D&D 5E A Lineage and Its Variants: The New Race Format Going Forward

[Blue]

Backgrounds can define a culture.

No, it really can't. At least in 5e. Since background is currently busy describing background. We aren't giving up being a sailor or outlander or urban bounty hunter or mercenary vet. And we know this because they have said it's going to be compatible.

Different orc cultures correlate with different Background assemblages.

No, we still need to be able to say I'm the apprentice shaman (acolyte) or my orc tribe, or the smith (guild artisan) or what have you.

Zeroing out background to replace it with culture is a non-starter in anything compatible so we know it is false.

 

[Yaarel]

@Blue

Among the prominant backgrounds of a particular orc culture, there can be Artisan, Folk Hero, and Sage. But there can also be unusual backgrounds like Cave Dweller. A specific faction, like Gruumsh, might comprise unique backgrounds.



When thinking about race and culture, I tend to keep the elf in mind because of its diversity. Any format that works for elf, can work for anything else.

An elf culture can include specific backgrounds like:

Grugach:
Cooshie Raiser
Trapper
Spear Hunter
Memory Eraser

Grey:
Griffon Rider

High:
Tree Shaper
Sword Dancer
Fey Librarian

Udadrow:
Spider Raiser
Sleep Poisoner

Aevendrow:
Tailor Mage

Avariel:
Glassteal Artisan

And so on.

 

[Blue]

Among the prominant backgrounds of a particular orc culture, there can be Artisan, Folk Hero, and Sage. But there can also be unusual backgrounds like Cave Dweller. A specific faction, like Gruumsh, might comprise unique backgrounds.

When thinking about race and culture, I tend to keep the elf in mind because of its diversity. Any format that works for elf, can work for anything else.

An elf culture can include specific backgrounds like:
... [snipped]
And so on.

Your list is moving the goalposts since we are talking about common backgrounds, not culture unique ones. So I need a Cormyrian smith, with both smith features and Cormyrian features, a Sword Coast smith, with smith and Sword Coast features, a Cormyrian sage, with the same Cormyrian culture features and sage features, a Sword Coast sage with yet again repeating Sword Coast feature and repeating sage features, a Myth Drannor Sage, with ... I have to stop. It's endless multiplication of every background (including custom background) times every culture. And "elf" isn't even a culture anymore, so everything you have above is completely bonus - it might be for particular cultures in a particular setting. It just doesn't work on multiple levels to make background do double duty as background and culture.

And, this isn't compatible with existing, which they said they want. So this doesn't work anyway.

 

[Faolyn]

Thats a lot of wasted page space roughly a page and a half, instead of half a page, and thats not including the ASI section that is boring, and the Language section that of course can no longer assume Dragonborn know Draconic, because reasons.

I mean, this is an improvement?

I'd say so. 5e has too few languages. I'm not advocating a return to 2e, where every type of dragon, giant, humanoid, and faerie had their own language, but I think that it's silly to assume that just because a creature looks reptilian that it speaks Draconic the way 5e does, or that flying bird-things all speak Auran.

I also think that Human should be a language, and Common should become a true trade tongue, not just the Human language that everyone speaks.

 

[Baron Opal II]

The Monster Manual should absolutely be a generic book. I have little interest in published campaign worlds, except where there might be an interesting concept or two. I wouldn't mind a template of some sort to modify a creature like in 3e (although that became excessive). We can have a paragraph or two for humanoids that point out how a couple things might change if their culture was primarily nomadic, seafaring, cave-dwelling, what have you. But you shouldn't need much.

I'd say so. 5e has too few languages....

I also think that Human should be a language, and Common should become a true trade tongue, not just the Human language that everyone speaks.

Emotionally I agree with you. However, in order to make it something useful rather than just a series of boolean values you need to have language trees. This would allow for understanding of dialects, partial understanding of sister languages (Romance, &c.), noting similarities in scripts, &c. It's a lot of work that you have to be conscious of in order to bring the payoff.

