D&D General consideration on sapient folk having two distinct base cultures?

[Mind of tempest]

I think you can hack it. First, I'd give choices. For instance, say that all human cultures automatically have Prodigy or Skilled as a choice, and then each sub-culture grants one or two other options--like Mounted Combatant or Mobile for your Mongol example. Or make up new feats for each culture. As long as there's a choice, you won't have the problem with someone getting stuck with a useless feat.

you also have foot-based nomads as were found over Africa, Australia and north America pre reintroduction of horses.
then you get the wagon baed ones who I forget the names of.

 

[Redwizard007]

Can it be done? Sure. Can it be done with reasonable page count, balance, cultural sensitivity and interesting options for players? I'm less sure, but I'd love to see some attempts.

Fluff Example: traditional representations of D&D dwarves are the sedentary culture. Nomadic dwarves are more like a commune that moves from one ore deposit to the next, settling for a human lifespan to mine the ore and work their trades. No kings or heirarchy, just a will to contribute to the collective and be a productive member of society. As a mine begins to peter out they send prospectors out to search for their next "camp."

This is a built in excuse for abandoned fortifications connected to "dungeons" across hilly regions.

I'd probably add cultural feat choices or bonus skills available exclusively to either race/culture combinations or across all races along the settled/nomadic breakdown. Bonus feats wouldn't be out of the question, but they may alter the balancing of encounters at low levels. If this were something baked into a new edition it would be easier to do.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Can it be done? Sure. Can it be done with reasonable page count, balance, cultural sensitivity and interesting options for players? I'm less sure, but I'd love to see some attempts.

Fluff Example: traditional representations of D&D dwarves are the sedentary culture. Nomadic dwarves are more like a commune that moves from one ore deposit to the next, settling for a human lifespan to mine the ore and work their trades. No kings or heirarchy, just a will to contribute to the collective and be a productive member of society. As a mine begins to peter out they send prospectors out to search for their next "camp."

This is a built in excuse for abandoned fortifications connected to "dungeons" across hilly regions.

I'd probably add cultural feat choices or bonus skills available exclusively to either race/culture combinations or across all races along the settled/nomadic breakdown. Bonus feats wouldn't be out of the question, but they may alter the balancing of encounters at low levels. If this were something baked into a new edition it would be easier to do.

for dwarves I am wondering what the other culture would even be as they have never really had a second thing to them, even tolkiens elves have something of a split, but dwarves never had.

but dwarven strip mining locusts would be an utterly scary thing to have to deal with, the thousand clans of dust.

it is more I am considering it as a basic set of templates to create basic depth to a race and making new fuller subdivisions as need or desired.

 

[Faolyn]

you also have foot-based nomads as were found over Africa, Australia and north America pre reintroduction of horses.
then you get the wagon baed ones who I forget the names of.

Travelers as a generic term, IIRC, assuming you mean people like the Romani or the Irish Travelers.

In Level Up, there are (as of the playtests, at least) a couple of different possible nomadic cultures. Some of the abilities include proficiencies with Animal Handling, proficiency with land vehicles and the ability to repair land vehicles or even to jerry-rig land vehicles, proficiency in Survival to indicate the ability to live off the land, and the ability to get your mount to mow down creatures that are in your way. I don't know how much of that will be reflected in the final product.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Travelers as a generic term, IIRC, assuming you mean people like the Romani or the Irish Travelers.

In Level Up, there are (as of the playtests, at least) a couple of different possible nomadic cultures. Some of the abilities include proficiencies with Animal Handling, proficiency with land vehicles and the ability to repair land vehicles or even to jerry-rig land vehicles, proficiency in Survival to indicate the ability to live off the land, and the ability to get your mount to mow down creatures that are in your way. I don't know how much of that will be reflected in the final product.

interesting might be useful, what would settled have instead?

 

[Oofta]

To me, separate cultures are represented by backgrounds, if that. It's not like everyone from ancient Mesopotamia had all that much in common. Nomads might be a little more likely to have similar skills, but even then there would have been division of labor and different people would have had different strengths and weaknesses.

Subraces are just typical over-simplification to make the game functional, I think in many ways Tasha's is "better" in a simulationist perspective. Whether it's "better" from a game perspective is a separate issue.

 

[Faolyn]

interesting might be useful, what would settled have instead?

The playtest packet is here. But it varies depending on what sort of "settled" you go for. One such culture grants things like prestidigitation (I guess it's a very clean city) and, strangely, the ability to conceal items on your body (a clean city that involves a lot of contraband, maybe). Many of them grant extra proficiencies like History to represent better access to schooling. One has some weapons training, representing that you come from a culture that wants its citizens to be able to form a militia. One even gives you the ability to halve reductions to your hp max to represent better access to health care in your formative years. The Villager culture gives you proficiency in Animal Handling and proficiency in improv weapons (like shovels and rakes), and the ability to use Wisdom in place of Intelligence when using certain skills (to represent knowledge of folklore). The Pioneer culture gives you the ability fortify areas against intruders, proficiency in some useful skills, and advantage on checks to determine if something is poisonous (to eat, at least). Don't know how many of these will end up in the final product, but there's a lot of interesting abilities there.

 

[Iry]

I am unreasonably happy you used Sapient.

 

[Fenris-77]

The real trick here is to posit a nomadic human culture without slapping on the wealth of awful colonial tropes that usually apply. A nomadic culture that can hold it's own against more industrialized nations though? One that isn't defined by less-than terminology? That's a strong idea.

 

[Mind of tempest]

The real trick here is to posit a nomadic human culture without slapping on the wealth of awful colonial tropes that usually apply. A nomadic culture that can hold it's own against more industrialized nations though? One that isn't defined by less-than terminology? That's a strong idea.

that is difficult but could be interesting, depends on the rought time period tech is in setting as it is only relatively recently it was this way.