D&D General 5E species with further choices and differences

[Corinnguard]

What, in any way whatsoever, does this say about your culture?

Backgrounds don't really say anything about culture specifically. They do, however, lend themselves to your character's origin as they represent who the character was before they left to become an adventurer. They also can be found in every culture in a given setting. And unless it's otherwise noted in the setting, a scribe in Waterdeep is going to be the same as a scribe in Neverwinter.

I will admit 5.24 isn't the best system, but I understand why WotC opted for keeping culture having limited mechanical impact to prevent having to create unique culture traits for every region, subrace, or lineage.

The 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting tried to introduce culture by making them regional. There was a table (pages 28-32) in the FRCS that broke the continent of Faerun down into regions. Each region gave a character a language they automatically knew and a list of bonus languages they could learn. They offered up regional feats and regional equipment too (magical and mundane).

For instance, if your character hailed from the Dalelands, they would automatically know how to speak Chondathan and could learn Elven, Damaran, Giant, Gnome, Orc or Sylvan as bonus languages. They could also pick up the Blooded, Forester, Luck of Heroes, Militia or Strong Soul as a regional feat. In terms of equipment, someone from the Dalelands could get a Mighty Composite Longbow (+2), a Mighty Composite Shortbow (+2), a weapon (Longbow, shortspear or a quarterstaff), or a Potion of Cure Moderate Wounds.

I can imagine Level Up taking the Dalelands region and turning it into a Dalelands culture. Someone from the Dalelands would be proficient in the Longbow, Shortspear and Quarterstaff, regardless of their class. They would know how to read, write and sign in the human dialect of Chondathan as well as one or two of the above bonus languages. And they would be proficient in at least two skills.

The Forgotten Realms in 3e also had several books covering each region of Faerun.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

How do you put culture into the PHB without assigning a default setting?

You ask this as though 5e does not have a default setting...because it pretty clearly does.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Those are the institutions that spread multiculturally, like farming, writing, and are in core rules intended for multi settings.

I also expect official settings to detail backgrounds that are unique to local cultures.

And the DM can be creating backgrounds for such local institutions as well. The design space comes with social connections known thru the background and at least implies noncombat resources thru these personal contacts.


Origins includes languages, skills, technologies, abilities developed thru experienced, all taking place among specific groups and transgenerational traditions. All of this is culture. It is up to the local settings to detail local cultures, and regional settings to detail regional culturres.

So...when you said "I consider backgrounds to be the participation in various cultural institutions.", what did that mean?

Because that doesn't look like participating in "cultural institutions" other than in a purely instrumental sense. Because...all people by definition have a culture. The background doesn't actually add anything cultural that you don't have by being a sapient being that interacts with other sapient beings. If that's all 5e backgrounds do, they're not actually expressing anything whatever about, y'know, culture.

All cultures have cultural institutions. If all you're saying is that backgrounds imply that cultural institutions exist, then they've done genuinely nothing whatosever. We know cultural institutions exist. It's completely entailed by the existence of people, plural, living in a single place.

Like I'm genuinely grappling here with what you could possibly have been saying by that that was more than this, and I cannot come up with anything. What does that statement mean?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Backgrounds don't really say anything about culture specifically.

Okay. Folks have repeatedly said they should, or said things about how backgrounds somehow invoke culture.

If they do not actually say anything about culture, then either those people are deeply mistaken, or they're presenting falsehoods, or they're in some way creating something that simply is not there, or some other thing, but the culture part is not there.

They do, however, lend themselves to your character's origin as they represent who the character was before they left to become an adventurer. They also can be found in every culture in a given setting. And unless it's otherwise noted in the setting, a scribe in Waterdeep is going to be the same as a scribe in Neverwinter.

That last bit was exactly my point, so I'm not sure where you're going with this. I was specifically pointing out that these things are perfectly fungible. Every culture has scribes, so there is nothing cultural about being a scribe. Hence, the Scribe background does not and cannot communicate anything about culture--because it works identically well in every single culture that has any degree of writing ability, which every civic culture is going to have. (As long as we allow things like quipu to count as "writing", which we absolutely should.) The same logic applies to every other background.

The 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting tried to introduce culture by making them regional. There was a table (pages 28-32) in the FRCS that broke the continent of Faerun down into regions. Each region gave a character a language they automatically knew and a list of bonus languages they could learn. They offered up regional feats and regional equipment too (magical and mundane).

