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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheSword" data-source="post: 8082185" data-attributes="member: 6879661">I’ll say this, though I fear it may be controversial.The human section reads like someone has an axe to grind. In a game attempting to be a real world analogy of the 18th and 19th C then this might be interesting but in D&D it feels very jarring. In fact it reads like the human section has been written based on white western society rather than humanity as a whole.It claims colonization is an unfortunate legacy of human culture due to birth rate leading to expansion and migration. Every society has expanded over time unless it stayed exactly where it was formed. Colonialization has unavoidable associations with colonialism where people and resources are funnelled back to a remote metropole causing huge socio-economic Problems (this association is cemented by the profiteer and sheltered citizen cultures). Societies on the other hand have expanded and tested borders for thousands  of years. We’re all the product of migration.  In fantasy settings it often isn’t at the expense of others as seems to be heavily suggested.These descriptions of humans bear little relationship to how humans are used in current d&d settings. Let’s take the Forgotten Realms - the majority of human lands do not behave this way - the Sword Coast, the North, the Dales, Damara, Waterdeep These are not empires. In fact any empires in the Realms are generally long in the past. With the exception of maybe Baldurs Gate (which has expressly walked back from that idea in products).The cultures associated with humans are overwhelmingly perjorative. Profiteer means someone who makes a profit unfairly or illegally - it is not synonymous with capitalist. The culture is appears modeled on the colonial East India company. Sheltered Citizen suggests naïveté and little c conservatism. Pioneering is linked with colonization at the expense of others rather than expansion/exploration (neutral and common to most civilizations) which again is not the same thing. These could easily have been neutral... or gasp... may be even positive. Trader is just as relevant as ‘Profiteer’.  The word citizen can be used without the ‘Sheltered’ adjective.The villager Culture at least is neutral but I see absolutely no reason why humans are more likely to live a village life than any of the other heritages. That rural life is common to all heritages as far as I can see. However I wouldn’t expect other ancestries villages to look like the one described in this culture.Go back and read the text of the human section and then compare it to the balance of overwhelmingly positive or at least neutral descriptions in the other entries. It reads as if someone is trying to make a political statement about the last 350 years of human existence not describe fantasy humans in D&D.If I make one piece of feedback stronger than any other, please if the language isn’t substantially revised then separate culture from ancestry completely. Otherwise you are being just as stereotypical as the existing rules - more so in fact - as the PHB rarely makes such sweeping and perjoritive statements about cultures. From reading the document the ability to take any culture is not clear and strongly associates some heritages with the cultures that follow.</blockquote>

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