Conscientious Culture Design

Creating science-fantasy cultures can be a delicate topic. It's best to avoid creating species or cultures based on damaging stereotypes or simplistic reductions of real-world groups. Creating entire cultures out of harmful genre tropes, such as “primitive nomad” or “noble samurai,” reduces real-world cultures to caricatures and perpetuates misconceptions about people from those cultures. Taking inspiration from the real world is wonderful—our world is filled with an incredible diversity of cultures and peoples—but you should do so with care and respect for those sources.