First appearing to the mass market fanbase within 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons in Eberron: Rising from the Last War and now in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, the Artificer is a kind of techno-wizard. For someone without previous connections to Eberron, the setting that exploded on the scene in 3rd edition, the Artificer confused me.
The fiction upon which it is based seemingly is all self-referring, or modern fantastical. There’s a subclass that essentially reads as if it is Iron Man ported back into D&D for example. Whereas most D&D classes stretch into the myths and legends that predate the game itself, the Artificer does not seem to have that convention.
Oddly enough, it was a Christmas movie that reminded me of Artificers within our lore. There are magical techno-wizards within holiday tales. From Christmas elves of tradition, to the inventors of Jingle Jangle, you can find your inspiration for your next Artificer.
These creators take the mundane and imbue it with magic. They create automatons, magically tinker, infuse items, and all the other things you expect from the description of an Artificer.
Masters of invention, artificers use ingenuity and magic to unlock extraordinary capabilities in objects. They see magic as a complex system waiting to be decoded and then harnessed in their spells and inventions. You can find everything you need to play one of these inventors in the next few sections.
Artificers use a variety of tools to channel their arcane power. To cast a spell, an artificer might use alchemist’s supplies to create a potent elixir, calligrapher’s supplies to inscribe a sigil of power, or tinker’s tools to craft a temporary charm. The magic of artificers is tied to their tools and their talents, and few other characters can produce the right tool for a job as well as an artificer.
Opening up a vision of an Artificer to include these amazing gift-gives also helps change how you approach D&D. A character of kindness and generosity, or that thieving Gustafson, expands the stories you can tell. When you visit the village you can brighten the spirits of the community via your infusions and spells.
https://fullmoonstorytelling.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/pexels-photo-730256.jpeg*Photo by Lisa Fotios on Pexels.com*It may be a Hallmark/Lifetime/FreeForm/UPTv cliche, but there is magic in the holiday season. Incorporating the magic of elves, toys, inventors, Santa, and others into your D&D characters and stories means adding more joy to a game that so often centers violence.
Generosity and joy exist in D&D (even in Barovia). Your Artificer has the power to amplify those feelings (while also being an effective combatant, but there are many places that talk about optimizing in those ways). There are 1,000 times a thousand stories available at any table and any session. Adding a little Christmas to your Artificer is a way to discover more of them.
Be Jeronicus, Jessica, Journey, or even Gustafson. Be Alabaster Snowball, Bushy Evergreen, Pepper Minstix, Shinny Upatree, Sugarplum Mary, or Wunorse Openslae. Roll dice and tell stories about the power of Artifice.
Full Moon Storytelling is presented by Homes by KC
Homes by KC is a Keller-Williams Realtor with a background in interior design, marketing, and project management.
Follow her on Facebook or Instagram to see featured homes in the area as well as to get advice on the real estate market around Puget Sound and southeast Washington.
You can support Full Moon Storytelling by choosing Homes by KC for your next real estate transaction.
Ich habe gerade das Projekt 'A Life well lived' von #Cubicle7 für #DnD5 auf #Kickstarter unterstützt. Es geht um Lifepath-Systeme, Downtime-Aktivitäten und das Vermächtnis von Charakteren. Alles interessante Dinge, ich gerne mehr einbauen würde. Und da der Verlag eigentlich größtenteils gute Arbeit macht, gebe ich diesem Buch gerne eine Chance. #pnpde
Please respond by saying what sorts of TTRPG things you're pretty likely to either talk about or respond to if you see them.
This can be a list of games (D&D! Tribe 8! Fate!) or categories (the weirdest of indie stuff! NSR! Anything PBtA!), topics (Worldbuilding! Publishing!), stuff you're making, meta-commentary (The State Of The Industry), and so on.
Then maybe share, and if the replies are building up, check them for new people.
Driving off into the wilderlands of Oregon my thoughts wandered to the D&D world I’ve created. Creating names for places on the fly is hard. Often people get consumed with making something that feels like Tolkien, Jordan, Weis, Bardugo or other greats. These names are complicated and often involve invented languages.
