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Ancestry & Culture: An Alternative to Race in 5e
Character creation rules for 5e that replace race with ancestry, culture, and mixed heritage, for awesome new PCs
From the successful ZineQuest Kickstarter!
Play as the child of an elf and an orc, or a tiefling and a halfling!
Play a character of one ancestry who grew up in a different culture!
Have you ever wondered why there are half-elves and half-orcs in your favorite fantasy roleplaying game, but not half-tieflings, half-dwarves, or half-gnomes? And why only allow orcs and elves to have children with humans and not others? Why can't we play the child of an elf and an orc or a gnome and a halfling? What's more, what if we want to play a human raised by elves, like Tolkien's Aragorn, or a halfling who grew up among orcs? Wouldn't such characters be different than a halfling who grew up among her own people, for example? It would be a delight to be able play such a diverse cast of characters, with such a wide range of ancestries and cultures.
Well, now we can! This 70-page zine of rules and original fantasy art allows for the easy creation of a variety of new ancestral and cultural combinations and types, without having to make big changes to the core game rules. What's more, they replace the problematic concept of race as it is traditionally used in character creation. Ancestry provides those heritable traits a character might receive from their parents, such as height, average lifespan, and darkvision, and culture provides such teachable features as weapon training and ability. This frees us up to play the characters we want to play, without all the baggage, and provides us many more options, just dripping with role-play potential.
In addition to the new character creation rules, Ancestry & Culture also includes two adventures, "The Light of Unity" and "Helping Hands," suitable for players of all ages, which highlight the themes of the title.
And if you'd like a whole lot more ancestries & cultures to supplement this, check out Custom Ancestries & Cultures, which contains 61 more, from fantasy classics to bizarre originals.
From the successful ZineQuest Kickstarter!
Play as the child of an elf and an orc, or a tiefling and a halfling!
Play a character of one ancestry who grew up in a different culture!
Have you ever wondered why there are half-elves and half-orcs in your favorite fantasy roleplaying game, but not half-tieflings, half-dwarves, or half-gnomes? And why only allow orcs and elves to have children with humans and not others? Why can't we play the child of an elf and an orc or a gnome and a halfling? What's more, what if we want to play a human raised by elves, like Tolkien's Aragorn, or a halfling who grew up among orcs? Wouldn't such characters be different than a halfling who grew up among her own people, for example? It would be a delight to be able play such a diverse cast of characters, with such a wide range of ancestries and cultures.
Well, now we can! This 70-page zine of rules and original fantasy art allows for the easy creation of a variety of new ancestral and cultural combinations and types, without having to make big changes to the core game rules. What's more, they replace the problematic concept of race as it is traditionally used in character creation. Ancestry provides those heritable traits a character might receive from their parents, such as height, average lifespan, and darkvision, and culture provides such teachable features as weapon training and ability. This frees us up to play the characters we want to play, without all the baggage, and provides us many more options, just dripping with role-play potential.
In addition to the new character creation rules, Ancestry & Culture also includes two adventures, "The Light of Unity" and "Helping Hands," suitable for players of all ages, which highlight the themes of the title.
And if you'd like a whole lot more ancestries & cultures to supplement this, check out Custom Ancestries & Cultures, which contains 61 more, from fantasy classics to bizarre originals.
70 pages, Paperback
Published June 8, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 4, 2020
This supplement to the 5 Edition of Dungeons and Dragons provides an alternative to race in that game. It splits race into ancestry and culture. Ancestry represents the biological traits that you inherit from your parents, and culture represents the traits that you learn from the society in which you grow up in. It also allows for more flexibility in creating multiracial characters. So, you could have a character who is half gnome and half dragonborn who grew up in a dwarven community. In addition to eliminating some troubling ideas about race, this leads to more interesting characters.
The section on ancestry and culture is only about half of the book. The second half offers two adventures that focus on multicultural communities with an emphasis on non-combat conflict resolution. These are short adventures that can be completed in one session, so they are idea for one-shot campaigns, or you could drop them into your regular campaign if you didn't have to prepare your own story. These adventures are optimized for 3 or 4 level characters, but the book gives advice on how to scale them up or down.
