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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9799576" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Oh, most certainly.It is an improvement over the idea that because you're an elf, you 100% always have one specific culture and never anything else.Yes, this makes culture less unique. That is completely intentional, and as long as it is done knowingly and judiciously, it won't ruin anything. It will instead enhance, because now you can have an elf who grew up in Darrowdelve and thus is a hard-working hard-drinking swearing sweaty miner, and a dwarf who grew up in one of the surviving cities of lost Cendriane and thus has an ultra refined palate (meaning: super picky and doesn't like spicy food), an eye for quality goods, and a lot of poetry and song. And you can even have a person whose mother and father come from two different culture strongly associated with different particular species, e.g. a dwarf father from Darrowdelve culture and an elf mother from Cendriane Exile culture.This recognizes the complexity and texture of the cultural space. It, of course, requires more care and subtlety than "you're an elf, you speak elf speak, you eat elf food, you always have more in common with other elves than anyone who isn't an elf, you can't be an elf and not have elf culture, and understanding the ways of non-elves is beyond you"--which is what comes from the idea that race/species IS culture.IRL societies are not ethnostates, and trying to manufacture an ethnostate always requires dictatorial, oppressive policies. Some dragonborn will be raised by orcs, and learn those orcs' ways. Some elves will emigrate to, and assimilate into, a human-dominant society. Having mechanics that can reflect this is more interesting than mechanics which deny that such a possibility could ever occur.And if you don't want to bother with all that? Then just roll with the default. Every high elf is a Cendriane Exile. Every Dragonborn is a Scion of Arhosia. Every Tiefling is Turathi. Every human is Nerathi. Etc. It costs you precisely nothing in terms of keeping things simple, unless you consider having to speak the sentence "Please stick to default/expected culture" as being a cost, which I do not. But having this space open presents a world of possibilities and embraces the much more realistic situation, and I'm actually using that word intentionally because this is how reality works, where a person's phenotype is not particularly indicative of their culture and vice versa.</blockquote>

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