You don’t need to be so impressive that linguists study you.
Your world will feel alive borrowing from our own world.
Seven Devils Road and Old Seven Devils Road is perfect for any Dungeons and Dragons game. You don’t need to stretch to far for there to be both an incident that involved seven devils and for the now ruling empire to have a newer, more popular road that carries the same name.
West Beaverhill Road could mean that it is west of Beaverhill. I submit that your fantasy world is more Lewis when you have every cardinal direction have a Beaverhill Road. Each of those is for a different beaverhill. Make those beavers talkative and have them part of the empire to capture some Fillory vibes too.
Full Moon Storytelling is presented by Homes by KC
Homes by KC is a Keller-Williams Realtor with a background in interior design, marketing, and project management.
Follow her on Facebook or Instagram to see featured homes in the area as well as to get advice on the real estate market around Puget Sound and southeast Washington.
You can support Full Moon Storytelling by choosing Homes by KC for your next real estate transaction.
Whiskey Run Road is just down the way from where we are staying. In my fantasy world that road probably started as a minor trail used by some bootleggers. Now, as they gained power within the realm, thanks to their whiskey runs making money, Whiskey Run Road is the main thoroughfare between the capitol and its not-quite-satellite city. What was once a former smuggler cove is now the headquarters of a major influence on a failing state.
Hidden Canyon Road is something I’m fairly certain I passed by driving to get a cranberry turnover this morning. But my memory of this road is fragile as the road may not exist. The canyon might not exist. I never saw it. In a fantasy world Hidden Canyon Road could be a road, and a bridge, that exists over a fey gulch. There are nights when the gulch exists on most days the hidden canyon and covered bridge is just a normal passage with no need of a bridge at all. But on those nights with a few moons waning the fey canyon is back. Elves and their friends come out of the gulch demanding tax from those who use the bridge.
tl;dr
Take a few road names with you and be ready to create them as fantastic locations using the techniques from SlyFlourish’s Lazy Dungeon Master series. These quite normal names create a world of magic and wonder. Use placenames in reality to inspire your fiction.
The trope that starts every Dungeons & Dragons campaign is “So, you meet in a tavern.” Which is fitting. For most campaigns start with a diverse group of characters who don’t have strong connections throughout the group. They are a cross-cultural, cross-class, cross-Class, cross-everything group that wouldn’t meet at most places in the medieval-Renaissance-ish fantasy world that is D&D.
But the tavern, via the trope, has become a third place. It’s not home (though it often becomes that). It’s not work (though it often becomes that). It’s the place between. And these places between are frequently where subcultures within a society connect.
Various cultures have had different third places. For modern America it is now the coffeeshop and used to be bowling alleys. In the Ottoman Empire in the classical age had its cafes, where philosophy, music and political debate occurred.
In New England during the American Revolution public houses were the gathering point, for many at that time the first place was a co-located home with work and the second were churches.
The Greeks gathered on the steps of temples. Finns and Russians gather in bathhouses.
Sporting venues have been third places, before they became economically stratified. Travelling carnivals and festivals can be a third place.
No matter the type of third place, it tells you a bit about the culture.
Using third places as a character backstory tool
When creating a PC think about the place where you mingled with peoples unlike you. Where did your dwarf first meet an elf? Where did your farmer first meet a noble? Where did your follower of Lathander meet an unbeliever?
This decision will help tell you about your own history.
It will connect them to a place and associated behaviors that aren’t mechanics, but are fuel for the social pillar. Their own stories about a trip to watch a great debate between philosophers, a visit to the library, or the type of ale they enjoyed at the pub are stories that add more depth to the shared story that is D&D.
Adventurers have the place where they sleep (a cave, a cove, an inn), the place where they work (dungeons), and the places where they spend time meeting strangers with odd quests. Once they start their adventure they have the third place that was cross-cultural communication when they were growing up and now the place between — and that’s up to the whole party of different peoples.
Using third places as a world building tool
Dungeon Masters generally are more active in creating the world. There are a few ways they can use third places in that world.
