Creating your own group of people
An entire discussion of the sociological factors of why people create social groups is beyond the scope of this guide, but at the risk of oversimplifying and being reductive:
-
People make groups to share goals. Maybe there’s a short-term project (excavate this site), or a long-term one (establish an agricultural collective). Goal-oriented groups often share a common location, but don’t necessarily share the same beliefs. Often, they may not even share a plan for attaining their goal.
-
People make groups to share beliefs. Maybe it’s a religion, or maybe it’s the start of a city-state or other political structure. Beliefs don’t necessarily follow geography, so a common location is not always shared.
-
People make groups to share resources. Whether the resource is natural (a border river with abundant fish), unnatural (the spoils of a shared war), or something in between (a ruin of the Old Ones, rich with artifacts), people will come to an accord to ensure fair allocation, even if they are otherwise at all odds. While other groups may be built on foundations of trust and respect, resource collectives are just as often built on mutual distrust.
Some questions which may help:
- Who were the originators of the group? Did they have any different interpretations of the purpose of the group?
- Why did the group come together? Does that historical reason still bind them?
- When did the group form? Has it stayed together since then, or experienced any disruptions?
- Where is the geographical area for this group? Does that area influence anything about the group?
- How does authority work within the group?
- What divides the people within the group from everyone else?