Kenshi 2: Culture!

[lakired]

Characters in Kenshi feel rather stale and cookie cutter. Something that I think could go a long way towards both increasing immersion and individual character skill diversity would be the implementation of cultural markers that can be assigned to individual characters.

Essentially, every character would be generated with certain cultural backgrounds, in the same way that you can assign other elements to characters in the FCS.

What would culture do?

Well, for one, it could be used to designate speech patterns in dialogue. More importantly, however, it could be used as an additional vector for altering characters' skill and attribute bonuses/deficiencies. Currently this is only impacted by race, so while a farming village in the middle of the Okran heartland isn't going to be producing many scientists, in Kenshi's current iteration all of those Greenlander farmers gain a 20% bonus to it. Wouldn't it make more sense for someone who was raised in World's End to have a stronger proclivity towards science? Even within the same city, one would certainly expect there to be significant differences between, for instance, your average UC Noble and their slaves.

Racial bonuses/deficiencies would still exist, but should focus more on physical and mental attributes, rather than vocational ones. A Shek who has lived their whole life in a secluded and peaceful fishing village would likely possess far less of a martial spirit than one raised in the warrior culture of the Shek kingdom, but would be just as physically gifted. Similarly, someone from a culture whose warriors fight exclusively with polearms would likely have an advantage in learning their use over someone whose people rely on high walls and turrets to protect themselves.

To allow for multiculturalism, cultural influences can be assigned a "strength" score from 1-100, or rolled between a set range (e.g. everyone from the hub has a 40-80 to have Okranite Peasant influence, as well as 50-100 Outlaw to randomize how much each character draws from both backgrounds). Some cultures would be racially locked (for instance, Okranite culture would obviously exclude non-human races, so if a Shek is generated in the Hub, they would only gain access to the Outlaw cultural background).

Bonuses/Deficiencies are decided on a random roll based off of culture strength for every attribute/skill. E.g., if a character has Culture Okranite Peasant 60, and Culture Flotsam Ninjas 20, then they'd have a 3/4th chance of any given skill or attribute gaining the bonus from Okranite Peasant culture, and only have a 1/4th chance that it'd come from their Flotsam Ninja cultural influence instead. If a character only has one cultural influence, they'd automatically gain all of its bonuses/deficiencies regardless of its strength. If a character is not assigned a culture for any reason, a default of "Drifter" culture would be assigned to them.

Overall, this would lead to far greater diversity in character templates. All of your characters will have a far more interesting and unique slate of skills and attribute bonuses/deficiencies, and factions/cultural groups would also feel more distinct from one another.