Collect each players’ third places in your notes. Give them the opportunity to revisit them in new lands.
Start the campaign at the typical third place for the origin culture of the campaign. “So, you meet on the steps of the temple.”
When the group comes to a new land and looks for their comfortable third place (the tavern) demonstrate how that locale is different from their expectation and what the unfamiliar culture would use as their non-stratified place that welcomes outsiders.
Use maps of abandoned third places to show how different the older ages were from the one in which you campaign.
Have an NPC name-drop their favorite third place. This can show how they are familiar to most of the group, or different. Each NPC can have their own place, they should!
Have two third places in the same town share similarities but still be unique beyond their name. Maybe the Rusty Clam is a working pub and the Silver Nail is for the merchant class — and yet the players are welcomed at both.
These are flavor elements, but flavor is story in D&D. And story is what tables build together, usually because Dungeons and Dragons is now our third place.
Spelljammer is already on printing two. That’s because they need to make some changes to the Hadozee for reasons of insensitivity. They’re good changes and Wizards of the Coast is changing the processes that allowed the culturally insensitive material to appear first too. This new printing has other errata too.
The one that sticks out is the addition of Feats to every Background.
“These backgrounds each give a feat. If a character takes a background from elsewhere and doesn’t get a feat from that background, the character gains one of the following feats of the player’s choice: Magic Initiate, Skilled, or Tough.”
Dragonlance will have something similar. For Dragonlance this was because these are characters in a war. They must be stronger, tougher, etc. In Spelljammer it kind of makes sense. Normal people aren’t space halflings and asteroid dwarves.
Similar to the Dragonlance decision my world has an additional feat at first level. In the case of the World of the Everflow these choices are;
Kin get a Bonded Companion.
Ken get a feat that grants a cantrip.
Kon get Artificer Initiate and the Rock Gnome’s tinker ability.
Similar to the Dragonlance decision to add Feats this was done to add flavor, speaking to the types of powers that people from various continents have.
With One D&D’s playtest we know there’s a chance at adding Feats for everyone at 1st level.
What if the One D&D system of 1st Level Feats was added to 5e now?
You could add Feats to any character in the current game with a minor, but not overwhelming, increase in power with a few simple guidelines.
Only allow Feats that don’t have a +1 to an attribute.
Don’t allow the +5/-10 Feats.
Don’t allow Lucky.
Don’t allow Polearm Master
That’s it.
Now you can have flavorful feats in your 5e game at 1st level.
Instead, attach Feats to Backgrounds
Now, my current world attaches Feats to racial choices, but one could choose to go the path of Dragonlance, Spelljammer, and Strixhaven. Each of those books assigns their unique Backgrounds specific Feats for flavor.
A more flexible system would be to attach Feats on a small curve. Those Feats would be selected to emphasize specific stories typically told regarding that Background.
Actor reminds me of Paden Fain. Artificer Initiate seems obvious. Linguist fits the wanderer mold. Ritual Caster makes sense to capture the one who picks up hedge magic.
Putting those on a chart with a curve using two dice can influence the commonality of the Feats.
Roll 2d4 or choose your favorite.
Magic Initiate
Tough
Linguist
Actor
Skilled
Ritual Caster
Artificer Initiate
Since it looks likely that Before We Were Heroes won’t be ready before the 2024 edition, I’m thinking of adding that Feat guidance to each listed Background.
Have another Background you’d like a Feat Chart for, ask in comments.
Since Dungeons & Dragons is anachronistic, most people, and basically every player character, know how to write. But what about those that know how to write and count better? The late middle ages were a time when there was a rapid need for more writers, more accountants. Guilds needed to track the money they were bringing in.
If your D&D world has many guilds it would have many clerks. Some of those clerks may get bored of quill and ink, or precisely measuring liquids, or whatever mundane task their employer has for them — so they head out on adventures, which is what happened in real life too. Lots of clerks got involved with murdering.
