doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Racial ability adjustments represent biological differences between species and subspecies. Culture rarely has much to do with RSIs.
Nonhuman races should not have parallels to real-life human ethnicities. However cultures most definitely do.
Because unlike species, you can draw direct parallels between fantasy and real-life cultures. Putting attribute bonuses on a culture will indicate value judgements on equivalent real-life races and cultures.
Do you really, really think it would be a good idea to put your name on, and try to market a product, in this day and age, that portrays USA Americans as mentally and physically superior to, say Africans, Europeans and Asians?
I wouldn’t put my name on a book that organized cultures as American, European, African, and Asian, firsts of all. “Asian” isn’t a culture. “American” is barely a culture.
But if we actually narrow things down, what I would do with RL cultures is create descriptions of cultures with simple names, and give examples of countries and cross-national cultures that fit that category.
So, there would be Intelligent and Strong cultures from every continent.
edit: of course, I don’t actually like the design of putting ASIs in culture, so this is academic for me, but I don’t think that such a product would be called racist by anyone but an extremely small minority, unless the descriptions and specific representation was problematic.
Last edited: