Corinnguard
Hero
Because of the associated historical baggage in RL. As for biological essentialism, it's one reason why Level Up decided to split race into heritage and culture in the first place.
D&D General elf definition semantic shenanigans
- Thread starter Mind of tempest
- Start date
Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
There is no such thing as a "culture" that has 100% of its members trained in a specific trait. The closest such trait would be a shared language, but even then this would not normally be 100% of the members. Literacy, immigration, dialects, jargons, and slang would further reduce the percentage of members who know the shared language.
To assert a 100% membership trait, is either to misunderstand what a cultural institution is as if it is omnipotent, or to misunderstand what a culturally learned trait is as if it is a racist biologically essentialist trait.
There is no 100% in a culture.
Toward a better understanding of what the word "culture" means, and how it can work in terms of D&D rules:
A "culture" is what a community LEARNS. Knowledge that proves useful transmits from an earlier generation to a next generation.
A "culture" enforces, comprises, and transmits via various kinds of "institutions", such as ones relating to literacy rates, family obligations, economic transactions, and combat service.
Example. A modern culture prioritizes institutions that promote literacy (languages, reading and writing), math and physical sciences (Nature), human sciences (History and Insight), and arts and literature (Performance, Persuasion and Intimidation). The education institutions include Elementary School and High School. The modern culture has a reasonably high literacy rate. But literacy is never 100%. Not every member of the culture is automatically literate. An institution lacks omnipotence. If a modern person is literate, it is statistically likely they attended an Elementary School and a High School. But who knows, perhaps they were homeschooled? Or they grew up elsewhere, or dropped out, and taught themselves how to read and write. Cultural experiences are fluid, and personal, despite statistical "trends".
In a D&D context, a cultural institution can EXPLAIN how a character acquired a certain skill proficiency. If the High culture town has a wizardry school as a local institution that all town citizens are required to attend, then most of the Elves and others of this town are likely to have Arcana proficiency, maybe Nature too. But this same cultural institution CANNOT guarantee that every member of the town culture participates in this particular institution. There will be exceptions to the rule. Some citizens will be nonproficient in Arcana or Nature, or both.
The 5e background represents what a character learns growing up. If a character happens to have skills, toolset and feat, that are "typical" or "prestigious" in the culture, then likely they learned them from a prominent institution within the culture.
But if the character has a skill or feature that is unexpected for ones culture, then perhaps the character grew up with exposure to more than one culture. Thus one actually learned from the prominent institutions from more than one culture.
Or the character is "rebellious" and disregards conformity to ones own culture, and taught oneself how to do the unexpected skill.
Whether it represents an institution of ones culture, of ones several cultures, or is an antithesis to ones culture, the background is the best D&D mechanics for all of these cultural experiences growing up.
To assert a 100% membership trait, is either to misunderstand what a cultural institution is as if it is omnipotent, or to misunderstand what a culturally learned trait is as if it is a racist biologically essentialist trait.
There is no 100% in a culture.
Toward a better understanding of what the word "culture" means, and how it can work in terms of D&D rules:
A "culture" is what a community LEARNS. Knowledge that proves useful transmits from an earlier generation to a next generation.
A "culture" enforces, comprises, and transmits via various kinds of "institutions", such as ones relating to literacy rates, family obligations, economic transactions, and combat service.
Example. A modern culture prioritizes institutions that promote literacy (languages, reading and writing), math and physical sciences (Nature), human sciences (History and Insight), and arts and literature (Performance, Persuasion and Intimidation). The education institutions include Elementary School and High School. The modern culture has a reasonably high literacy rate. But literacy is never 100%. Not every member of the culture is automatically literate. An institution lacks omnipotence. If a modern person is literate, it is statistically likely they attended an Elementary School and a High School. But who knows, perhaps they were homeschooled? Or they grew up elsewhere, or dropped out, and taught themselves how to read and write. Cultural experiences are fluid, and personal, despite statistical "trends".
In a D&D context, a cultural institution can EXPLAIN how a character acquired a certain skill proficiency. If the High culture town has a wizardry school as a local institution that all town citizens are required to attend, then most of the Elves and others of this town are likely to have Arcana proficiency, maybe Nature too. But this same cultural institution CANNOT guarantee that every member of the town culture participates in this particular institution. There will be exceptions to the rule. Some citizens will be nonproficient in Arcana or Nature, or both.
The 5e background represents what a character learns growing up. If a character happens to have skills, toolset and feat, that are "typical" or "prestigious" in the culture, then likely they learned them from a prominent institution within the culture.
But if the character has a skill or feature that is unexpected for ones culture, then perhaps the character grew up with exposure to more than one culture. Thus one actually learned from the prominent institutions from more than one culture.