You are someone who counts fast, keeps precise notes, reads for others, writes for others. You are meticulous and detailed. When
Skill Proficiencies: Investigation, Insight Tool Proficiencies: Calligrapher’s Tools Languages: One language Equipment: Common clothes, tabard, abacus, merchant’s scale, jar (precisely 1 quart), pouch, signet ring, 10 gp
Feature: Measure Twice
You can rapidly and accurately account for large quantities of coins or other staples, assessing their value using just a single action. Clerks are also able to stretch large quantities of staples further than expected. If you need more than 50 of an item a Clerk needs 10% less of that item. For example, 900 ball bearings works just as well for a Clerk as 1000. Or if others would need 50′ of rope the Clerk can make do with 45′.
Full Moon Storytelling is presented by Homes by KC
Homes by KC is a Keller-Williams Realtor with a background in interior design, marketing, and project management.
Follow her on Facebook or Instagram to see featured homes in the area as well as to get advice on the real estate market around Puget Sound and southeast Washington.
You can support Full Moon Storytelling by choosing Homes by KC for your next real estate transaction.
Alternate Background: Tax Collector
You are a representative of the government, collecting fees and taxes for the services they provide. Maybe you work at a toll bridge, a city gate, or you wander to various farms. Some pay in gold, most in silver or even copper. You’ll take barter too. The Barony needs the funds however it can get them.
A just collector may go easy on a family in years of struggle. An unjust may continually take. Your character’s behavior and history is up to you.
The Tax collector has the same skills, tools, and languages as the Clerk. The difference is in their Feature and in their role in society.
Feature: Forgotten Refund
Knowing the ways of governments you are able to assume the debts of a group that owe. You can also find a way to get a tax refund for yourself or others, or avoid paying the full amount. If normally the government takes 10% you would only pay 5%. If you are short gold, you may visit another tax collector, if one can be found, to get 5 times your proficiency bonus as a refund.
Design Goals
Clerks were so common in the late middle ages they killed a lot of people. Which sounds a lot like D&D adventurers, so why not have a Background based on them. Sure, they could be represented by Sages and Acolytes or other thinkers.
But, I’ve watched too many Clerks movies, and so needed to honor the OG clerks in a special way. Don’t be murdered by clerks, be the clerks that murder.
Custom Backgrounds for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons
Picking herbs from a backyard garden, a hot house, or a forest outside of town the herbalist collects natural items that aid and harm. An herbalist can heal, poison, invigorate. They know the powers of plants and fungi to change how humanoids and beasts experience the world.
You are a naturalist. You use the art and science of foods and other natural goods to change the way people experience the world. Maybe your favorite tisane helps awaken the weary, or heal the hurt, or cure a disease, or puts people to sleep. A poultice could stop blood flow, or cool the overheating.
There’s power in the natural world and your various recipes. Clerics count on gods. Druids channel the magic of nature. An herbalist knows that life interacts with itself in interesting ways. There’s a magic to that, it’s just not ‘magic.’
Skill Proficiencies: Nature, Survival Tool Proficiencies: Herbalist Kit Languages: Druidic Equipment: Sickle, 2 candles, Scroll case with 5 pieces parchment or a notebook, common clothes, component pouch, herbalism kit, 2 vials (1 w/ either antitoxin or healing potion)
Feature: A Dash of This; a Dollop of That
Using a short rest, you can always find the various fungus, plants, and whatnot needed to make antitoxin, healing potions, poison, or coffee-like substances. Your recipes manifest as salves, poultices, potions, pills, or any other way to deliver the ingredients. Any of your recipes take just a Bonus Action to use as they are more potent than typical.
The personality traits, ideals, bonds of flaws of the Acolyte, Folk Hero, Hermit, Outlander, and Sage all make sense to borrow from during the playtest of this Background. When published all Backgrounds will have unique character traits.
Full Moon Storytelling is presented by Homes by KC
Homes by KC is a Keller-Williams Realtor with a background in interior design, marketing, and project management.
Follow her on Facebook or Instagram to see featured homes in the area as well as to get advice on the real estate market around Puget Sound and southeast Washington.
