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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 9887352" data-attributes="member: 2205">All populations have differing clusters for their genetics and therefore their physical attributes. Being afraid of "the r-word" and denying this is blatantly anti-scientific and also dishonest. That said, nobody ever said that D&D is supposed to be scientific. But no, cultures or regions don't work very well for a generic D&D game. If we're migrating into the territory of Forgotten Realms is so integrated in the baseline of D&D that setting specific elements become the norm no matter what setting you're playing, then D&D is a much less useful tool for gamers to use. Therefore any such regional differences shouldn't be in the core rules, but rather in a setting specific supplement. Also, culture doesn't influence your actual attributes, unless the culture has been selecting for certain attributes for many, many generations and only those who possess heightened attributes have been able to pass on their lineage over the course of many, many generations, and those traits have become fixated in the genetic code of the population cluster. I don't think that that's a better solution what what D&D has always done. 3e FR, for instance, had regional feats which is more modest than ability score adjustments, and also more flavorful, honestly, and felt more like they were influenced by culture rather than biology. There's no reason that that can't be applied to any fantasy race, like dwarves or elves the same as it was to humans. Honestly, though, I'm not a huge fan of mechanical differences at character creation having a big impact on the game based on your race selection. That mostly just encourages people to pick their fantasy race for the mechanical benefit rather than for role-playing reasons, which is counter to my taste. Unless the mechanical differentiation has some kind of positive to the flavor of the game, I'm not in favor of it.</blockquote>

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