For instance, if your character hailed from the Dalelands, they would automatically know how to speak Chondathan and could learn Elven, Damaran, Giant, Gnome, Orc or Sylvan as bonus languages. They could also pick up the Blooded, Forester, Luck of Heroes, Militia or Strong Soul as a regional feat. In terms of equipment, someone from the Dalelands could get a Mighty Composite Longbow (+2), a Mighty Composite Shortbow (+2), a weapon (Longbow, shortspear or a quarterstaff), or a Potion of Cure Moderate Wounds.

I can imagine Level Up taking the Dalelands region and turning it into a Dalelands culture. Someone from the Dalelands would be proficient in the Longbow, Shortspear and Quarterstaff, regardless of their class. They would know how to read, write and sign in the human dialect of Chondathan as well as one or two of the above bonus languages. And they would be proficient in at least two skills.

The Forgotten Realms in 3e also had several books covering each region of Faerun.

Respectfully, this doesn't really respond to my frustration. I'm aware that 3e (and prior!) editions had lots to say about such cultures. "You can thus adapt this into 5e yourself!" is not a response to the criticism, "5e, as published, failed to include culture in a meaningful way." If anything, it is an admission that that's precisely what happened, because we not only have to invent our own rules, we have to go back to previous editions to even get material enough to work with!

 

[Remathilis]

You ask this as though 5e does not have a default setting...because it pretty clearly does.

Really? Pray tell which? Greyhawk? Forgotten Realms? I could see the argument for that in 2014 and the Realms, but even then the core didn't give enough info to develop cultures with. Unless you are referring again to "elf" being a culture and we're back to where we started. Might as well give all elves longsword proficiency again.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Unless you are referring again to "elf" being a culture and we're back to where we started. Might as well give all elves longsword proficiency again.

you can have species cultures without the assumption that every elf is born knowing how to wield a longsword and speak elvish, that's the point of it being a culture and not part of their species entry, it's what they teach, learn and value in elf civilizations, and you can even have multiple elven cultures so that elf civilization isn't one big monoculture across the world, but raise an elf outside those cultures and they're not going to know those things.

 

[Horwath]

you can have species cultures without the assumption that every elf is born knowing how to wield a longsword and speak elvish, that's the point of it being a culture and not part of their species entry, it's what they teach, learn and value in elf civilizations, and you can even have multiple elven cultures so that elf civilization isn't one big monoculture across the world, raise an elf outside those cultures and they're not going to know those things.

this.

skills, tools, languages, masteries, feats are great at describing background/culture.

species should focus on innate abilities;
darkvision, move speed/move modes, natural weapons/armor, some skills/expertise(perception, insight, deception, persuasion, intimidation, athletics, acrobatics), innate spells. other sensory methods: scent, blindsight, tremoresense,

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Really? Pray tell which? Greyhawk? Forgotten Realms? I could see the argument for that in 2014 and the Realms, but even then the core didn't give enough info to develop cultures with. Unless you are referring again to "elf" being a culture and we're back to where we started. Might as well give all elves longsword proficiency again.

Forgotten Realms. I thought that was quite obvious. Given, y'know, a third or more of all the books really are about the FR and only incidentally about anywhere else. And the fact that the vast majority of adventure paths and such published by WotC are specifically set in the Forgotten Realms.

 

[Corinnguard]

this.

skills, tools, languages, masteries, feats are great at describing background/culture.

species should focus on innate abilities;
darkvision, move speed/move modes, natural weapons/armor, some skills/expertise(perception, insight, deception, persuasion, intimidation, athletics, acrobatics), innate spells. other sensory methods: scent, blindsight, tremoresense,

This is happily covered in Level Up. If it's something you are born with, it's a part of your heritage. If it's something you have to learn in order to use it effectively, then it's going to be in either your background and/or your culture.

 

[Remathilis]

you can have species cultures without the assumption that every elf is born knowing how to wield a longsword and speak elvish, that's the point of it being a culture and not part of their species entry, it's what they teach, learn and value in elf civilizations, and you can even have multiple elven cultures so that elf civilization isn't one big monoculture across the world, raise an elf outside those cultures and they're not going to know those things.

But you have to root those cultures in the world. For example, gold dwarves are more isolated, have a great warrior culture, worships the dwarf God of war, have waged a war against aberrations and speaks the languages under dark species, that makes sense IN FAERUN ONLY. But you can't put gold dwarves as a culture in the PHB and expect it to apply to Oerth, Krynn and Ravenloft. Which means you either create a generic monoculture for the PHB, force a fourth setting book to complete your character, or set a specific setting up as the default PHB setting. Pathfinder and Tails of the Valiant can do that easily as the can use Golarion and Midguard respectively. Even if both settings are painfully generic, they still root in the world. D&D has no such setting (much to it's loss) so it either needs to make hypothetical cultures to places that don't actually exist or pick a real setting like they did.