You can support Full Moon Storytelling by choosing Homes by KC for your next real estate transaction.
Herbalist Design Goals
Again, this design exists because the Guild Artisan puts most Backgrounds that are related to Tools into a Guild. That’s fine for some stories, but it ignores so many others.
A rural or farm community Herbalist is common in the lore upon which D&D is based. These can become Druids, Rangers, Clerics, Sorcerers, Wizards, and Warlocks most commonly. There’s also a fit with certain Barbarians, Monks, and Paladins. Frankly, a Rogue (Assassin) and Paladin (Devotion, Ancients), and even a Fighter (Eldritch Knight). Because frankly every background should have a story with every core class.
There was also a desire to have access to Druidic, my least favorite D&D language, at a Background level. A couple Backgrounds grant access to Thieves Cant, and it makes sense to have at least one grant Druidic. Shortly, there will be a post about a new take on Druidic that expands it to cover at least one more class and a couple more Backgrounds soon.
Nynaeve al’Meara from the Wheel of Time is a foundational character for this Background.
Custom Backgrounds for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons
In a city you might be part of a guild, where in rural communities you could be the only midwife for miles. You are there to aid during pregnancy and birth. Your role goes beyond just those times, as you are also the confidant within the region. Your charges trust you, confide in you, and know that you will support them in their time of need.
You are capable of calming emotions during impassioned times, trained in techniques of general healing, when you are present life is honored and saved. Whether itinerant or attached to a guild, your role within the community is respected. Those who don’t need your services still hold you in esteem, if from a distance.
Skill Proficiencies: Insight Tool Proficiencies: Herbalism Kit Languages: None Cantrip: Spare the Dying Equipment: Druidic focus or religious symbol, healer’s kit, traveler’s clothes, flask, jug, steel mirror, soap, 5 gp
Feature: Welcome to our home
Folk that care for families will always welcome a midwife into their house. They will not fight for the midwife, but will help them hide, provide some food or provisions for the midwife and their friends if able, and share the gossip that caregivers invariably know about a community.
Characteristics: For now, use those from the Folk Hero or pick & choose your favorites. Whenever my background project sees full publication there will be unique characteristics for each of them
Full Moon Storytelling is presented by Homes by KC
Homes by KC is a Keller-Williams Realtor with a background in interior design, marketing, and project management.
Follow her on Facebook or Instagram to see featured homes in the area as well as to get advice on the real estate market around Puget Sound and southeast Washington.
You can support Full Moon Storytelling by choosing Homes by KC for your next real estate transaction.
Midwife Design Goals
First and foremost, this design is to honor my late mother-in-law. She was a maternity nurse, and through her I met many other nurses. Secondly, the background leans into Call the Midwife, which my wife watches regularly. There is a bit of inspiration from Nynaeve al’Meara (Wheel of Time) and her time as Wisdom of Emond’s Field when she cared for the community as a healer and confidant for the women of the community. As there is no healer among official D&D products, the Midwife attempts to fill some of that niche (as will the Barber, the Apothecary, and the Healer).
Like the Remarkable Drudge, the Midwife grants a cantrip at the cost of a skill and a tool/language.
Custom Backgrounds for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons
Opening up an NPC creation series with a character I should have made ages ago – one with glasses. If you don’t know me, I’m basically finger-blind. Without glasses or contacts I am unable to count how many fingers you would be holding up if you are more than a couple feet away from me. And yet, I never have played a character or NPC with glasses. I actively avoided it.
Heading over to DM Heroes, I hit the random button until it turned up a character with glasses. Then, it was about creating a character with an interesting background who was not a quest giver. Because as Rue says, “Make us non-quest related. Just people in your world. Living. Existing.”
First up is a Simple Index Card Version of an NPC. These are designed so with just a few words you can know who an NPC is from a basic description of appearance, to some basic motivations. In Willowrush’s case he’s a former soldier who once fought for the realm, but now works as a cooper. In my deep belief that everyone in your D&D world should have a hobby he is a fisher. He is not skilled in fishing though. He just enjoys doing the calmness of fishing with his friends. He can get dreamy about his past, but also doesn’t like to talk about it. Orne recently lost his beaver – Tryn. He’s just newly bonded with an otter – Orla.
