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Ancestry & Culture
5 years ago
All we are and all we seem...
I received in the mail a most splendid item; a book I ordered from DriveThru RPG. it's titled Ancestry & Culture: An Alternative To Race In 5e. it's a 70-page long sourcebook for D&D 5th Edition by Arcanist Press, a 3rd-party publisher. it lays out optional rules for substituting playable races for characters of different ancestries and cultural backgrounds.
the way it works is, racial traits are divided into ancestral traits and cultural traits. things like size, speed, age, Darkvision, and resistances are considered biological and therefor depend on your ancestry. things like alignment, languages, ability score bonuses, cantrips, proficiencies, and other traits are considered cultural and so depend on your culture. the mix of ancestry and culture determines what your traits are.
this breaks away from racial stereotypes, as well as from essentialist depictions of race. it also allows for mixed-ancestry characters, such as Dwarf-Halfling, Orc-Elf, Human-Dragonborn, or Gnome-Tiefling mixes. and of course, it means you can play a character of one (or mixed) ancestry but raised in a different culture!
I ended up reading the book cover to cover the day I got it, and I don't regret it one bit. it was well worth the price, and I quite like the rules presented in this book. I think any 5e game I run will use these rules.
I also decided to adapt these rules somewhat for my 3rd edition homebrew D&D setting. I tweaked them a bit, though, to suit my particular take on how they apply to 3rd edition racial traits.
for one thing, while I mostly left ability score modifiers in the Culture half, I did allow some ability score modifiers to be ancestral rather than cultural. namely, the -2 STR of Halflings and Gnomes (because they are physically small and puny), +2 out of the total +4 STR of Orcs (because I really just feel that Orcs increased muscle mass is, at least in my setting, a biological fact) and the same treatment for my homebrew Leonin race (+2 STR from Ancestry, +2 STR from Culture), and the +2 CON, -2 WIS, and -2 CHA of Warforged (because I ruled that Warforged traits all come from their "ancestry", and they cannot have a Culture. Warforged are built, not born).
so in total I have a Human Ancestry, an Udori High Caste Ancestry, Udori Warrior Caste Ancestry, Orc Ancestry, Elf Ancestry, Dwarf Ancestry, Halfling Ancestry, Gnome Ancestry, Changeling Ancestry, Leonin Ancestry, and Warforged "Ancestry". and Cultures representing each of the nations of my setting, plus a few diaspora Cultures, including a Culture of nomadic humans that I was inspired to write up and add to my setting after reading Ancestry & Culture. they were just what my setting was missing (still need to give this culture a name and a language, though).
in a later journal I will follow up by posting the details of these Ancestral and Cultural traits.
the way it works is, racial traits are divided into ancestral traits and cultural traits. things like size, speed, age, Darkvision, and resistances are considered biological and therefor depend on your ancestry. things like alignment, languages, ability score bonuses, cantrips, proficiencies, and other traits are considered cultural and so depend on your culture. the mix of ancestry and culture determines what your traits are.
this breaks away from racial stereotypes, as well as from essentialist depictions of race. it also allows for mixed-ancestry characters, such as Dwarf-Halfling, Orc-Elf, Human-Dragonborn, or Gnome-Tiefling mixes. and of course, it means you can play a character of one (or mixed) ancestry but raised in a different culture!
I ended up reading the book cover to cover the day I got it, and I don't regret it one bit. it was well worth the price, and I quite like the rules presented in this book. I think any 5e game I run will use these rules.
I also decided to adapt these rules somewhat for my 3rd edition homebrew D&D setting. I tweaked them a bit, though, to suit my particular take on how they apply to 3rd edition racial traits.
for one thing, while I mostly left ability score modifiers in the Culture half, I did allow some ability score modifiers to be ancestral rather than cultural. namely, the -2 STR of Halflings and Gnomes (because they are physically small and puny), +2 out of the total +4 STR of Orcs (because I really just feel that Orcs increased muscle mass is, at least in my setting, a biological fact) and the same treatment for my homebrew Leonin race (+2 STR from Ancestry, +2 STR from Culture), and the +2 CON, -2 WIS, and -2 CHA of Warforged (because I ruled that Warforged traits all come from their "ancestry", and they cannot have a Culture. Warforged are built, not born).
so in total I have a Human Ancestry, an Udori High Caste Ancestry, Udori Warrior Caste Ancestry, Orc Ancestry, Elf Ancestry, Dwarf Ancestry, Halfling Ancestry, Gnome Ancestry, Changeling Ancestry, Leonin Ancestry, and Warforged "Ancestry". and Cultures representing each of the nations of my setting, plus a few diaspora Cultures, including a Culture of nomadic humans that I was inspired to write up and add to my setting after reading Ancestry & Culture. they were just what my setting was missing (still need to give this culture a name and a language, though).
in a later journal I will follow up by posting the details of these Ancestral and Cultural traits.
