D&D General Old School DND talks if DND is racist.

[DnD Warlord]

How many different cultures should we have per race? Keeping in mind that if the answer is "two", the monster manual will need to be about 200 pages longer, to account for twice as much fluff text.

3-4 and just put a few paragraphs in and it should be fine.

 

[Oofta]

3-4 and just put a few paragraphs in and it should be fine.

So what would it be? Not just for orcs, but say for gnolls or goblins?

I mean, I've said it repeatedly, they should be more explicit that what we have is a default starting point. But what would you add beyond a generic section that applies to all monsters (including non-humanoid ones). Does every monster need it? If not, how do you decide?

 

[jmartkdr2]

3-4 and just put a few paragraphs in and it should be fine.

A few paragraphs isn't a culture, it's a brief caricature of one. Look at the pages on orcs ion the MM - it's just barely enough detail to make them stand out from gnolls, bugbears, orges, goblins, quaggoths, etc.

I'm sure most of us could simply build off of that, but the book is for people who can't or don't want to do the work of making their own monsters. A monster manual full of "just make something up" is worse than useless - it's wasting people's time and money.

 

[Charlaquin]

You eat other intelligent creatures (unless you are vegan).

And I did acknowledge that there’s a strong argument to be made that the way we treat livestock is evil.

You live in and raise children in the furs of other creatures.

Not really? Most clothing is made from plants or synthetic materials. I do consider furs unethical. Leather is too, but I do wear it sometimes, so on that I’ll admit I’m compromising morally.

You destroy natural environments to make your homes and build power to improve your life...

Yes, and one could argue that’s evil too. I don’t think it is considered so in a D&D context though.

The key differences though, are that the animals we slaughter have debated sapience, while the victims of mind flayers are undoubtedly sapient. We also have the power to choose not to do these things - I’m not vegan personally, but many people are, which means even if we decide that participating in the meat industry is evil, humans aren’t always evil, whereas mind flayers don’t have the option.

And, as I’ve said before, I actually don’t classify mind flayers as evil. I classify them, and most aberrations, as unaligned.

 

[Remathilis]

Yes... not even just for making them more sensitive but for making the worlds make sense.
I loved babylon5 but one episode really irked me. Every race was showing off their religions and earth showed they had so many... shouldn’t every race have multi religions and disagreements.

I mean heck I joke about running Star Wars as a D&D setting is easy... the desert of tantoien and the ice planes of hoth the swamp of degaba and the giant city of corascont and even the volcanic mustifar and the island paradise they ended rogue one on could all be within the continent

I mean, Star Wars is space fantasy at it's core, complete with sword duels, pirates, princesses and magic. No surprise there.

 

[Scribe]

I somehow have an empty quote my phone won't delete.

Regarding multiple cultures, that isn't something the MM should deal with. The MM is not setting specific, or shouldn't be.

My world has 1 dominate Orc culture, and 2 explored minor ones.

Filling out cultural detail is the job of a settings book.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I somehow have an empty quote my phone won't delete.

Regarding multiple cultures, that isn't something the MM should deal with. The MM is not setting specific, or shouldn't be.

My world has 1 dominate Orc culture, and 2 explored minor ones.

Filling out cultural detail is the job of a settings book.

so the MM is for art and stat blocks then?

 

[Scribe]

so the MM is for art and stat blocks then?

Art, Stats, and a 10000 foot look at a default, with 'change as you like' bolded on the front.

 

[Oofta]

so the MM is for art and stat blocks then?

Along with a single simplified baseline starting point that you can use or toss, yes.

 

[jmartkdr2]

so the MM is for art and stat blocks then?

If we're not allowed to include any sample cultures, we can't include art; that would include clothing which is a cultural signifier (and one of the bigger ones, at that, up there with language.)