How much culture should be hardcoded into races?

[Crazy Jerome]

Nature mechanics in the races, nurture mechanics never in the races. Theme is one obvious place to put them, and depending upon how implemented might supersede my initial preference, which is to make "culture" a separate mechanical widget. Runequest has used a crude culture axis well for almost 40 years. So it isn't like it can't be readily done.

For one thing, this will make actual racial mechanical differences more acceptable, being limited to the core biology of the race instead of the presumed archetype. Instead of some wishy washy note about dwarves not liking to get their heads wet or a hard-line "don't swim, won't learn"--you can give them a significant penalty to swim checks (-4 or so in 3E/4E terms) based on their density that makes up so much of their toughness (and not incidently makes it easier to hold their breath underwater in a pinch). Then you make the default dwarven cultures reinforce this with little opportunity to pick up swimming.

Now, a dwarf raised in a "coastal" culture can probably swim about as well as an untrained person from that same culture--the exposure having compensated somewhat for the biology.

On the flipside, if you have a "race" that has nothing left to distinguish it from another "race" but such "cultural" items, that is a very strong sign that it has no business being a race in the first place. Make it matter, or leave it out.

Heck, you could do 80% of culture simply with terrain and a few societal descriptors (like the RQ ones), and be done with it: "Mountain Barbarian", "Civilized Forest," "Primitive Desert," "Ocean Nomads," "Plains Civilization". Describe 8-10 terrains and 4-5 society baselines. In a simple game, the players can pick. Instead of "dwarf fighter" you are "mountain civilized dwarf fighter" or "hills barbarian dwarf fighter" or something more off-beat. How does that get terribly complicated? Yet it tells you more about the character than assumptions embedded into "dwarf."

Then in games where you want more details, the DM or campaign supplement can name each relevant "culture", start with the mechanics of terrain and society for a base, and tweak it slightly to make it stand out. The "Misty Mountain" culture is predominatly mountain, civilized, and dwarven, with a few tweaks.

 

[Incenjucar]

Leave culture as fluff. Support it with strictly optional mechanics and monster entries. Go ahead and show people a model elf, but don't force them to be one.

 

[Gryph]

I think culture should be entirely tied to campaign settings rather than race. The player's core book (whatever it turns out to be) should have ties to the default setting as an aid to the new player and to casual players who don't care much about setting.

Looks like FR is that default setting this time around.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I'm not really a fan of hard-coding cultural assumptions into race mechanics. I think races should have quite a lot of crunch to them (far more than they do in 3E or 4E), but I don't think that crunch should involve big cultural assumptions. You can put forward a strong flavor and identity for a race without relying on culture, and I think the races come across as much more interesting and fantastical if you go the route of races with strong non-cultural qualities rather than a few minor things like "hates giants" or "trained with bows".

I think that culture is something that really isn't as important to D&D as race, class, or a character's personal identity (theme, personality, etc). In many ways, the classic D&D character is a strange outsider to normal society, after all. They wander between different cultures and see more of the world than anyone else, and any given party is often a unique mix of people from very different cultures... That identity as part of a party seems like it would grow to have more impact than a background culture, I think.

 

[Greg K]

Culture, in my opinion, should not be hardcoded into race. The culture of a race should be determined by the individual campaign setting.

I would rather see culture handled separately from race through the application of environmental backgrounds (e.g., cavern, forest, marsh, plains, rural, urban), cultural/occupation background (e.g., horse nomad, foot nomad, urchin) , etc. as determined appropriate by the DM for their setting (or designers for individual published settings).

 

[gweinel]

I'm inclined to think that themes would help individual PCs create characters who are different from ordinary members of their race (e.g. an elf with an appropriately "urban" theme).

But I don't think themes will handle the heavy lifting for a campaign where the races are substantially different than usual. (For example, the urban elves in Dragon Age or just about anything from Dark Sun.) For those situations, you're going to want to alter the racial packages themselves. That's likely to put the DM in the chair of "amateur rules designer" but I hope D&DN provides tools to make that type of customization a little easier. A small change should totally gimp a race or make it vastly dominant.

And, for that matter, character creation shouldn't be so dependent on a DDI tool that it's a waste of time for DMs to vary from the core rules.

-KS

Yes, you are right. I am really looking forward to publish some general guidelnes for the making custom race/class/theme. It is very important at least for me to know "where is enough power in that" and "that set of powers does not make any sense".

Imho the issue is not so to make a race more or less powerfull, it is more to have the control over the power of that race.

 

[Nimblegrund]

I think pathfinder's racial options from the APG should be the model of 5e races.

For instance:

Elves get a +1 bonus to either Dex or Int, and a -1 penalty to either Con or Str. They have low light vision.

And that's it for the overall racial abilities. But where things get interesting is when you throw class into the mix...

Elven Fighters: Elven fighters tend to focus on mobility and quick strikes with weapons like longswords, shortswords, and bows. As such they get (bonus with these weapons) and (ability to improve their armor class while in lighter armor) and (extra movement)

Elven Wizards: Elven wizards tend to have particular affinity for enchantment magics and illusions. What's more, they also train with bows as a means to train their minds. As such they get (bonus to enchantment and illusion) and (ability to add magic to bows)

Elven Rogues: Elven rogues are known for their catlike footsteps. They are also highly precise strikers, preferring to snipe their targets at range with bows and crossbows, particularly hand crossbows, and fight with thin, easily concealable blades. As such they get (bonus with weapons) and (silent steps)

Elven Barbarians: Elven barbarians are a rarity, but certain pockets of wild elves exist that train their own version of elven berserkers... These elves lose their penalty to con or str, as well as gain the following abilities... etc, etc.


This way we don't have to worry so much about whether a certain race/class option is really "optimized" because we can examine each combination and give players what they expect out of their characters. It also gives us an avenue for a lot of fluff, which is good.

This gives a lot of opportunity for expansion as well. Suppose we take our elf to Athas. The elves there are much different than the classic archetype, and so the book could have lots of new crunchy options to reflect the new fluff.

You could even have feats like "Trained by another race" where you gain another race's abilities. This would be an easy way of reflecting the long-standing tradition of playing characters who belong to a different race's culture (My half-orc was raised by elves, etc.) which the system has never reflected well.

 

[Derren]

I think pathfinder's racial options from the APG should be the model of 5e races.

But wouldn't this also be "culture as race"? Because your example simply says for example that elven wizards prefer illusions which clearly is a cultural thing.

 

[DEFCON 1]

But now what about the abilities that some races got (in 4E forex) that were more to do with their physical make-up rather than their 'culture'? Are we thinking these are still okay?

Elven Wild Step (ignore difficult terrain in nature), low-light or darkvision, a dwarf's Stand Your Ground (move one less square on forced movement), the dragonborn's breath attack, etc.? These are things that are inherent in their physical make-up in comparison to the human default, which is why they have them. Do these pass the smell test of whether they are abilities that should remain baked into the race mechanics?

 

[Ratskinner]

I guess for me it depends on these "theme" thingies we've heard so little about. I generally prefer the racial data to be as culturally neutral as possible, with a possible out for racial "feats" or something that could easily be modified for a given campaign world.