Going through the laid out PDF for The Serpent, I found myself wondering if this kind of table should be a bigger part of campaigns and settings.

This page shows three cultures with an at-a-glance overview of things like... what will they offer you to drink if you visit, what might they be having for dinner, what is expected romantic/sexual behaviour, if someone is sporty then what sport are they into.... The idea is that referees/GMs can drop in details to make each culture distinct. The referee already has stats for the society's military weapons, and maybe a map of where they live... now this is a kind of cheat-sheet for behaviour.

The aim, of course, is to help referees easily portray distinctive cultures. (In this case, for example, you'll notice the three cultures all live on spaceships / barren planets / asteroids, so there is no spare agricultural capacity for beer, wine, etc. - their beverages are more spartan.)

The question is... is this useful? (Or only to me, because of how I run games?) And if it is useful, then what else should we have on the table? If there were a second page, what else would referees want to know?

This is too late for The Serpent (we're finalising layout now, and Late Pledges end and the Backers Survey goes out at the end of this week), but for future campaigns and settings... I'm trying to work out if this work out if this is useful, and if so what more we should add.

Any thoughts?

A "Culture Checklist" for a society or community...?