Creating Your Tribe

Part of a series about the Tribes of Outlook.

• Tribes
• Creating Your Tribe
• Current Tribes
  • The Mutati
  • The Diamond Tribe
  • The Cartographer Tribe
  • The Seil
  • The Teddybear's Listeners

When you make your character, we’d like you to define the Tribe you come from. We’ve provided 3 examples here, and if people contact us with ideas for their Tribe which they don’t mind other PCs coming from, we’ll make them available to choose from there as well.

If you like, you can design your own Tribe. When designing your own Tribe, bear in mind two things; the setting, and the limits of the system.

Your Tribe will not have access to anything unique, except an advanced AI, a natural feature, or both.

Questions for Defining your Tribe

The following seven question types are what we would like answered for the defining of tribes.

1. Quick Summary: At its core, in 3 short phrases, how would I describe this Tribe?
2. Formation: Who makes up the Tribe? Is it large, or small? Are both strains represented in it?
3. Leadership: How is the Tribe governed? Is there a single leader, or is it rule by democracy? Does one strain prevail? Is an AI involved in leadership decisions?
4. Reputation: How is your Tribe perceived? Are they thought of as warring, or peaceful, extroverted or introverted? This links to everything else, but is very important.
5. Religion: What do members of your Tribe believe in, and how do they worship it? Is there something about the nature of their belief which is different from all the other Tribes?
6. Defining Trait: What makes this group special? This can be quite small (the Mutati) or make a big change to playing from these groups (the Cartographers and the Diamond). Please bear in mind the aforementioned limits when defining this.
7. Aesthetic: Although the idea of “uniform” is long dead, what accessory, or colour, links members of your Tribe?

Limits to Defining Your Tribe

• THE E&D POLICY.
• Your Tribe cannot show prejudice based on sex, gender, transgender status, sexual or romantic orientation, race, or disability.
• As a rule of thumb, your Tribe should not discriminate on the grounds of any characteristic which is also the basis of OC discrimination, but if you are in any doubt as to whether your ideas will violate this policy, feel free to chat to a ref about this.
• As mentioned on the Religion and Spirituality page, no religion is allowed to parody real-world religion, or to mimic it closely enough to be distinguishable at a glance.
• They aren’t slavers. They can be rowdy, and have a defined feud, but slavery does not happen in the outlook.
• They can have a feud, and they might be quite willing to raid, but remember that a Tribe that is consistently aggressive will find itself in trouble quickly.
• No mimicking of characteristics from real world ethnically defined Tribes.
• No cannibalism; this is a system decision that cannibalism is not going to be one of the narrative devices we will be playing with.
• They can’t have actual contact with any deity they choose to worship - unless it is a natural phenomenon/AI, or they simply believe they have had dreams.
• Although you may define an Advanced AI, with ref approval, and say whether it partially houses or is unhoused, you may not declare that your PC is going to get an Advanced AI housed in their ka. That’s the type of thing we want your character arc to centre on.