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Message: <blockquote data-quote="teitan" data-source="post: 8182032" data-attributes="member: 3457">I don’t mind the changes and embracing of Tasha’s system but it’s odd because the races as presented in the PHB outside of Humans and half Orcs ARE called out as cultures. The sub races are explicitly identified with subcultures of those races such as Qualinesti being High Elves and Mountain Dwarves as Shield Dwarves for example. Even then the idea of Mountain Dwarves vs Hill dwarves and Wood elves vs high elves or even dark elves as implemented are inherently cultural differences based on the different values of those “sub races”. Even calling dark elves “Drow” is a demonstration of a culture applied to the dark elves.As we see in cultural studies different cultures emphasize different things such as the rugged “redneck” culture of the Appalachian region of America where strength and hands on labor is emphasized while intellectual and artistic pursuits are degraded. Throughout the region these are near universal expressions. For some reason we don’t see these same things in other races in the game even with the blatant presentation. High elves emphasize grace and beauty, elegance, in their culture plus qualities we call chaos and good in game terms. Drow, the culture that seems to draw the most ire because of skin color that the intent was to be a negative photograph of the elves rather than any racist connotations we would apply today, even if problematic, have a culture and religion, which is very important to how cultures develop, have a culture that emphasizes the qualities we would recognize, unfailingly, as evil and chaos. Demon worship, strong religious influences defined by an irredeemably evil goddess,  etc but as we see in Wildemount, that’s just one group of dark elves. But all of these are ELVES and different cultural examples within that species. that isn’t to say that all members of these sub cultures follow those alignments and tendencies but those coming from the Underdark would experience a similar upbringing that emphasizes the strengths and weaknesses within that culture.If you look at these examples and see racism you have a limited imagination at best and are quite possibly inclined to systemic racism at worst. just like the kid that grew up in Appalachia to be an artist rather than a coal miner, variables exist. I think the error WOTC is making with races is that they are forgetting even their own presentation on the races as cultures and how they have variations in different campaign worlds that don’t fit the default cultures represented in the Realms or Greyhawk for those races. A Drow is an elf with different cultural values. Drow isn’t even their name, it’s an acknowledgement of how their decisions led to their current station as those who betrayed the Seldarine. That story doesn’t play out on other worlds so why even call them Drow in Eberron for example?what WOTC should do in the future besides expanding and developing the Tasha rules a bit better, is, when presenting a new setting, that they present differences in the default bonuses of a subculture and provide the fluff that explains why on this world these things vary rather than expect Elves and Dwarves, gnomes etc to always be the same from world to world to world as has been done in the past.</blockquote>

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