Orne’s best friend is a librarian named Incirion Vadu, a goblin. You can often find them at the river together, ignoring work. Incirion knows Mending, and will often have an extra pair of glasses for Orne.
https://fullmoonstorytelling.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/lemplet_place__4300.png*Built using the Medieval Fantasy City Generator*Winestar is a neighborhood built along the rolling ridge of the Lemplet River. It’s a mix of farmsteads with a few crafts to support their needs. Most of the good produced enter the walled part of the city via barge or float. The Spring, across the river, is up on a cliffside, and is generally more wealthy than Winestar, especially those parts that are next to the castle walls. Within Winestar you will, of course, find many small vintners, with most of the homes at least having a passing hobby of wine creation. In general, Winestar produces luxury goods whereas Northroad is sustenance farming.
Lemplet Place is a city of about 4,300 people.
Blackbridge – known for the eponymous bridge, the downtown of Lemplet Place
Tidewater Place – the slums, used to flood with high tide
Castle Lemplet – originally built as a exterior castle, the city has grown around it
Trollrock – the northern block surrounds a huge rock hill with a cave inside, no trolls though
Northroad – sustenance farming
Winestar – grapevines, orchards
The Spring – for the wealthy that moved out of the city
How will you use Orne Willowrush in your campaign?
Languages in most Dungeons & Dragons settings is rather rudimentary. There’s the pidgin-trade tongue of Common (and sometimes Undercommon. From there, the typical known languages are based on races and the planes.
A character might know Common, Elvish, and Primordial for example.
This is bland, unnecessary, and lacks verisimilitude. Get rid of languages. They rarely come up at the table. For most tables, languages are simply “You can communicate” or “You must use gestures.” Few encounters are successes and failures based on the 3-7 languages a character knows.
Instead replace them with Culture: NAME.
This would also replace Intelligence (History). This small tweak aids deeper connections between certain character classes and backgrounds with the world in which they are played.
What do you gain from adding Culture?
Especially in games with heavier social and exploration pillars you have a better idea of what your character knows. Rather than have a wood elf raised as an urchin on the streets of Waterdeep be capable of talking to every single elf in the world, as if language is hard-coded in the soul, it is instead a learned thing.
Said wood elf would instead know Common and the Culture of the Sword Coast, able to communicate with the peoples in and around Waterdeep, as well as knowing the traditions of the various peoples, their symbols, their stories.
The characters are deeper, with more connections to the world in which they play. A Fighter-Sage would be intimately familiar with many nations and cultures, rather than just a few and whatever the DM determines is known through a d20. A character that has studied the Dalelands would know the holidays, conflicts, and ways to communicate that are common in the the Moon Sea and the Inner Sea.
At its simplest with Culture, you know more.
What do you lose by removing Languages and History?
Not much.
The characters will still be able to communicate as always. There may be a perceived penalty for a few backgrounds, but there is a fix for that.
There is additional bookkeeping. You will have to use a custom field on DnDBeyond.com, for example.
How does adding Culture work when building a Player Character?
While building your character in the standard order (Race, Class, Background) take note of every language learned. Each of these are replaced with adding a single culture.
When you would take History you would now have the option to take another proficiency or take a culture.
Additionally, I would encourage most tables to use a PC’s Intelligence modifier to add (or subtract) from known cultures. This is mostly because Intelligence is undervalued within the game.
Example: A High Elf, Fighter, Sage would begin knowing as many as 8 cultures known. This would represent their studious familiarity with many peoples.
Full Moon Storytelling is presented by Homes by KC
Homes by KC is a Keller-Williams Realtor with a background in interior design, marketing, and project management.
Follow her on Facebook or Instagram to see featured homes in the area as well as to get advice on the real estate market around Puget Sound and southeast Washington.
You can support Full Moon Storytelling by choosing Homes by KC for your next real estate transaction.
How do you use Culture?