The section on ancestry and culture is only about half of the book. The second half offers two adventures that focus on multicultural communities with an emphasis on non-combat conflict resolution. These are short adventures that can be completed in one session, so they are idea for one-shot campaigns, or you could drop them into your regular campaign if you didn't have to prepare your own story. These adventures are optimized for 3 or 4 level characters, but the book gives advice on how to scale them up or down.
July 5, 2020
This book arrived on my doorstep in late June 2020, on the heels of Black Lives Matter protests and announcements by Wizards of the Coast (publishers of Dungeons and Dragons aka D and D) that they will be addressing problematic aspects of the concept of “race” in the game. That said, this book was the outcome of a Kickstarter I backed in February; so the conversation has been going on for quite a while before this moment.
The book 100% matched my thinking on the idea of “race” in D and D (hereafter I’ll use the less loaded term of “folk”). Split racial feats up into inherited and learned. Ie, nature and nurture. They only did one sub-folk per main folk - there are only Hill Dwarves, no Mountain Dwarves. But it’s all hackable.
I already have removed ability scores as having anything to do with a character’s folk.
I might also go one step further and allow players to roll or choose cultural feats to create an actual culture in the world. That could be fun. Even things like Tiefling fiendish origins could become cults or something.
Last thing on Darkvision and mixed-folk ancestries. If a player decides to NOT take Darkvision, I might give them an extra cultural feat or skill proficiency that they have learned to “keep up”.
There are also 2 adventures in the book which I will read later today. The adventures give you a way to introduce and normalize the multi-cultural ideas in this book. I think that’s a great call.
Overall a solid book. But for me still a bit more work to be done before I’m satisfied with how folk are handled in D and D.
The book 100% matched my thinking on the idea of “race” in D and D (hereafter I’ll use the less loaded term of “folk”). Split racial feats up into inherited and learned. Ie, nature and nurture. They only did one sub-folk per main folk - there are only Hill Dwarves, no Mountain Dwarves. But it’s all hackable.
I already have removed ability scores as having anything to do with a character’s folk.
I might also go one step further and allow players to roll or choose cultural feats to create an actual culture in the world. That could be fun. Even things like Tiefling fiendish origins could become cults or something.
Last thing on Darkvision and mixed-folk ancestries. If a player decides to NOT take Darkvision, I might give them an extra cultural feat or skill proficiency that they have learned to “keep up”.
There are also 2 adventures in the book which I will read later today. The adventures give you a way to introduce and normalize the multi-cultural ideas in this book. I think that’s a great call.
Overall a solid book. But for me still a bit more work to be done before I’m satisfied with how folk are handled in D and D.
February 11, 2021
The idea behind the book (zine, really) is solid, and the execution is both more robust and more tactfully handled than the “race/origin customization” options in Tasha’s Cauldron. It’s still pretty simplistic, though, and the author approaches the intent behind the changes from a lot of axioms that the kind of people who want to cry “SJW” at everything will probably get turned off by. The two low-level adventures included are nice standalone quests that take pains to reward peaceful resolutions, which is a nice way to encapsulate the zine’s purpose.
Would give 3.5 if Goodreads allowed half stars.
Would give 3.5 if Goodreads allowed half stars.
October 10, 2020
This seems like a good supplement to the game, and something that was thought about a lot ahead of time! IDK tho since I am not a D&D player. The art here is nice as is the way they displayed all of the information, the adventures seemed OK. I wonder what other D&D races and ancestries exist that I don't yet know about.
March 28, 2022
Easy to use rule adjustments that make character creation way more fun (I mean, who hasn't wanted to play a halfling-tiefling or a firbolg-orc?!) and frankly makes a lot more sense than the rules in the Player's Handbook of 5e D&D. You also get two fun 4-ish hour long pre-written adventures. Recommended for all players of 5e!
September 20, 2022
I wrote about this book for the Hugo-winning blog Nerds of a Feather:
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2022/09/...
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2022/09/...
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews