Thoughts on In-Game Cultures

[Taoma]

Am I the only weirdo who actually loves the original portraits? Coming from a background of classic portrait-based RPGs like Baldur’s Gate II and Neverwinter Nights, I’ve always been amazed by how much art style alone can enhance roleplay and immersion. Lately, I’ve been collecting stock photos of Iron Age reenactment from around the internet and using them to build a broader cast of characters for my game, and while doing that I noticed something: the in-game lore feels a bit sparse, with each culture only having a short paragraph in the encyclopedia. That made me wonder whether there is any additional official material about these cultures, or whether they are meant to be direct reflections of real-world peoples, where most of the “lore” is simply what you can already research about their historical inspirations. If it turns out that there is very little written lore beyond what’s in the game, I’d love to hear from the community what you have learned to love or hate about the peoples of UnReal World, and what your favorite culture is and why.

[Matti-patti]

As I understand, the inspirations are:

Seal-tribe: Merisaamelaiset (Sea Sami, actually Norwegian)
Kuikka-tribe: Inarinsaamelaiset (more sedentary Sami from lake Inari area)
Owl-tribe: Tunturisaamelaiset (Fell Sami)
Sartolaiset: Pohjalaiset (Ostrobothnians)
Driik: Varsinaissuomalaiset (Finns proper)
Koivulaiset: Hämäläiset (Tavastians)
Kiesseläiset: Savolaiset (Savonians)
Reemiläiset: Karjalaiset (Karelians)
Kaumolaiset: Kainuulaiset (not sure there is established English term? Kajanalanders?)

The Islander's are pretty vague, though since they aren't said as speaking a different language the implication is that they are akin to Driik rather than being Norse. Personally I often give them bättre folk (i.e. Norse) names, though. Like Gandalfr, good islander name if there ever was one.

In general the in-game takes here are more in place in 19th century national romanticm than historical iron-age Finland. Like colonization of Savo by Tavastian migrants (there was actually some results of large scale genetic study published recently confirming that they were indeed Tavastians, not Karelians) was something that was still ongoing in early modern period, to say nothing about Kainuu which was definetly still Sami territory. And then we have the puukkojunkkari Sartolaiset (knife junker, 19th century Ostrobothnian rogues, folk anti-heros). So you could look up on Finnish national romanticism, especially the book The Seven Brothers by Aleksis Kivi if you can find it. And of course Kalevala, a far less accessible collection of poetic literature edited from basis of mainly Karelian folk poetry.

Personally I like Kuikka-tribe, Kiesseläiset and Islanders. Good mix of skills and competent but not sky-high combat skills.