JPWB - Jacmus Prime World Building

Civilisations

As your world begins to grow, you may choose to have at least one civilisation arise. A civilisation arises when a sentient species gathers together to form a social network, which supports each other through advanced forms of agriculture, industry, trade, government and urbanism.

A common method for creating fictional civilisations is to use our history and knowledge of human civilizations as a basis. There are ten commonly acknowledged characteristics:

1. Urban society: Community Living
2. Religion: Beliefs that provide answers to “unanswerable” questions.
3. Literacy: Reading and Writing
4. Government: Governance, Laws, Taxation
5. Specialization: Unique Skills.
6. Social classes: Common Characteristics.
7. Tool-making: Problem Solving
8. Concept of time: Seasons, sunrise, sunset, tides.
9. Leisure: Arts and Entertainment.
10. Education/criticism: Advancement / Improvement.

It can be more challenging and difficult to create an alien civilisation that your world's audience can relate to that follows different characteristics.

By now, you should have an idea of the races or at least one race that will be living upon your world. Before you begin to gather the race's social networks to form a civilisation you may prefer to work out some more finer details about the race first. Creating a Race sheets can be very useful for recalling information as you continue to build your world.

I found the best way to create and write about my civilisations was to start with the history of the world and a race sheet. Knowing about your race first is important as it helps to answer the first questions about where your race has originated.

Questions

Has your race evolved with the world?
If your race has evolved with the world, why has it created social networks?
Has racial Migration had any effect on the development of your civilisation?
Has your race arrived on your world from elsewhere else?
If it has arrived from elsewhere, did it bring with it already established social networks and even the ability to set up a civilisation on your world without it having to slowly develop or adapt to your world's environment?
Has your race been created?
If your world was created, did the creator also establish the social networks and relationships that have led to the rise of a civilisation? Did the creator set up the Civilisation for the created race?

Social Norms

Social norms are the behaviours that a social group expect those within the group to adhere too. Social norms can cover topics such as:

religion
family unit
dress
building structures
language
social hierarchies
politics
trade relations
occupational choices
communication
food
recreation
entertainment and
education.

If your world has a civilisation address each of the above topics. If your world has more than one civilisation, you may want to create a matrix that provides a list of the differences found in each of the above topics, between each of the civilisations that you have established.

Members can download the Social Norms Matrix Template from our downloads area.

Discoveries

Civilisations discover new ways of doing things by crafting or fashioning new tools and they use existing tools in different methods or modifying them to be more efficient.

Some of the first discoveries of the Human civilisation are:

fire
the wheel
stone tools such as axes
spears and other weapons such as boomerangs
languages including music and maths
pigmentations
agricultural methods such as crop rotation and irrigation.

Influential Beings

Your civilisation will have notable beings (people) who have been the catalyst for new discoveries. Their work has influenced others for many years to come, possibly thousands. Select a handful of your favourite "beings" and their influential and helpful inventions to write about.