Keldryn
Adventurer
I re-read the playtest materials and I acknowledge your point here; I missed that part of the Stonecunning ability and assumed that it was just a version of what previous editions had that didn't require a check. The abilities to determine approximate depth underground, to retrace a path, and even to determine the approximate age of stonework could all fall fit well with the dwarf's innate magical connection with stone.
If a player in my game wanted to play a dwarf that for some reason had no exposure to dwarven culture or to stonework, I'd apply some DM's common sense and say that he can't identify the culture but could do some other exploration-related task of approximately the same value. The dwarf as written is probably fine for 95% of the dwarf characters that my players want to make, and I'd rather not clutter up the rules for the sake of the other 5%. I do web development for a living, and one of my frustrations with content management systems (such as Drupal) is how the need for accommodating the marginal cases where perhaps maybe somebody somewhere might want to potentially do something possibly different makes the whole system bulkier than it needs to be to accomplish the vast majority of tasks.
There's a point of diminishing returns when it comes to this stuff, and I'd rather use my judgement to tweak a few abilities here and there when the situation calls for it than have another subset of rules to handle marginal cases. Maybe the desire of D&D players to be dwarves who can't identify the culture which created a stonework structure because it doesn't fit their life story is more prevalent than I think. What do I know?
Sure, that's exactly what I was saying.
And yet still doesn't have the cultural resonance of Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. I don't have any data, but my gut feeling is that the Drizzt novels have a much higher ratio of gamers to non-gamers in their readership than do LotR, Harry Potter, or any number of other non-D&D-franchised fantasy books.
It doesn't need fixing, it just needs a reasonable DM. In case it needs to be said, I'm not in favor of designing the rules to reduce the impact of poor DMing. I find it just results in more rules to remember and the DM still sucks.
Fair enough, and like I said, a reasonable DM would accommodate you and maybe even create a seafaring, jungle-dwelling dwarf culture for you to be from. At a certain point, however, I'd have to ask why you want to play a dwarf at all. If I want to play a dwarf who fights with swords and bows, dabbles in magic, is friends with the animals, and loves to frolic in the forest, one might ask why I don't just play an elf instead.
I'd like to see that too, and the modules which expand the came to include the most popular styles of play (i.e. emulating other editions) should be available on Day One, whether they are appendices in the core rulebooks or separate products.
But for me, the game can be open and flexible enough to allow this sort of thing without having explicit rules for it. A few guidelines should cover most situations. Substitute one exploration-focused ability for another that should apply with roughly the same frequency. Only give a combat-focused ability or bonus in exchange for another combat-focused ability.
