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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dire Bare" data-source="post: 8349754" data-attributes="member: 18182">Thanks for dismissing the concerns and preferences of a growing number of D&D fans, myself included. But yeah, you're right, we're wrong . . . maybe even badwrongfun. I probably actually agree with some of your points as I skimmed your posts, but your aggressive opener just shut down my interest in reading further.In the real world, culture is what differentiates human groups from one another. Sure, we have physical differences, but they are incredibly minor. But we overemphasize those physical differences all the time and confuse them with the cultural differences, and base our tendency towards tribalism, or racism, on those misunderstood differences.In the fantasy and sci-fi world (or sci-fantasy), the differences between races goes beyond cultural. The difference between elves vs dwarves vs orcs is somewhere between ethnic differences and species differences . . . and just as in the real world, we conflate biological and cultural differences. This matters because the language and thought processes we use to stereotype elves and orcs is the same that we use in the real world to negatively stereotype different groups of people.So, a growing number of us are interested in separate race/species from culture in the game, to try and avoid that racist imagery. A well designed system can also allow for more diversity in character creation, as well as more options for those who like, well, more options. If, at character creation, you make a race/species choice, and then a culture choice . . . you can choose to be an elf with a wood elf culture (not really different than the current system) . . . or you could choose to be an elf raised by dwarves steeped in mountain dwarf culture. With customization rules similar to those in Tasha's, you could devise a more complicated background if you want . . . grandpa was an elf, dad an orc, mom a dwarf, but I was raised by halflings, halflings living in a human city . . .Most of the systems I've seen so far are a bit clunky and don't quite hit things right, for my tastes at least . . . but again, we're having conversations, we're innovating with designs, and we're stumbling towards something better.</blockquote>

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