Hard Boiled: Cultures (4e)
Races in Dungeons & Dragons 4E are good for laying down the broad strokes of a character¸ but they often don't feel as "lived in" as the ethnicities we encounter in everyday life. One potent reason for this is a general lack of cultural complexity and diversity. D&D races tend to be presented as monocultural societies-all elves are the same the world over¸ and so on.
Hard Boiled™ Cultures aims to make it easy to change that¸ outlining versatile¸ easy methods for diversifying the ideas of culture and race in your D&D 4E game. Better yet¸ the methods break down how to give this diversity real weight in the system¸ rather than simply relying on "color" text to do the job.
Fred Hicks and Jonathan Walton show you how to reverse-engineer cultural cues out of an existing race writeup¸ and then create nigh-limitless possibilities for other cultures within that race once the building blocks are made plain.
Inside this 17-page PDF you'll find a clear¸ well-documented methods for culture building¸ a culture building worksheet¸ tribes of elves¸ apelord intellectuals¸ and a dark faerie spin on dwarves. Your campaign worlds will never be the same again!
Crack Open These Hard Boiled Ideas™