Use Culture like you would use History, but apply it like a tool. Most often it would connect with Intelligence, but there are times when your proficiency in a culture would apply to a check based off of Wisdom (if a character isn’t proficient in Insight their awareness of the opponent’s culture might help them) or Charisma would apply.
Knowing a culture of a peoples with which you are interacting is particularly helpful in social encounters. A character familiar with a particular empire should be able to take advantage of that knowledge at the table!
Are you familiar with the Dalelands? Then you would recognize their heraldry, for example. Hidden societies, or subsets of a culture may require a check (DC: 15) to see if you have studied or are aware of that aspect.
Practical Examples of Cultures in D&D
Within the World of the Everflow, a rather narrow setting, the following cultures would be available;
Western Wildes
Ancient Sheljar
Ancient Gallinor
Kirtin
Daoud
Crinth Confederacy
Azsel
Mehmd
Gobkon Union
Dragonken
Church of Quar (yes, this is cross-national group with influence throughout the continent of Kin)
There are other faiths and cults that may be appropriate
The Scholars and Proctors of Grace
In a more explored and developed setting such as the Forgotten Realms I would recommend using the super-national regions such as, but not limited to the Sword Coast or the Dalelands or Chult. If you are a member of a Faction, assume that you know their Culture too. The list of political groups, religions, factions, and other strong cultural groups within the Forgotten Realms would fill an entire wiki.
If you are playing in Eberron: Rising from the Last War the various nations of Khorvaire would all be appropriate Cultures as would most of the religions.
Tables that use other setting would have to assess that setting. Do not make the cultures too narrow, nor too broad (then you just have the language problem, but different).
Within Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything there is an optional rule that allows you to create a character that shifts their proficiencies around. No longer is every Dwarf a brewer, mason, or smith. No longer will every Elf know how to use a sword.
The ability to swap these out lets you tell new stories through new mechanics. But the change to the game mechanics are quite minor. Half the classes already allow the weapons that the Dwarf and Elf start with in the Player’s Handbook, in this case many optimizers will take Tools in order to expand their skills.
Yes, this expands the powers of certain combinations Race and Class. Frankly, ignore that tiny tic up in power.
This optional rule in Tasha’s grants you the ability to expand the story of your character.
https://fullmoonstorytelling.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/pexels-photo-5711899.jpegPhoto by Anna Shvets on Pexels.comSince your Dwarf didn’t grow up knowing masonry, but instead was a woodsman, what does Woodcarver’s Tools mean for them? Were they part of the crew that regularly left the caves of the fathers to harvest the massive trunks that became reinforcement for the great halls? Or were they just not raised among their people, instead taking their mother’s stone carving tools but applying those to the softer structure of wood to create art?
Your High Elf that did not learn the sword and bow, maybe instead they have Coffee Gear and Insight, because they founded a cafe where they interacted with wizards, nobles, and adventurers. You aren’t a warrior by nature, instead you are someone who understands the people who go out and see the world beyond the city.
https://fullmoonstorytelling.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/pexels-photo-1309778.jpegPhoto by Tom Swinnen on Pexels.comLike so much of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, the mechanics by this decision do not create power creep – they fashion story creep. There are 25 tools, plus Gaming Sets and Musical Instruments. Your character that has more of these than typical or usual has reasons for these.
As you generate new ways that your spells manifest (one of my favorite suggestions in Tasha’s) you should generate the reasons for your differing skill set from the classical presentations within your race. Whether it is all in your head, or a single line on your character sheet, a hint in the art you commission or draw, or an entire blog entry is up to you, the player.
But it should be there, because the 1000 thousands of stories that can be told in any game session originate in the mechanics, but the mechanics aren’t the point – the story is.
Full Moon Storytelling is presented by Homes by KC
Homes by KC is a Keller-Williams Realtor with a background in interior design, marketing, and project management.
Follow her on Facebook or Instagram to see featured homes in the area as well as to get advice on the real estate market around Puget Sound and southeast Washington.
You can support Full Moon Storytelling by choosing Homes by KC for your next real estate transaction.