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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8863809" data-attributes="member: 85555">I think the whole monoculture thing is just a simplification. And that varies a lot by setting. A lot of settings will have multiple elven cultures for example. With dwarves and elves, it can sometimes be easier to talk of them broadly. But I also think creatures that different from humans would probably have different cultural tendencies. Not every dwarven culture would be the same, but being able to see in the dark, would probably lead to big differences (like having an easier time building underground cities). I also think culture can be linked to a species biology. The problem is when people try to link different human cultures to different ethnicities or races as a matter of some kind of inherent quality. That isn't the case because humans are basically the same physically. But humans have cultural tendencies as a species. And we are different from other species. I imagine other species of hominids that are distant enough from us would also have cultural tendencies. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. The logical leap of humans have cultural tendencies as a species, so fictional species like dwarves and elves might also have cultural tendencies is fairly reasonable I think. Obviously some abilities would be more rooted in culture, some more in biology (infra vision for example). Some are on the line (a dwarves affinity for stone work could be explained as cultural, but in another setting it might be an innate affinity due to their origins: if they were created by a stone god for example).  On separating abilities that come from culture and race/species, I think there are so many games that do that well, because they aren't built around the level of abstractions of class, race and levels as D&D is. I actually tend to prefer games like that. But I've also found the more D&D messes with character creation in this respect, and the more it tries to achieve that kind of simulation of reality, the less it seems to work as a game (I just don't think it is built for that kind of complexity). A big strength of D&D in may view is a very simple character creation process of rolling attributes, picking your race, your class, etc. The more D&D has added other things to that process, the more it tries to do what other games do, I think the less interest I have in it (simply because I can find a game that emulates cultural effects ten times better than D&D since those games are built around doing that from the ground up).</blockquote>

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