Ancestry & Culture: An Alternative to Race in 5e

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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.