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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 9726169" data-attributes="member: 6915329">Level Up doesn't do racial stats, and while each heritage has a couple of traits, they also each have a selection of traits they can choose from (heritage gifts) and when they reach tenth level, they can choose from a selection of paragon gifts. This means that while all elves will be similar, they're not going to be cookie cutters of each other. Draw Steel does something similar, where each ancestry gets one trait and 3-4 points to buy additional traits from a list. A lot of games don't have species traits at all--it's all purely cosmetic. Or there are traits you can buy through non-species means but pretend they're from your species. E.g., play a catfolk, take a class with an unarmed attack, say it's claws. Many games I've seen may try to deal with different cultures for different species, and rarely even multiple cultures for a single species. Very few of them try to think of non-"gamey" biological differences. For instance, some species shouldn't be able to digest certain foods, or may even be deathly allergic to them. (The only time I see this is with purely carnivorous species or plant-based species that photosynthesize.) Some species should have vastly different ways reproductive habits (although this is difficult to do tastefully in a game.) We rarely see cultures, either human or nonhuman, that have "ugly" cultural practices unless they're also supposed to be evil cultures; for instance, no "good" culture that, due to scarce supplies, practices infanticide or senicide. The only one I can think of off-hand is D&D's lizardfolk and their willingness to eat dead sentients.</blockquote>

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