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D&D Ideas — Culture

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is the culture, which we discussed in our weekly live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST on Nerdarchy Live to talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. Speaking of culture in the frozen tundra of Kredgefur’s Belt myth and magic greatly inform the lives of clan culture including the power of fate to affect outcomes — like the rise of a new Frost King. You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy plus snag a FREE GIFT by signing up here.

Nerdy News

Fire off a ray towards the week that was! Undergo a dragonborn evolution, discover an array of ray spells and become a master of all things tool plus a new live chats and game play round out this week’s Nerdy News. Check it out here.

Delving Dave’s Dungeon

One of the complaints about Dungeons & Dragons is how races tend to be monocultural in nature, at least in the core fifth edition D&D books. Once you move into the novelizations of the D&D worlds you start to get some variance in racial cultures, but not a lot. I think this culture problem shows up more in 5E D&D particularly though.

Previous editions included a lot more splat books, which would often feature new subraces offering not only mechanical changes to a race, but also information on their culture. Even this could be a bit of let down though because most of the time it had more to do with climate and the environment where those races dwelled. Of course those things would be factors but it would have been nice if every once and a while to read about different cultures of the same race living in similar environments and evolving culturally in differently ways.

In our own D&D games we’ve always strive to mix it up. One of our earliest campaigns highlighted the orc kingdom of Grawnor, which was largely evil but remained civilized. Other races like humans lived there just like any other citizen. Not only that Grawnor competed with dwarven civilization — not martially, but economically. Grawnese steel was prized the land over and the culture of Grawnor produced some of the finest smiths the world over.

This is one example of how we enjoy making the D&D races our own. These ideas appeared in some of our earliest videos at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel. Two videos come to mind right away: Killer Combos Barded Badger Battle Brigade | Unorthodox Character Builds and Forest Gnome Barbarian and Custom 5E Character Back Ground | Unorthodox D&D Character Builds. In these two videos we throw in some tweaks to gnome society and one of them is definitely inspired by changing the habitat. The other gives our forest gnomes a bit more of a martial tradition in their culture.

On the other side of the coin with culture in your D&D games it’s fun to lean into classic fantasy tropes. For those who enjoy playing all your dwarves, elves, gnomes and halflings the way they’ve been presented then go for it because I have definitely played in many games like this and they are fun.

As a Dungeon Master and RPG world builder I love putting my own spin on those classic tropes and encourage other GMs and DMs to experiment in their own D&D games. The Eberron campaign setting, which got its start in 3.5 D&D does a great job of doing this. In second edition Advanced D&D the Dark Sun campaign setting also did a fantastic job of mixing things up. The Prism Pentad series of Dark Sun novels, starting with The Verdant Passage, would be a great place from which to garner inspiration. You could even sign up for a free Audible trial account to get the books free.

From Ted’s Head

When Nerditor Doug brought this topic up I knew I would have a lot to say but usually I am able to cover everything I think about before we get off the air on the live chat. With the topic of culture in D&D this wasn’t the case. Culture is not a new concept in the modern world but there are loads of people and places that truly savor and enjoy color. In a magical world, what if we had such a place, which took it beyond the usual brightly colored clothes and wonderful decorations?

As a culture the type of people who would love vibrant colors are the type of people you likely expect. They are full of energy and positive attitudes. As a culture I see them as welcoming to any and all. Some miscreants may try to get the better of them but others become inspired to join the fold a see a new way of life. I see this culture as a community driven society working for the betterment of all and eschewing the normal potholes of selfishness and greed.

I see this community culture as originally created by elves and forest gnomes who are a little more free but quickly welcoming of others. This culture develops ways to communicate with the farms on the outskirts of town — on an open plain visibility can be quite high on a clear day. Because bright colors attract attention and both elves and gnomes tend to work well with animals they might make use of birds to carry long colorful streamers with meaningful messages. Purple could be a celebration of new birth while red carries a warning to alert townsfolk of danger at an outlying farm. A whole language of the streamer colors and bird flight patterns develops within this culture.

