Civilization
Source GM Core pg. 142
Once you've established your home world and other important planets, it's time to establish significant nations, whether they're bound to a single world or part of a larger interstellar coalition, and then define major ports of call.
When it comes to designing a setting's cultures, you might want to focus primarily on areas the party is likely to explore first. Doing so allows you to establish the details and depth of one region's peoples before expanding out to address others. That isn't to say you shouldn't have ideas about the cultures beyond your starting settlement—it just means you don't need to decide every detail of every culture all at once.
As always, you don't need to demarcate every planet in the solar system or indicate every station, city, and spaceport. Keep your focus on what you need for your story and your adventure—leaving terra incognita can lead to stories down the road as the party ventures further from home.
When it comes to designing a setting's cultures, you might want to focus primarily on areas the party is likely to explore first. Doing so allows you to establish the details and depth of one region's peoples before expanding out to address others. That isn't to say you shouldn't have ideas about the cultures beyond your starting settlement—it just means you don't need to decide every detail of every culture all at once.
As always, you don't need to demarcate every planet in the solar system or indicate every station, city, and spaceport. Keep your focus on what you need for your story and your adventure—leaving terra incognita can lead to stories down the road as the party ventures further from home.
Societal Benchmarks
Source GM Core pg. 142
The following sections can help you establish certain truths about your world as a whole. From there, you can decide the details of specific cultural groups, including whether they deviate from these global standards.
Technology
Source GM Core pg. 142
Throughout history, a major driver of world culture has been the continuous advancement of technology in warfare, agriculture, and industry. The following categories roughly approximate real-world technological levels, but progress might vary on your world. What heights of technology have been achieved? Have any groups fallen behind or leaped ahead?
Primeval: Weapons and tools in this early era are crafted primarily from bone, wood, or stone. Knowledge of stonecutting allows early civilizations to raise stone walls and buildings. If visited frequently by those with other technology, they might salvage pieces of sturdier materials to use as tools. If resistant to advanced technology, they might even develop magic and tools that are extra effective against technology.
Antiquities: Advancements in mining and metallurgy lead to weapons and tools made from bronze and later iron. Crop rotation and storage ensure greater resilience to famine, leading to the development of complex irrigation and large militaries that can consolidate and conquer city-states into major empires. The economy is dominated by river and sea trade between coastal settlements aided by oar- and sail-powered galleys. Alien technology is often readily incorporated, as wars are often won during this relatively rapid advance in technology.
Early Industrial: Warfare in this era is defined by iron armor until the development of black powder firearms. Larger ships permit ocean crossings and long-range trade to distant shores. The printing press increases literacy and speeds up the dissemination of new ideas, and the development of early steam engines rapidly shifts societies' focus to engineering and science. Dirigible airships and observation balloons make it more likely for locals to recognize devices like spaceships as technology rather than magic, and a desire to replicate the technology makes any kind of first contact more dramatic than ever before.
Late Industrial: Heavy machinery and a race for diminishing resources define this period of technological development. Famine and plagues are likely confined to less industrialized nations exploited for their natural and human resources. Consolidated power in countries with the most advanced technology, coupled with the knowledge that an actual war between the nations could have nigh-apocalyptic side effects, means a need to reform social traditions, especially once major developments like atomic energy and telecommunications bring about subsequent technological revolutions. Cultural exchange and leisure time would permit the development of games and stories to inspire future technology, lending itself to greater acceptance of more advanced technology regardless of its source.
Tech Renaissance: This civilization teems with advanced technology and magitech, including but not limited to cybernetic augmentations and artificial intelligence. While technology has made conventional warfare too dangerous, nations and corporations openly engage in hacking and sabotage for economic control of ideas in lieu of direct control over land. Globalization, communication technology, and the intermingling of cultures have made national and ethnic identity secondary to stark individuality. Outside of the glittering cities of skyscrapers, you're less and less likely to find any but the most stringent luddites, as most farms would be automated while nations allow nature to reclaim rural communities for the sake of a balanced ecosystem. Visitors with more advanced technology would be hesitant to visit these worlds without a disguise, knowing how much alien tech would be worth to factions struggling to get an edge in a cutthroat market of ideas.
Spacefaring: Journeying to the final frontier opens countless paths for technological and social progress, including openly intermingling with alien technology, establishing new governments independent from any on a civilization's home world, and the necessity of tools needed to survive the harsh conditions of space that are developed and improved independent of an astronaut's home world. As space colonists from post-scarcity societies struggle to survive, they can find their technology lagging behind their predecessors, potentially reaching a state resembling a post-apocalyptic level of technology for centuries before explorers from their long-forgotten home world rediscover them.
Post-Scarcity: At this level of technological progress, there's no longer a need for mortal species to compete for resources. All needs and basic desires are met, resulting in an opportunity for social and artistic progress unhampered by the inequalities of the past. Oftentimes, this level of technology betrays a darker truth, as the society is propped up by those who could only dream of the false utopia. Other times, the civilization's military or explorative tech is no more advanced than a tech renaissance or even late industrial civilization, as some watershed moment in the civilization's history pushed them to focus their efforts on energy, food, technology, and resource allocation. Such a utopia might be accepting and curious of outsiders, or it might fear that the inclusion of outside technology might damage their hard-won harmony.