 

[Faolyn]

Your list is moving the goalposts since we are talking about common backgrounds, not culture unique ones. So I need a Cormyrian smith, with both smith features and Cormyrian features, a Sword Coast smith, with smith and Sword Coast features, a Cormyrian sage, with the same Cormyrian culture features and sage features, a Sword Coast sage with yet again repeating Sword Coast feature and repeating sage features, a Myth Drannor Sage, with ... I have to stop. It's endless multiplication of every background (including custom background) times every culture. And "elf" isn't even a culture anymore, so everything you have above is completely bonus - it might be for particular cultures in a particular setting. It just doesn't work on multiple levels to make background do double duty as background and culture.

And, this isn't compatible with existing, which they said they want. So this doesn't work anyway.

Well, what sort of mechanical differences would there be between a smith from Cormyr and a smith from the Sword Coast?

 

[Faolyn]

Emotionally I agree with you. However, in order to make it something useful rather than just a series of boolean values you need to have language trees. This would allow for understanding of dialects, partial understanding of sister languages (Romance, &c.), noting similarities in scripts, &c. It's a lot of work that you have to be conscious of in order to bring the payoff.

Well, D&D languages didn't really evolve the way real-world languages did. Presumably, when a god created a creature, they also created the language at the same time. There should literally be no non-coincidental similarities between, say, Gnomish and Dwarven.

Some gods also created a script to go along with the language; other gods didn't, so their creations either went without or borrowed someone else's script whole-cloth.

I'd say just go with the way GURPS does it, where you learn languages at different levels. GURPS has broken, fluent, and native (I think that's the order), and you can have different levels for written and spoken, if you like. For D&D, I'd just go with broken and fluent. Instead of getting to speak 2-3 languages, you get, say, your own language at spoken (fluent) and written (at either fluent or broken, if you want to be more "realistic" in your faux-medievalness), and, say 8 points. You can spend 1 point to get a spoken or written language at broken and 2 for fluent, and 4 points for both spoken and written at fluent. And maybe additional points depending on your Intelligence or background.

Don't know how useful most tables would find this, but we did this when I ran Ravenloft using GURPS and the players had a blast with it.

 

[Baron Opal II]

I remember that chart.

I used that roughly, although not exactly, the same time I used differing valuations for coins. Increased realism but also headaches.

Now I kind of do it by zones. You speak the language used here. If you invest in it, you can learn to read or speak the language over there. If you invest more, you can talk to the people way over there that dress really weird and have the trade good everyone lusts after.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Then don't join in. It is really that simple.

Is that what you took from that? Wow. And please take your own advice. If your instinct is to swan into a conversation with a superiority complex (always a bad idea, hot tip) and deliver a drive by comment like this, perhaps go off and take a few minutes to rethink what you were about to say and why you wanted to say it.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Well I prefer getting rid of subraces. It saved a few lines here or there, while making it often necessary to cross-reference between a PHB race and a non-PHB subrace.

Regarding jargon. When we talk informally about a "race", we are actually talking about the "lineage". Technically, a "race" only refers to the statistics that a player character can use when choosing a lineage.

You are interpolating in a lot here, based I would assume on a presumption that there has been more consistency in the stance over the last several relevant releases than I think there necessarily is. The most recent release, Fizban's, ignores the concept of "lineages" in favor of players choosing from "the human race or one of the game's fantastical races". I see no mention of lineage here. My reading would be that, at this particular moment, they are not emphasizing "lineages" over races. I find it doubtful that they've really settled everything in as neat a scheme as you propose. I think if WotC actually felt committed to a clear scheme they were happy with they'd make a public announcement laying out the scheme. Instead I think they are playing with a variety of approaches over the last year or so of releases and haven't really committed to a final

They seem to have definitely settled on floating ability score boosts. At the moment they are playing with writing up subraces as races, though this may partly have to do with this particular release where, were they to use a race-subrace scheme people would incorrectly think they were supposed to attach the subraces to the PHB Dragonborn race. They also did it in an Unearthed Arcana for the Astral Elf, but that may have to do with everything else in the document being a race rather than a subrace and it being easier to read written as a complete race. Once again I hope they do dump subraces, as I think they just made for unnecessary cross-referencing and makes it harder to evolve approaches to races over the course of an edition, but I won't be shocked if they show up again.