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

[Yaarel]

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?

What do you be consider a "culture" to be?

A group that shares a language? Background grants this.

An Amercan athlete excels in American football? A background can do this for a modern US setting.

A culture is made out of disparate institutions, shared group traditions, such as popular football sports. Not every American knows how to play football, but in an American group there will be a higher frequency of individuals who do. Not every American plays or likes football.

If it is that all Norse get Cold damage resistance, but all Americans get a bonus to Intelligence, that is racism, not culture.

So what do you mean, exactly, by the word "culture".

There is no such thing as a cultural "essence". Not even every French likes wine and cheese.

A culture is like a crate of lego pieces. The experience of a particular individual character is like assembling a lego structure from pieces out of this crate, to present the experiences that the character happens to have run into while growing up.

Each background is a handful of lego pieces. This is precisely how reallife cultures work: skills gained while participating in the traditions of specific groups in specific places.

 

[Corinnguard]

A group that shares a language? Background grants this.

Which background in 5e grants the character a bonus language?

 

[Yaarel]

Which background in 5e grants the character a bonus language?

Every "origin" grants three languages: typically (but not necessarily) Common, a native tongue that one grew up speaking, and an additional language relating to background experience. Additionally, the proficiencies gained from the background can supply a language proficiency.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Which background in 5e grants the character a bonus language?

not supporting Yarrel's point, just responding to the question, but even amongst the base PHB backgrounds (14' at any rate) there are a good few backgrounds which do give a free language, some even give multiple. but yeah i would not consider 'a group that shares the same language' to be any sort of adequate definition for what a culture is.

 

[Yaarel]

@EzekielRaiden @Corinnguard

I dont have the book Heroes of Faerun yet. But based on what others have said, it supplies backgrounds (with unique mechanics) to represent a unique local culture. Example, the initiates of the Dragon Cult have a special feat. This distinctive cultural institution trains secrecy and tracking skills.

This is exactly the kind of local cultural options that I expect an official setting to supply, and apparently Heroes of Faerun does this.

Even when using multicultural backgrounds from core rules, these are opportunities for the DM and player to negotiate ways to make them culturally specific by grounding them within a certain place and group of people. These narrative (non mechanical) rules supply unique culturally specific resources. Even a DM that is less confident about mechanically tweaking a background should be doing things like granting an advantage to History skill checks when referring to a characters own cultural background.

Finally, a DM can and should be working with the player to decide on specific mechanics that represent the biography of a character.

 

[CreamCloud0]

i think if i had to give an off the top of my head definition of what defines a culture it would probably be something like 'A specific collection of shared knowledge, values and traditions unique to a certain group of peoples'

 

[Corinnguard]

i think if i had to give an off the top of my head definition of what defines a culture it would probably be something like 'A specific collection of shared knowledge, values and traditions unique to a certain group of peoples'

According to Wikipedia, Culture is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, attitudes, and habits of individuals in these groups. So, your definition of culture is pretty close to what Wikipedia initially mentions about it.

Like everything else in 5e, culture follows the Keep It Short and Simple rule. Give it some mechanical benefits and lore for the players to chew on, and no more.

 

[Yaarel]

i think if i had to give an off the top of my head definition of what defines a culture it would probably be something like 'A specific collection of shared knowledge, values and traditions unique to a certain group of peoples'

The implication that every member of a group has the same characteristic is already going beyond reallife cultures. Thinking in "stereotypes" is not what a culture is, academically speaking.

I expect a regional culture to speak the same language, and a local institutional culture to speak the same jargon, but even these are not always the case.

 

[Yaarel]

According to Wikipedia, Culture is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, attitudes, and habits of individuals in these groups. So, your definition of culture is pretty close to what Wikipedia initially mentions about it.

Yes, but not every member of a culture is knowledgeable about every belief, art, law, custom, capability, attitude, or habit that happens to exist within the diversity of a culture.

A culture is like a buffet where people get different helpings from the traditions supplied.

 

[Corinnguard]

Yes, but not every member of a culture is knowledgeable about every belief, art, law, custom, capability, attitude, or habit that happens to exist within the diversity of a culture.

And this is one of the reasons why the DM will ask a player for a skill check. Individually, people aren't very knowledgeable about everything that makes up the culture they live in. We know bits and pieces on any given topic and will defer to someone more knowledgeable than ourselves.

A culture is like a buffet where people get different helpings from the traditions supplied.

More like a gestalt created through a shared consensus.