Transcendent: The members of this civilization have gone beyond their physical bodies to become something more. Whether they're ascended beings of pure energy, digital consciousnesses existing in a virtual reality, or a merged hyper-consciousness spanning dozens of worlds, the preservation of their consciousness has become the primary concern of this civilization. Any other advanced technology exists only as vestigial artifacts left behind in their now empty cities. Sometimes these civilizations can attempt to forcefully integrate others into their trans-mortal hive minds, or else eradicate their targets out of fear of other life-forms developing a way to erase them from existence. Other times they are above reproach and feel compelled to protect other species from even greater cosmic threats. Civilizations that attempt this level of technology can carry on as once-mortal robots, feral mutants, or paranoid undead, the fear of death having driven them to become inhuman facsimiles of their former selves.
Post-Apocalyptic: Oftentimes a civilization finds itself progressing backward in the tech tree due to fear of rapid advancement, a cataclysmic war, or even divine intervention. They could be left with vestiges of their former glory, perhaps having vague notions of how to use these ancient devices while treating even the most mundane tech as though it were magic. They might outright reject and hunt down advanced technology, blaming it for their daily struggles to survive in a world decimated by radiation or rampant biotechnology.
Primeval: Weapons and tools in this early era are crafted primarily from bone, wood, or stone. Knowledge of stonecutting allows early civilizations to raise stone walls and buildings. If visited frequently by those with other technology, they might salvage pieces of sturdier materials to use as tools. If resistant to advanced technology, they might even develop magic and tools that are extra effective against technology.
Antiquities: Advancements in mining and metallurgy lead to weapons and tools made from bronze and later iron. Crop rotation and storage ensure greater resilience to famine, leading to the development of complex irrigation and large militaries that can consolidate and conquer city-states into major empires. The economy is dominated by river and sea trade between coastal settlements aided by oar- and sail-powered galleys. Alien technology is often readily incorporated, as wars are often won during this relatively rapid advance in technology.
Early Industrial: Warfare in this era is defined by iron armor until the development of black powder firearms. Larger ships permit ocean crossings and long-range trade to distant shores. The printing press increases literacy and speeds up the dissemination of new ideas, and the development of early steam engines rapidly shifts societies' focus to engineering and science. Dirigible airships and observation balloons make it more likely for locals to recognize devices like spaceships as technology rather than magic, and a desire to replicate the technology makes any kind of first contact more dramatic than ever before.
Late Industrial: Heavy machinery and a race for diminishing resources define this period of technological development. Famine and plagues are likely confined to less industrialized nations exploited for their natural and human resources. Consolidated power in countries with the most advanced technology, coupled with the knowledge that an actual war between the nations could have nigh-apocalyptic side effects, means a need to reform social traditions, especially once major developments like atomic energy and telecommunications bring about subsequent technological revolutions. Cultural exchange and leisure time would permit the development of games and stories to inspire future technology, lending itself to greater acceptance of more advanced technology regardless of its source.
Tech Renaissance: This civilization teems with advanced technology and magitech, including but not limited to cybernetic augmentations and artificial intelligence. While technology has made conventional warfare too dangerous, nations and corporations openly engage in hacking and sabotage for economic control of ideas in lieu of direct control over land. Globalization, communication technology, and the intermingling of cultures have made national and ethnic identity secondary to stark individuality. Outside of the glittering cities of skyscrapers, you're less and less likely to find any but the most stringent luddites, as most farms would be automated while nations allow nature to reclaim rural communities for the sake of a balanced ecosystem. Visitors with more advanced technology would be hesitant to visit these worlds without a disguise, knowing how much alien tech would be worth to factions struggling to get an edge in a cutthroat market of ideas.
Spacefaring: Journeying to the final frontier opens countless paths for technological and social progress, including openly intermingling with alien technology, establishing new governments independent from any on a civilization's home world, and the necessity of tools needed to survive the harsh conditions of space that are developed and improved independent of an astronaut's home world. As space colonists from post-scarcity societies struggle to survive, they can find their technology lagging behind their predecessors, potentially reaching a state resembling a post-apocalyptic level of technology for centuries before explorers from their long-forgotten home world rediscover them.
Post-Scarcity: At this level of technological progress, there's no longer a need for mortal species to compete for resources. All needs and basic desires are met, resulting in an opportunity for social and artistic progress unhampered by the inequalities of the past. Oftentimes, this level of technology betrays a darker truth, as the society is propped up by those who could only dream of the false utopia. Other times, the civilization's military or explorative tech is no more advanced than a tech renaissance or even late industrial civilization, as some watershed moment in the civilization's history pushed them to focus their efforts on energy, food, technology, and resource allocation. Such a utopia might be accepting and curious of outsiders, or it might fear that the inclusion of outside technology might damage their hard-won harmony.
