you're going to get the family's dinner and so on. Also, view it from the family. Is the dad the leader of the family or is it the mother? Does the eldest have say or do they decide together? What do the breadwinners do for a job or fun? What do the kids learn? How are the old treated? Do the elderly get the Eskimo treatment or the Japanese treatment?

You've got really good points. I'll be sure to tweak those in later in the week, thanks for the feedback!

 

[The Pattern]

It helps everyone so I thought I'd provide a few ideas.

 

[Demonhunter]

Best thing I've ever heard for world building is the SPERM model
To create a country, a city, a setting ect their society needs things that exemplarize 5 things (Dael's idea)
Social
Political
Economic
Religious
and Military

Have those things covered and you have almost your entire society fleshed out and helps you with good NPCs