The Human Race has no Culture!

[Manbearcat]

I would love to see some "cultural traits", but I'd want to be sure that Wizards takes their time to develop actual cultures of their own(perhaps off existing D&D cultures), and not just create stereotypical "Native", "black", "asian" and so on BS like that.

Honestly, I don't think this would be very difficult at all. A rudimentary understanding of Anthropology would allow a designer to specify cultural traits and embed them within the mechanics of a "Cultural Background". Anthropological studies of historical cultures have revealed that they are primarily responses to pragmatic necessity of the most fundamental needs:

- Dealing with specific climactic conditions/topographical extremes.
- Development of means of resource harvesting and distribution.
- Raiding/pillaging when available resources were deficient or technological means to extract them unavailable.
- Focused/shaped by a few powerful, charismatic leaders.
- After this point, once the culture is stabilized, economy and luxury concerns become more than just afterthoughts...they become central.

Nail each of those down and you have your Cultures - Their traits and the skill packages that come with them.

 

[Sunseeker]

Honestly, I don't think this would be very difficult at all. A rudimentary understanding of Anthropology would allow a designer to specify cultural traits and embed them within the mechanics of a "Cultural Background". Anthropological studies of historical cultures have revealed that they are primarily responses to pragmatic necessity of the most fundamental needs:

- Dealing with specific climactic conditions/topographical extremes.
- Development of means of resource harvesting and distribution.
- Raiding/pillaging when available resources were deficient or technological means to extract them unavailable.
- Focused/shaped by a few powerful, charismatic leaders.
- After this point, once the culture is stabilized, economy and luxury concerns become more than just afterthoughts...they become central.

Nail each of those down and you have your Cultures - Their traits and the skill packages that come with them.

Yeah basically, and I think there are enough developed cultures in the D&D multiverse to provide a great deal of possible "cultures" for humans.

 

[Arytiss]

Yeah basically, and I think there are enough developed cultures in the D&D multiverse to provide a great deal of possible "cultures" for humans.

Certainly, but which of the many, many cultures is appropriate for core? And which of them will allow any individual player to say "yup, that's a human alright. I'd recognise it anywhere."

The problem isn't that humans don't have a culture, it's that they have too many.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

In 3x I developed house rules to combat this, seperating the racial benefits into genetic packages and cultural packages. The main focus of the rules was to great a wider and diverse set of characters. It worked very well and happened to fix the half-race, reincarnation, polymorph, and Bane weapon issues...

Well, not completely but pretty well. It did handle the eberron nationality issue..which was my main focus.


Instead of just race you would pick your race and a culture, mix and match to your hearts content. Its posted somewhere back in the legacy forums.

So..is it doable? Yes. Do I think 5e will add culture to the character generation? No.. mainly because culture and background step on each other.

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[Olgar Shiverstone]

Cultures should neither be a subrace nor in the core rules.

Cultures belong in campaign setting books or the DM's own campaigns. Mechanically distinct races should be different races or significant variations thereof -- and I don't think humans need that. They're the "generalist" race; why should they get specialists, too?

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Olgar Shiverstone, I agree that cultures belong in campaign books, but if the core rules have 'generic' cultures and a mechanical holder for culture rules then its easier for the campaign books to implement.

This would also remove some of the 'prestige class' or alternate classes that are added to the game in order to fit into a campaign. For example... the Harpers. Or in Ebberron each nation and house could have its own culture block. It is virtually impossible for a campaign book to emphasis distinct cultural differences that emulate the stories written in books when every PC Dwarf has the same preference for plate mail despite one of them coming from the sea raiders of Lhazzar, where plate mail is a 5' push to a death sentence.