Cultural texture
Also said as Customs, Everyday culture, Anthropology
The ordinary habits that make a people particular: what they eat, how they greet each other, what is rude, what they swear by. It is mostly small and rarely explained.
Without it, every town is the same town with different signs. Details that nobody explains make a culture feel as if it existed before you came in, and does not need you.
Say it
“Give the river people three customs players will see without any explanation: they never say goodbye, they pay in salt, and they leave one seat empty at every table.”
Where you’ve seen it
Morrowind's Dunmer live in hollowed-out giant crab shells and grown mushroom towers, travel on enormous insects, and speak of living gods, and the game does not stop to explain it as strange.
Not to be confused with faction
A faction is a group that wants something. Culture is how people live whatever they want, and one culture can hold several rival factions.