D&D 5E Yes to factionalism. No to racism.

[CleverNickName]

But there is a distinct "office culture," with its own expectations and norms and rituals. And it's very different indeed from a "construction site culture," which has its own expectations and norms and rituals. It might be overreaching a bit, but I can see the point being made.

 

[Scribe]

But there is a distinct "office culture," with its own expectations and norms and rituals. And it's very different indeed from a "construction site culture," which has its own expectations and norms and rituals. It might be overreaching a bit, but I can see the point being made.

Ones office culture may differ wildly from another, and if you are not in said office, your job isn't defining your culture anyway.

I get where you are coming from, but bring that line of thought to the game.

Can you, would you, represent that in the crunch?

 

[Lyxen]

A "job" is a "systemic culture".

No, Where does this definition come from ? Moreover, even if it was even remotely true, it would actually be at cross purpose from everything that you have said elsewhere.

Whether the job is serving as a page in the senate, or making poisoned arrows out of treefrogs, the single job is a single star that is part of the context of the wider constellation that characterizes the ethnic culture.

Except that if exactly the same job exists in the next culture over, that job certainly does not defined that culture at all.

As jobs change, the culture evolves.

And th eother way around, this proves nothing.

We evolved from medieval agricultural culture into a modern urban culture − because the jobs changed.

Or the other way around, forced in some cases by the way, and still some jobs stayed exactly the same even when the culture changed.

 

[Bolares]

I think we are lacking a definition of culture here. I don't know if this is a translation issue but to me "office culture" and Culture despite having the same word don't mean the same thing. I think culture is more than how do people behave in a certain context....

 

[CleverNickName]

Can you, would you, represent that in the crunch?

I mean, sure? You can do anything in D&D if the story and campaign setting require it. If I were running a 5E D&D game that used current-world technology and setting, I mean. And if I needed a "crunchy" way to represent them, well, Construction Foreman or Office Manager might make good Backgrounds.

But that's not the kind of game I run, so I won't be doing any of this. All I'm trying to say is that I understand the point being made.

 

[Yaarel]

I think we are lacking a definition of culture here. I don't know if this is a translation issue but to me "office culture" and Culture despite having the same word don't mean the same thing. I think culture is more than how do people behave in a certain context....

Human scientists (sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, archeologists, historians, etcetera) have much to say about "culture".

TheFreeDictionary definition works well enough here.

culture
1.
a. The arts, beliefs, customs, institutions, and other products of human work and thought considered as a unit, especially with regard to a particular time or social group.
b. These arts, beliefs, and other products considered with respect to a particular subject or mode of expression.
c. The set of predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize a group or organization.



Where humans evolved to rely on learning rather than instinct, anything that one learns as part of a group is probably a "culture".

 

[jmartkdr2]

Pondering this a little more, and I think the base "problem" with racial alignments is either a non-problem or a new problem.

The non-problem argument is: if you actually read the whole books, DnD has almost never had absolute alignment, and in those cases it wasn't really about morality. Orcs or drow or whoever have never been portrayed as always irredeemably evil, (even when no good examples were given) - even celestials can fall which means fiends must be able to rise. The only "always always evil" creatures are undead, and that's because the negative energy they run on is itself classified as evil. No matter how she behaves, a vampire pings as evil, and if you removed the evil she'd be a well-dressed corpse. The outrage against 'orcs are always evil' is against something that isn't really there. (except maybe in certain home games, but we shouldn't hold WotC accountable for that.)

The new problem argument is: why is this suddenly a discussion in 5e? Is the text less clear about these things? Is the audience different? Is it really just a fringe group of very loud complainers? I'm inclined to dismiss the last option - there's always been whiners but there do seem to be a lot more confusions these days - and the 5e text does not read the same way as, say 3e's descriptions of monster alignments. But without real numbers I can't really say.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I think we are lacking a definition of culture here. I don't know if this is a translation issue but to me "office culture" and Culture despite having the same word don't mean the same thing. I think culture is more than how do people behave in a certain context....

So fun fact: in anthropology, the study of culture, there's no universally agreed on definition of culture. It's just a bunch of stuff that happens when groups* of people interact. Any kind of group that can be described (not even really defined) has some kind of culture. And groups can be defined all sorts of ways. Two people is the minimum for a culture, though that's usually too small a culture to be worth studying.

So for game rules purposes, we need to pick a level (say, ethnicity or nation) and use that. But it does not need to be very well-defined, any more than race does.

 

[cowpie]

I disagree. Unless your position is that the totality of all you do and experience is your culture (and therefore useless as a game device) then no, your training, is not culture.

Learning to lay bricks, is not a cultural touch stone.

Yep, you could be a bricklayer by day, culturally from Poland, but know how to play the violin and participate in classical music culture, and serve as a Pastor at a church on the weekends.

 

[Scribe]

So for game rules purposes, we need to pick a level (say, ethnicity or nation) and use that. But it does not need to be very well-defined, any more than race does.

This is what I'm getting at.