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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheOneGargoyle" data-source="post: 8162740" data-attributes="member: 6924207">Yes, this is exactly what I'm saying.  Not every individual from a given race/heritage/culture will be exactly the same as each other, nor will they be a precise stereotype of that aspect of their origin. I think we're in furious agreement there <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> As a DM, I would like my players to think about how they relate to those norms though - they could embody the stereotype if that's what they want, be the exact polar opposite of it if they prefer, or be somewhere on a spectrum in between, and they might be at peace with that, or extremely uncomfortable with that, and all of that is great character building.  They're unlikely to be completely indifferent to it though if they grew up immersed in it, I would normally think they would have some stance to it, regardless of what that stance is.They aren't the totality of what makes it interesting by themselves, but they can be aspects of things that are interesting about it.Again, I think we're trying to say the same thing.  I'm in 100% agreement that individuals can be very divergent from norms be they racial, cultural, gender or otherwise.That's completely different from saying that albatrosses have the longest wingspans, peregrin falcons have the highest dive speeds and owls are the most silent flyers.If you're making up an albatross character, do you have to have long wings ?  No, of course not.  But even short wings for an albatross are likely to still be pretty long compared to falcons (unless you decide otherwise in your particular case for whatever your story reasons are).I agree that is an unfortunate confluence.  Correlation does not equal causation though.  Plenty of races designated as Evil in past editions are not black. Well, this is probably where I think differently.  If every other race has fundamentally the same brains, thought processes, emotions, motivations, etc as humans, then, sure, but who's to say they do ?  And why do they have to be ?As an example, why can't other races with different biologies have different ways that their brains and hence minds work ?  One of my biggest bugbears in sci-fi is when authors write about aliens who think and experience emotions the same as human beings and are basically humans in goo-bag suits.  If a different race has a different biology, who's to say they might not completely lack the same form of emotional connection that we know of as empathy and hence, we view them as evil ?  As another example, why can't a race be inclined either through biology, sociology or just plain universal education to be far more likely to be what we would call good ?  Why is that not allowed ?I guess what I'm saying here is, if we limit all forms of life to only be able to be like humans "some good, some bad, some neutral, some a little of everything depending on circumstances" we are forcing them all to be the same, in which case, why not just all play humans ?I actually really like this !  That would make complete sense to me for elves !  (how do we request this gets added to the official material ?!?!)It's not, I'm just trying to get my head around the idea which doesn't seem to make any sense to me.  Let me try a different example:There are many types of frogs, some larger, some smaller, some lives in trees, some in water, some spit water, some have slingshot tongues.To me, the idea of moving a bunch of what seem to me like biological traits (stat proclivities, skin/hair/eye colourings, etc) to Culture & Backgrounds is akin to saying that a Green Tree Frog might grow up to be as big as a Caine Toad if that's who it grew up with, or might develop poison skin if it was trained to do so by archers from the Amazon.  It won't. It just doesn't work that way.  Green Tree Frogs are smaller than Caine Toads and not poisonous.  Now, do you want to play a wierd mutant Green Tree Frog who is both huge and also poisonous ?  Ok, cool, great character concept, have at it !  You might want to think about WHY you are so different from normal Green Tree Frogs, but there's no reason you can't play what you want.  But that doesn't change the fact that you are very different to the normal one.Well, I can't say I know definitively what their intentions were there, but as you say, "Thing that make you go hmmm..."  I agree that doesn't look so good.  But definitely not what I'm talking about.  Btw, I used orcs for my example, not drow, and orcs are definitely not black (and I'll leave it to each person to say whether they think orcs are sexy or not ....).Again, I have no issue with this varying by campaign setting (in fact, those that do are better settings IMHO), but that applies to anything, mechanical, technological, biological, sociological, etc.  You can still have starting points in core rules which those settings can depart from.My question was simply around subraces in O5e (which definitely have biological differences) being changed to cultures in A5e (which seem to have no biological differences).  It wasn't meant to have any more read into it than that <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/glasses.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt="B-)" title="Glasses    B-)" data-shortname="B-)" /></blockquote>

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