A culture valuing acceptance of all might develop and encourage ways fore people to blend in or assimilate by either adding or changing features. I made some nifty magic items that would fall nicely into this sort of culture. Perhaps you’ll find some inspiration for the cultures in your own games from these themed D&D magic items from over at Nerdarchy the Website.

We can take culture concepts even further. What if an entity wants to change their skin or hair color? Potions or pigments could easily be made to either temporarily or permanently change the effected material to whatever the end user desires. Imagine if your human wanted horns and the half orc desperately does not want to be green any longer. This type of culture could easily make these changes happen.

For a purely cosmetic change I would say the price could be as frugal as you want. For example 2 silver pieces for a temporary cosmetic changes lasting 1d6 days, just to try out the color, sounds reasonable. For a permanent change anywhere from 1-10 gold pieces sounds fair — especially if you do not bog anything down with game mechanics. Some may argue it can help with a disguise or Stealth depending how you use such changes but this is between you and your DM.

This culture may appreciate painting their architecture in such a way to stand out as do many from our own culture today. Because of all these colorful things I imagine this culture prizes horticulture and vibrant gardens for the pigments they can harvest from the exotic and bizarre plants they cultivate, but just not sure if they are ready to share this secret yet.

From the Nerditor’s Desk

All things considered the concept of culture in 5E D&D or any other RPG for that matter sits at the top of my list of important aspects for a game experience. Insofar as culture means the customs, arts, social institutions and achievements of a particular nation, people or other social group it is the No. 1 touchstone for engaging characters (and their players too!).

Culture is an incredibly powerful resource for DMs, which provides the answers to why a great many things take place during the party’s adventures. Depending on the playstyle of your group and your own strengths as a DM I advocate putting a healthy dose of thought into the culture of whatever region the adventures occur.

I’ll draw a terrific example from a video game I recently discovered. Greedfall is set in an early 17th century-styled fantasy setting, an aesthetic for which I’m a huge sucker. Tricorne hats, embroidered coats, cutlasses, flintlock pistols and an age of exploration? I’m all in.

The premise of the game sees the protagonist travel to a mysterious island where six distinct cultures create conflict for the protagonist to navigate and resolve. Each of these — the Merchant Congregation the player represents, the Bridge Alliance focused on science, the Coin Guard mercenaries who serve any who hire them, Thélème and their magical mysticism, Nauts who rule and seas and Islanders who are native to the new land — demonstrate their own cultures in both obvious and complex ways. Cultural cues like clothing and accentuating marks clearly identify folks from a particular culture. On a deeper level their language, customs and social norms feature prominently as your own character diplomatically moves from one to the next.

One of the more fun series to create over at Nerdarchy the Website unfortunately never found an audience but makes for another excellent example of developing culture for your D&D games. Worldbuilding and Character Development for 5E D&D Inspired by Game of Thrones takes an in-depth look at each of the 5E D&D armor types with an eye towards extrapolating cultural elements. I got through padded armor, leather armor, studded leather armor, hide armor and chain shirt. Like most of the posts I write dealing with worldbuilding the underlying theme is developing the setting I created for my own games. Do you find any inspiration from these posts? If you enjoy them and would like to see more please leave a comment on any or all of them to let me know. Perhaps I’ll pick the series back up with one of my all time favorite types of armor — scale mail.

The last thing I want to mention when it comes to culture for your D&D games is look to your own personal lineage. This approach revealed quite a wealth of inspiration for my own setting when I delved into Slovenian mythology and folklore but also everyday life and culture. Ever since I began running D&D adventures in the small coastal town I developed I notice players often grow more fond of and interested in the world through mundane elements of culture than they do because of action and excitement from monsters and magic. Take a look into what your own real world historical culture has to offer and you might be surprised how immersed and engaged players become in your games.

*Featured image — Adventurers travel to the seat of the Frost King’s power for the Clansmeet and become embroiled in a cold-blooded murder investigation. You’ll also find 3 new playable character races, 2 new Otherworldly Patrons, 10 new creatures including the Frost King, 2 new magic items and new tundra vehicles alongside the Kredgefur’s Tundra adventure for 4-6 characters of 3rd-9th level. Check it out here.

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