What would you do if you were....[Race and Culture Thread]

[Primitive Screwhead]

I would love to see what you come up with.. and yes, my verison is an Eberron specific set, altho the base concept can be tweaked to fit differing campaigns. Its hard to do a 'Culture' element as generic

I figure this is a good base, un-playtested as it is, and the great minds of EnWorld might provide tweaks/adjustments.. and if it helps your game in the progress, thats just icing on the cake

 

[Nyaricus]

If you are interested, I can post (either here or in a separate thread) what my system ends up becoming so that you can compare it to yours.

I'm interested; please start up a new thread detailing this!

I'll be eventually starting up my own, although my D&D races, aside from name and some basic traits, are being thrown right outta the window in regards to most of the crunch

 

[Spatzimaus]

although my D&D races, aside from name and some basic traits, are being thrown right outta the window in regards to most of the crunch

Incidentally, for a homebrew I threw out anything that was culture-related from each race (including the entire concept of Favored Class), keeping only the names, some of the basic stats, and a few racial abilities. Then, I added a few custom races to fill out the ranks a bit.

The hook I used for mine was that most of the classic "fantasy" stories were just misinterpretations caused by the assumption that our plane, where usually only Humans live, was the "prime". In fact, there were six elemental planes, and one humanoid race was native to each. So, the Dwarves were simply the inhabitants of the Plane of Earth, the "elves" (Nymphs) were from the Plane of Water, and so on. In that situation, why would the elves be focused on swords and bows? Why would the halfling-based race focus on thrown weapons? That sort of thing.

Frankly, I'm glad we did this. Too many D&D games blur together; everyone just knows what to expect when they hear "elf", "dwarf", etc., because the rules focus these races so much toward specific archetypes. But if you give elves nearly the same variation as the Humans in their cultural backgrounds (and related bonuses), it goes a long way towards keeping things unpredictable.

 

[Nyaricus]

Incidentally, for a homebrew I threw out anything that was culture-related from each race (including the entire concept of Favored Class), keeping only the names, some of the basic stats, and a few racial abilities. Then, I added a few custom races to fill out the ranks a bit.

The hook I used for mine was that most of the classic "fantasy" stories were just misinterpretations caused by the assumption that our plane, where usually only Humans live, was the "prime". In fact, there were six elemental planes, and one humanoid race was native to each. So, the Dwarves were simply the inhabitants of the Plane of Earth, the "elves" (Nymphs) were from the Plane of Water, and so on. In that situation, why would the elves be focused on swords and bows? Why would the halfling-based race focus on thrown weapons? That sort of thing.

Frankly, I'm glad we did this. Too many D&D games blur together; everyone just knows what to expect when they hear "elf", "dwarf", etc., because the rules focus these races so much toward specific archetypes. But if you give elves nearly the same variation as the Humans in their cultural backgrounds (and related bonuses), it goes a long way towards keeping things unpredictable.

Well, I suppose I didn't explain myself - my campaign setting moreso goes back-to-basics in regards to said archetypes. Gnomes are a race of fey, halflings are hobbits, elves are similar to Tolkien elves, and dwarves (along with a bit of nordic themes) and orcs as well. I just don't like the mechanics in D&D for any of those races, and have gone back to the drawing board with them

Sorry for misleading you, but don't get me wrong either - please start up a thread and detail those races and such in great detail - they sound fun!

cheers,
--N

 

[Spatzimaus]

Well, I suppose I didn't explain myself

No, I understood you, I was just going off on a semi-tangent, not trying to suggest you use anything like my races. My point was just that if you strip out all the "cultural" baggage/bonuses that D&D has piled on, and replace it with either campaign-specific cultural stuff (me) or a more back-to-basics concept (you), you still get something good, because so much of the D&D stuff is nonessential and way too specific (dodge bonuses vs. Giants?).

And besides, the system we came up with REALLY wasn't suitable for a "classic" D&D setting. One of the things I did, for instance, was give every race racial levels you were more or less forced to take by level 10ish, but that every character started at level 2 or 3. Humans are the only race with only a single racial level, meaning they can enter other professions immediately (giving them the flexibility); all the other races have the equivalent of LA+1 or higher by way of these racial levels, and at the extreme end, the Drak'hai (Large-sized dragon) PC race has six. Since we switched spellcasting to be skill-based, this doesn't penalize casters very much.

 

[Nyaricus]

No, I understood you, I was just going off on a semi-tangent, not trying to suggest you use anything like my races. My point was just that if you strip out all the "cultural" baggage/bonuses that D&D has piled on, and replace it with either campaign-specific cultural stuff (me) or a more back-to-basics concept (you), you still get something good, because so much of the D&D stuff is nonessential and way too specific (dodge bonuses vs. Giants?).

I completely agree, and like my cake either way - something completely offbeat like that fun set of stuff you have going on, or something more 'back-to-basics', as you aptly termed my concept of D&D.

And besides, the system we came up with REALLY wasn't suitable for a "classic" D&D setting. One of the things I did, for instance, was give every race racial levels you were more or less forced to take by level 10ish, but that every character started at level 2 or 3. Humans are the only race with only a single racial level, meaning they can enter other professions immediately (giving them the flexibility); all the other races have the equivalent of LA+1 or higher by way of these racial levels, and at the extreme end, the Drak'hai (Large-sized dragon) PC race has six. Since we switched spellcasting to be skill-based, this doesn't penalize casters very much.

Okay, you have a fan with this: you'd better be posting up a copy or a word doc of your campaign setting sometime soon

cheers,
--N

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, you have a fan with this: you'd better be posting up a copy or a word doc of your campaign setting sometime soon

I could try, but it's more like a dozen Word docs. One has a bunch of miscellaneous rule changes, one covers the planes (all 10) and races (8 playable, 8 non-playable), one handles all our new spells, one for the 9 non-Prestige classes, two for the revised Craft/exotic materials rules (one doc, one spreadsheet), one for changes to skills and feats (including a complete reworking of metamagic), one for all our new item enchantments... it sort of adds up.

Basically, we kept adding house rules to D&D, until we reached a point where all that was left was a few races and classes, and those were better to replace all at once. So, when we were making a homebrew for fun, these house-ruled systems became our baseline. On the bright side, many of these stand alone, and quite a few have already been posted on these boards in various forms.

I can try to collate the whole thing, but not all of it was updated to 3.5E, since it's actually more based on d20Modern. The Planes/Races/Classes/Skills/Feats parts are really the core of the system, and even most of the Skills/Feats part could be applied to 3.5E pretty easily.