Transcendent: The members of this civilization have gone beyond their physical bodies to become something more. Whether they're ascended beings of pure energy, digital consciousnesses existing in a virtual reality, or a merged hyper-consciousness spanning dozens of worlds, the preservation of their consciousness has become the primary concern of this civilization. Any other advanced technology exists only as vestigial artifacts left behind in their now empty cities. Sometimes these civilizations can attempt to forcefully integrate others into their trans-mortal hive minds, or else eradicate their targets out of fear of other life-forms developing a way to erase them from existence. Other times they are above reproach and feel compelled to protect other species from even greater cosmic threats. Civilizations that attempt this level of technology can carry on as once-mortal robots, feral mutants, or paranoid undead, the fear of death having driven them to become inhuman facsimiles of their former selves.
Post-Apocalyptic: Oftentimes a civilization finds itself progressing backward in the tech tree due to fear of rapid advancement, a cataclysmic war, or even divine intervention. They could be left with vestiges of their former glory, perhaps having vague notions of how to use these ancient devices while treating even the most mundane tech as though it were magic. They might outright reject and hunt down advanced technology, blaming it for their daily struggles to survive in a world decimated by radiation or rampant biotechnology.
Divine Involvement
Source GM Core pg. 143
What's the nature of the gods? Do they even exist? If so, are they omnipotent and omniscient? How does a follower request their divine favor? The answers to these questions will help you determine how strongly divine faith impacts the cultures of your world.
None: Deities don't exist in this world, or if they do, they're oblivious to or completely unconcerned with mortal affairs. If they exist, they don't make their presence known, nor do they grant power to their worshippers. People might still believe in deities, and there might be powerful enough entities, or artificial intelligences, that have convinced people to worship them.
Limited: Deities exist, though they remain aloof from the mortal world and make their divine presence known only to a chosen few.
Accepted: Divine influence is an accepted fact of everyday life. Their will is enacted through priests and organized religions. Divine avatars might appear in the world during extreme circumstances.
Ubiquitous: Deities live among mortals, exerting their divine will directly. Gods frequent social media sites, run streaming broadcasts to their followers, or even dominate entire solar systems as rulers.
None: Deities don't exist in this world, or if they do, they're oblivious to or completely unconcerned with mortal affairs. If they exist, they don't make their presence known, nor do they grant power to their worshippers. People might still believe in deities, and there might be powerful enough entities, or artificial intelligences, that have convinced people to worship them.
Limited: Deities exist, though they remain aloof from the mortal world and make their divine presence known only to a chosen few.
Accepted: Divine influence is an accepted fact of everyday life. Their will is enacted through priests and organized religions. Divine avatars might appear in the world during extreme circumstances.
Ubiquitous: Deities live among mortals, exerting their divine will directly. Gods frequent social media sites, run streaming broadcasts to their followers, or even dominate entire solar systems as rulers.
Magic
Source GM Core pg. 144
Does magic exist? If so, which traditions are available? What are the sources of a spellcaster's power, and how do they gain and channel that magic?
No Magic: Magic of any kind doesn't exist in this world. Spells and magic effects don't function. Consider the variants to handle the lack of magic items or convert magic items to tech items using such advanced technology as to be indistinguishable from magic.
Low Magic: Magic is mysterious and taboo. The few practitioners of the mystical arts are feared or shunned. Again, consider the variants to handle the relative scarcity of magic items.
Common: Magic is an accepted fact of everyday life, though, like computer programming, most users don't bother learning the details of how it works. Magic portals and gates can whisk travelers “in the know” halfway across the world or to the other side of the multiverse.
High Magic: Magic and magical items are commonplace in society, perhaps even more than technology. It might be as easy to learn spellcasting as it is to learn a new language. Many tech objects are replaced with magic objects that cost the same and serve the same function, like handheld magic mirrors instead of comm units. The fantastic is never more than a stone's throw away.
No Magic: Magic of any kind doesn't exist in this world. Spells and magic effects don't function. Consider the variants to handle the lack of magic items or convert magic items to tech items using such advanced technology as to be indistinguishable from magic.
Low Magic: Magic is mysterious and taboo. The few practitioners of the mystical arts are feared or shunned. Again, consider the variants to handle the relative scarcity of magic items.
Common: Magic is an accepted fact of everyday life, though, like computer programming, most users don't bother learning the details of how it works. Magic portals and gates can whisk travelers “in the know” halfway across the world or to the other side of the multiverse.
High Magic: Magic and magical items are commonplace in society, perhaps even more than technology. It might be as easy to learn spellcasting as it is to learn a new language. Many tech objects are replaced with magic objects that cost the same and serve the same function, like handheld magic mirrors instead of comm units. The fantastic is never more than a stone's throw away.
The Multiverse
Source GM Core pg. 144
In Starfinder, the physical universe of your world is one plane within a much broader multiverse. The Planes, details how planes work and the multiverse of Starfinder, but you can fit planes into your story and world, or even build a new multiverse from scratch! Perhaps there are only two planes beyond the material Universe, diametrically opposed and fighting over mortal souls, or the multiverse consists only of a series of infinite alternate realities. The options are truly endless, limited only by your imagination and the story you want to tell.