Subcultures

A subculture is a people inside a culture, such as the merchant houses or the knightly courts of a culture. Players only see the top culture. Townstead uses subcultures for:

• clothing, through the subculture’s own clothing;
• conversations, through a voice that lists the subculture. See Voices & Cultures;
• which forms of government a town founds, and which subculture its people drift toward.

Making a Subculture

A subculture is a culture file with parent:

{
  "schema": "townstead:culture/v1",
  "parent": "examplepack:fisherfolk",
  "name": "Whalers",
  "spirit": { "nautical": 1.0, "martial": 0.4 },
  "forms": [
    { "profile": "examplepack:harbour_guild", "weight": 3 }
  ]
}

A subculture can have a subculture of its own. The top culture is the one with no parent.

What a Subculture Takes from Its Parent

A field that a subculture leaves out comes from its parent:

Field	From the parent
name	Always. Players see the top culture’s name, so a subculture’s own name does not show.
naming, naming_tradition	When the subculture has neither.
settlement_names, faction_names	When the subculture leaves the field out.
demonym	When the subculture has none.
clothing	Each part (skins, types, sets, palette, livery) that the subculture leaves out.
spirit, forms	Never. These belong to the subculture only.

Spirit

spirit maps Community Spirit axes to weights, from 0 up. A village that is strong in those axes draws its people toward the subculture.

The axes are nautical, pastoral, martial, scholar, industrious, commercial, tourism, magical, spiritual, haunted, mining, natural and clandestine.

Townstead measures how well a village fits a subculture:

fit = sum of (axis weight × how far the village's share of the axis is above an ordinary village's)

An ordinary village fits no subculture, so it draws nobody. A village with many docks and fishing buildings fits a subculture with "nautical": 1.0.

Forms

forms lists the founding profiles that the subculture’s towns use. Each form of government has its own founding profile.

Field	Required	Description
profile	Yes	A founding profile ID.
weight	No	How often this subculture’s towns use the profile, compared with other subcultures. 0 or more. The default is 1. A weight of 0 is ignored.

The same profile can appear under more than one subculture.

Founding a Village

When a village is founded on its own, Townstead picks a founding profile. A profile that a fitting subculture uses is more likely:

profile weight × (1 + 2 × best fit of a subculture that uses the profile)

Townstead then picks the village’s subculture from the subcultures that use that profile:

weight of a subculture = form weight × (0.25 + fit)

When no subculture uses the profile, the village takes the top culture. When a profile is applied with a command, or when a player founds a village, the village takes the culture that the profile or the player names.

Drift Between Subcultures

Every day, a village pulls its people toward the subcultures that suit it:

• a subculture whose spirit the village fits;
• a subculture whose forms include the village’s founding profile.

So a fisherfolk town that builds many docks draws its people toward the whalers over the years. A culture with no fitting subculture keeps its people as they are. See Mixed Cultures & Drift.

Switchboard

The Switchboard lists only top cultures. A subculture follows the setting and the rate of its top culture.