Survey (A5E) Level Up Surveys #2.5 & #2.6 - Halfling & Human

[Morrus]

Today we have two more short surveys - Halfling and Human.

A couple of days ago we sent out the survey on the playtest document for our Origins system for Level Up. That was a broad overview of the chapter designed to give us a general impression.

Over the next week or so, we are also surveying each heritage individually. Because this is a particularly large chapter, we’ve broken it up into a series of smaller surveys. We won’t email you about each one, but we’ll email you at the end with links to all of them. In the meantime, you can get at them earlier by checking back here over the course of the week.

You don’t have to take them all, but the more data we get, the better our game will be!

Take the Halfling survey Take the Human survey
As always, it’s OK if you don’t like things about this playtest. That’s the reason we have a playtest process, and the reason we send out these surveys. The data we get from these surveys informs the development of the game. Thank you so much to the thousands of people taking part in this process!

If you missed the Dragonborn and Dwarf surveys, they are still ongoing until 18th September, along with the Elf and Gnome surveys. There will be one more pair (Orc and Tiefling) early in the coming week before we move on to adventuring classes!

Continue reading...

 

[rules.mechanic]

Human cultures. I think it is harder to create distinctively human-predominant cultures and, as others have said, Sheltered Citizen, Villager and Pioneer all feel like General Cultures. Maybe this is somewhere where ideas from this community would be useful? As a start, perhaps:

• Profiteer -> Trader (as others have said, this represents the good and the bad of humans' knack for diplomacy)
• Sheltered Citizen -> Citizen of the Empire (the good and the clear bad of the ancient, medieval and colonial empires - whether expanding or in implosive decline)
• Villager -> Breakaway Community (small independent/isolationist groups that escape the dominant society - whether communes or cults)
• Pioneer -> Pioneer but the wider theme of humans as explorers: wilderness pioneers as much as colonial settlers (e.g. including the exploration of new lands by the First peoples or new seas by the Austronesian peoples)

 

[Faolyn]

In rereading the human section, I've come to the conclusion that this assumes all humans are byproducts of a "civilized nation." Either they live in the central cities, in the rural parts, or they are explorers/pioneers/colonists for the central cities. There's no options for hunter/gatherers, for instance, or for a fantasy "cave-human." While Pioneer is close, the flavor text, and the "Claim Stakes" ability (which I'm not fond of), make it not fit.