Thought experiment: human and variant stats as expressions of culture

[Nevvur]

I'm considering some revisions to a homebrew world which features two major human civilizations. I thought it would be interesting if all the humans from CivA used the normal racial bonuses for humans, while CivB used the human variant option. The underlying assumption here is that CivA tries to produce more well rounded citizens, while CivB puts more resources into specialization.

1) Does this sound like a plausible interplay of narrative and mechanics? If not, why?
2) As a player, if your DM used this model and the racial bonuses did not correspond to the civilization you prefer, or vice versa, would you switch one?
3) As a DM using this model, if one of your players asked to use one civ's narrative and the other's racial bonuses, would you permit it?

 

[DEFCON 1]

1) If you allowed all the possible feats to be taken for CivB, then no. There are just too many completely different things you can take with a feat to have it fall under this one idea that they are a "specialized" culture. If they are "specialized", then select like 3 or 4 feats total that CivB specializes in.

2) If I played a human PC, I'd select the Civ that gave me the mechanic I wanted, not the Civ.

3) No. If I'm going to switch upon request, then there's no point in having them be different in the first place.

To be truthful... if I was going to make two differing human Civs... rather than one regular human and the other variant human... I'd instead choose like 4 or 5 feats for each Civ that their culture is known for... then let players select either standard human, or variant human and the feat they take has to be one of the 4 or 5 for the culture. On top of that... I most likely would not select combat feats for either of them. They'd all be roleplayingish feats so that they could apply to the largest swathe of human players regardless of the class they end up playing.

 

[Krachek]

Yes.
Civilization fist.
Do you have consider making all phb races to be human, and racial features a kind of genitco-arcano feature?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ooh, which culture gets to be the smartest?

/runs away from bomb

 

[jgsugden]

A lot of ideas like these make sense to a DM, and may make sense to players, but suffer from one problem - they limit options. As a DM, I like to say yes to players as much as I reasonably can. It allows them to contribute to the story more. So, if you do it, I'd make it a general rule, but not a firm rule. That will allow players from culture A (which is generally a 'pure' human) choose to be a variant human if they want to do so.

 

[Immortal Sun]

*shrug* How does this reflect in the citizenry? Is CivA made up of ONLY well-rounded citizens? Is CivB made up of ONLY specialized citizens? What sort of social climate exists to promote this? Are there overt genetic statements? Are there subtle social implications ala (at least conceptually) Divergent? How do we know if Mr WellRounded of CivA is truly well-rounded? Are you going to stat out each and every citizen by the book as though they were all at least 1st-level characters?

These are interesting thought experiments, but fundamentally poorly expressed through game mathematics and tedious to do on the scale of a civilization. If people from CivA are generally more well-rounded, that's something that can be presented via story far better than math by having people who "wear many hats" during their daily lives. If people from CivB are more specialized, that can be presented again, by story-telling about people who are highly specialized and may guffaw at the idea of performing a task outside their training. Because fundamentally you're painting a broad picture of these civilizations and their people, and only statting up a handful of them.

I tend to err on the side of "let the players play what they want" and have them come up with interesting reasons as to why they may or may not fit the usual mold. Maybe they're a social pariah, maybe they're struggling to keep their skill-diversity on the down-low, maybe they're hiding a secret desire to specialize in one single thing ever. Maybe they're actively promoting that things need to change.

But ultimately, unless your game is going to revolve around the politics of these societies, the party will probably never hear about it.

 

[jmartkdr]

I was considering doing something similar:

Imperial humans are form the dominate civilization in the setting. They use the rules for standard human, but get a second background (including extra skills). They also get the the basic privileges of being from the dominant culture. (They get two backgrounds because I think standard humans need a boost to make the attractive as a race.)

Tribal humans are all variant humans - but unlike your example, they're not one civilization. Instead, each feat represents a different small society. It could be a tribe, or a city-state, or a band of nomads, or whatever. But it's small, and the feat the pc chose is the culture's hat. (Ie if they choose polearm master, it's because they come from a kingdom that was fouded when the first queen slew a dragon with a glaive, so now everyone in the kingdom trains with polearms.) The player gets the first pass at building the culture, but if they pass on it I'll come up with something.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I'm considering some revisions to a homebrew world which features two major human civilizations. I thought it would be interesting if all the humans from CivA used the normal racial bonuses for humans, while CivB used the human variant option. The underlying assumption here is that CivA tries to produce more well rounded citizens, while CivB puts more resources into specialization.

1) Does this sound like a plausible interplay of narrative and mechanics? If not, why?
2) As a player, if your DM used this model and the racial bonuses did not correspond to the civilization you prefer, or vice versa, would you switch one?
3) As a DM using this model, if one of your players asked to use one civ's narrative and the other's racial bonuses, would you permit it?

1) Absolutely. I assume that the idea is that CivB encourages individuals to specialise, rather than the Civ as a whole being specialized, right? IF so, then the suggested mechanic makes sense.
2) I think you mean, would you pick the other Civ because it fits the mechanics you want more? Nah, I'd just make do.
3) If I had two Gnome civs, and one was Rock Gnomes and the other Forest Gnomes, thematically, I'd allow a player to play a Rock Gnome from the Forest kingdom, so yes. I would want a little more background from them, though. Why are they so into tinkering? Did the grow up dreaming of Rocklandia? etc?

 

[Nevvur]

To provide a little clarification, the idea of specialization as the basis for variant humans ... I speak of the multitudes of skill specializations one sees as a settlement grows in size and complexity. This concept does not require that common citizens receive the PC package. PCs get a feat because they're bad@$$, everyone else is just more into a single job

 

[Li Shenron]

I'm considering some revisions to a homebrew world which features two major human civilizations. I thought it would be interesting if all the humans from CivA used the normal racial bonuses for humans, while CivB used the human variant option. The underlying assumption here is that CivA tries to produce more well rounded citizens, while CivB puts more resources into specialization.

1) Does this sound like a plausible interplay of narrative and mechanics? If not, why?
2) As a player, if your DM used this model and the racial bonuses did not correspond to the civilization you prefer, or vice versa, would you switch one?
3) As a DM using this model, if one of your players asked to use one civ's narrative and the other's racial bonuses, would you permit it?

1) Yes. It's reasonable.
2) Yes. If I agreed to play the campaign, I abide by its rules.
3) No. If we use a model, then we use the model.