Cultural Backgrounds
Added 2025-04-22 12:00:09 +0000 UTCThis has been an idea kicking around in my head since I saw the new design philosophy for Player Species/Races in the new 5.5 that completely divorces and kind of cultural elements from your racial traits.
Since Backgrounds have a much stronger focus than the relative afterthought they were in the first version of 5e, it seemed like a fun challenge to go all out on cultural background based on the base selection of races/species in the PHB. As the supplement implies, i might revisit this idea with other settings such as Eberron, where the cultures vastly differ from the relative fantasy-kitchen-sink attitude Faerun and Greyhawk have-though faerun might be worth revisiting for the Giths...
Regardless, for now this will be a 5.5 exclusive update. I will sit down in the next few days to see how I can turn these Backgrounds into something interesting in 5e. But truth be told in my own games in 5e I simply skipped the Backgrounds and said "just pick 2 Skills that make sense for you" and be done with it.
I hope you'll enjoy these! See you next week with a free update that I've been very excited for!
