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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DammitVictor" data-source="post: 9799387" data-attributes="member: 6750908">No, that is exactly what doesn't work. It is this exact fungibility, that everyone is striving for, that separates all of the "lego bricks" of your character from each other and the shape they're supposed to be representing. You are a reducing a "dwarven Waterdhavian blacksmith" into 1) a dwarf, 2) from Waterdeep, 3) who works iron.Meaning his dwarven-ness has no bearing on his upbringing in Waterdeep and the way he works iron, his upbringing in Waterdeep doesn't inform his identity as a dwarf or his career as blacksmith, and his blacksmithing doesn't relate to being a dwarf or being from Waterdeep.This is what makes all of those decision points meaningless.You've reduced "being a dwarf" to nothing but "size, speed, and senses" by removing everything else from it. There are no dwarven traditions, no dwarven identities, literally nothing but what you have (narrowly and dogmatically) defined as "biological"-- I'll bet you're explicitly and deliberately excluding the possibility of psychological or magical differences-- and any concept that growing up as a dwarf in Waterdeep is different than being an elf or a halfling in Waterdeep or that there's any difference in blacksmithing between dwarves and elves and/or between Waterdhavians and Dalish.There are no physiological or spiritual reasons why dwarves favor axes and hammers, and heavy armor? There are no cosmological reasons why dwarves worship dwarven gods, even when living among humans? There's no sociological or cultural pressure to retain their ancestral language, even if only for liturgical purposes?You think you're adding detail, but you're effectively erasing it-- by dividing this axis of identity into multiple different, unrelated choices, you're trivializing all of them. You are, ironically and paradoxically, making them even less diverse than the human complexity you're trying to emulate.And then-- generally speaking, not you in particular-- complaining that they're trivial.You're right that it's weak tea, so stop pouring water into it.Orrrrrr... ?You can leave the rules-- the definitions-- simple and broad and note that while sometimes unique individuals bend/break the rules, that's only a meaningful decision when the rules are actually considered valid. Your special, wonderful player characters can defy some of the rules, some of the time, as long as you're aware that you can't just ignore them. Even the rules you don't follow are part of who your character is.Your note about "default settings"? I couldn't agree with you more. D&D has always had a setting implied by its rules-- whether it was explicit or not-- and I wish the game would do a much better job of pointing them out, and allowing those implied setting details to vary between published  (and homebrew!) settings.</blockquote>

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