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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kinematics" data-source="post: 8064660" data-attributes="member: 6932123">I want to take a closer look at the Culture mechanic idea.First, do not conflate the Culture mechanic idea with the real term, 'culture'.  A game mechanic is not the same as the real-life thing, even if we try to interpret it through that lens. It's the same as looking at Strength or Intelligence as reflective of their real-life counterparts.  There are certainly similarities, and there's a broad parallel intent, but they are not the same thing.  Making assertions based on the assumption that they are the same thing is arguing in bad faith.First, what would be the purpose of Culture, as a mechanic?Well, the preliminary idea was to split off subrace and other non-genetic bonuses from the Race selection.  Background is another mechanic that also does this, in a vague, handwavey sort of way, but doesn't cover quite the same ideas, and would have an exponential explosion of options if it were to absorb the differences. That's not acceptable.The set of genetic racial characteristics (height, speed, age, darkvision, etc) is fairly easy to establish, with the possible exception of racial stat bonuses (which are being argued elsewhere in this thread).  This provides one boundary on the definition of Culture: It does not affect aspects of character design which are genetically intrinsic.Background is less well-defined.  However almost all backgrounds can be described as "a thing you chose to do in life, before you chose to develop [Class]".  Soldier, Outlander, Criminal, Sailor, etc.  Noble goes against this trend, as that's generally something you're born into, and Acolyte is ambiguous, as that could be an adult choice, or you could have been raised in that environment.But largely we can consider a pretty reasonable boundary on the Background side of things as "a thing you chose to do once you were old enough to make your own choices". (Although there are exceptions even there, such as conscripted soldiers, it serves the purpose of defining the boundary.)That leaves the window between when you were born, and when you were old enough to set out on your own, as the period where you developed based on the Culture you were a part of.  This is not something that you (as a character) chose, but rather what was imposed upon you.  This is the broad period of learning how to Social as you grow up.As an abstract, that's fine. But how do you define individual instances?  Dwarf culture vs Waterdeep culture vs nomadic culture?For casual shorthand purposes, any of the above might work, but for the published rules you want to be as clean and abstract as possible.  You don't want to reference Waterdeep, because what if you're running the campaign in Greyhawk? You don't want to reference dwarves, because what if your world doesn't have dwarves?So you have to be able to name things in abstract ways, that can be applied to a broad variety of settings.  And then each setting can detail what sorts of cultures can be used for each area.  For example, you aren't likely to get a traditional noble culture in nomadic orc tribes.In addition, what sort of benefits do you gain from choosing a given Culture?  What does the Culture mechanic represent?As a first pass at trying to define it, I'd say:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Culture does not raise attributes. It is almost entirely about social integration.  Your stats may develop during this period, but it's basically your core stats (rolled or bought), which means the Culture does not have an outside effect on them.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Culture develops common skills and tools associated with a given cultural group, and perhaps some training in a subset of weapons or armor.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Culture would form the foundation on how you interact socially. It is likely to define how you approach social conflict in game the majority of the time. (As opposed to Class, which tends to define how you approach physical conflict.)</li> </ul>The social aspect of this I think is key to making Culture its own mechanic.  D&D is horrible at managing social conflict.  You have a handful of skills under Cha which basically do all the work. Otherwise, players tend to try to force their Class to be the barometer of how to deal with people, even though the classes have virtually no mechanical support for such.Classes are almost exclusively designed for combat.  Despite the stated intent that all classes be able to participate in the social pillar of the game, there's basically nothing that actually provides any such support.  Instead, all social interaction relies on how much a given class can put into Cha as an attribute, along with its skills.I would argue that Culture is first and foremost an expression of how a character learned how to interact socially, and that the inclusion of Culture as a mechanic opens the doorway to a much more robust social conflict system.While the separation of Culture from Race is nice in a "tidy the game mechanics" sort of way, it does not provide enough mechanical lifting power for the game to be worth that separation if that's all you're going to do.  However if it opens the doorway that allows every character to be more effective in participating with the social piller, that would absolutely be worth developing.This might need its own thread.</blockquote>

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