Or the character is "rebellious" and disregards conformity to ones own culture, and taught oneself how to do the unexpected skill.
Whether it represents an institution of ones culture, of ones several cultures, or is an antithesis to ones culture, the background is the best D&D mechanics for all of these cultural experiences growing up.
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Scribe
Legend
Don't worry I still don't like the idea.
Clint_L
Legend
I don't like that, either. I'm Canadian - should I be required to have proficiency in hockey? (I don't). Languages, maybe, but again there are plenty of exceptions. Describing the typical features of a culture or species makes sense and is useful. Lots of Canadians do love playing hockey, poutine (overrated and sometimes kinda gross), and wearing toques (only if absolutely necessary).Which is strange since everyone is perfectly fine with different kinds of elves, dwarves, etc. being presented mechanically.
In Level Up, culture is an additional way to help customize your character mechanically by providing you with additional skill proficiencies, weapon and armor proficiencies, spells and starting languages.
But making cultural traits mandatory is strange to me. It think it is very odd, for example, that all dwarves are given proficiency with axes and hammers, a set of tools, and "stonecutting." Like, it is unthinkable that there could be a nerdy dwarf who wasn't into any of those things? Or who grew up on a farm in the plains taking care of the animals?
Edit: to be clear, I'm not saying it's wrong to have dwarves that mostly dwell underground, are good with hammers and axes, and handy with tools. I just think it's problematic (and boring) to require those traits of the exceptional individuals who are the player characters. Identifying those cultural traits as suggestions for players who want to play into the dwarf stereotype, or elf stereotype, or whatever, is awesome and useful. But a player who wants to say, "Nah, I'm not that kind of dwarf" shouldn't be shut down, IMO. Their choosing a different path doesn't invalidate the cultural trends of the DM's world. Bilbo choosing to go adventuring didn't mean that most hobbits stopped being elevensies-obsessed little NIMBYs.
As with alignment, adding the word "typically" to cultural traits takes nothing away but allows a lot more room for the imagination.
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I like gnomes and halfling separate.
Halfling should play up their luck.
Gnome's their science (forest zoology, rock gadgeteering) and anti-magic
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Then there should definitely be no ability scores associated with races, considering the breadth of variation just within the human species.
By this logic, all characters should have no locked-in, specially-meaningful characteristics that aren't directly rooted in something like "I literally can just breathe fire which is something a human physically can't do" or "my eyes can see in the dark which is something a human physically can't do" etc.
Corinnguard
Hero
Even though Level Up was built on 5e's chassis?
It's cool. Some are going to like Level Up, and some aren't going to like it for a number of reasons.Corinnguard
Hero
The beauty of Level Up's cultures is that you can choose any culture for your dwarf character.
If you want to be a Dwarf raised in a Dwarven culture, you got your choice of Deep Dwarf, Hill Dwarf, and Mountain Dwarf. If you want to be a Nerdy Dwarf, you could choose the Collegiate culture. Collegiate | Level Up If you want to be a Dwarf who grew up on a Farm, there's the Villager culture. Villager | Level Up You can even be raised in a culture belonging to another heritage, and thus learn their cultural traits instead of those belonging to your typical Dwarf.I don't see a player who wants to say, "Nah, I'm not that kind of Dwarf" being shut down by the Narrator in Level Up.
CreamCloud0
Hero
just because there's mass variation in a species it doesn't also mean that there isn't also trends and strengths that appear in that species, especially when in comparason between one species and another, so sure you can have the dwarven species that on average varies between 8-17 CON but next to elves or halflings who's species averages around 6-15 CON that's still a relative +2 higher average, even if you are that dwarf with 8 CON.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
But you are turning trends into ironclad, permanent patterns. Every dwarf starts out always the precise same amount more hardy than every halfling. But that is simply not how trends work. Instead, there will be some genuinely, deeply sickly dwarves--as sickly as the sickliest halfling--and there will be some halflings who are as hardy as the hardiest dwarf, because real variation within species is HUGE, far bigger than a "effects happen 5% more often" could ever account for.
My point is that the real variation in real populations means there should be 6 Con Dwarves (albeit rare ones) and 17 Con Halflings (albeit rare ones). We, as creators and players, do not hew to the average man (who, in general, doesn't even exist to begin with--everyone is far away from the norm on at least some measures). We hew to the outliers, the weirdos, the folks who willingly dive into murder-holes for money, who risk life and limb for foolish causes, who dare to defy fate. Adventurers are necessarily bucking trends in one form or another, that's why their lives are full of adventure and not comfortable monotony.
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