Turning Racial Templates into Ancestry+Culture Templates

[LoneWolf23k]

So, a trend I've seen in Pathfinder 2e and some third party D&D 5e books is to take the idea of PC Races and dividing them up into Ancestries (the biological traits one inherited from one's parents) and Cultures (the traits gained from the culture where once was raised in).

I could see this being done very easily in GURPS. Create a Racial Template of purely biological traits, and then create a "Cultural Template" including a character's social background elements: cultural familiarity, languages, social advantages and disadvantages (such as Social Stigmas), and "racially learned" skills.

For example, take your traditional fantasy dwarf.

The Ancestry Template could include the following traits:
Attribute Modifiers: HT+1[10]
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: SM-1; Will+1 [5]
Advantages: Extended Lifespan 1 [2]; Longevity [2]; Night Vision 5 [5]

The "Traditional Dwarven" Cultural Template could include the following traits:
Advantages: Artificer 1 [10]
Disadvantages: Intolerance (Racial Enemies) [-5]
Racial Skills: Ace/Mace (A) DX [2]-10; Merchant (A) IQ [2]-10; Professional Skill (Miner) (A) DX [2]-10

More Cultural templates could include not only "traditional racial" cultures (Elves, Orcs, etc), but also more "national" cultures. Using GURPS Banestorm as an example, Megalos could have one Cultural Template, Caithness another one, and al-Haz and al-Wazif have closely related Cultural Templates.

This is an idea I'd like to explore further, at least in terms of woldbuilding a campaign setting; it would be easy to flesh out a campaign world by building Cultural Templates for the major nation/cultures of the world.

[Stormcrow]

It's mostly a matter of terminology, but GURPS handles this sort of thing with the rule for "sub-races" (p. 454). Specifically, you write up the sub-race exactly as a lens for a character template. In this example, the dwarf ancestry writeup would be a sub-race, written as a lens.

Cultural templates, on the other hand, are written as ordinary character templates (see p. 446).

So this dwarf, for instance, would start with the general Dwarf racial template, apply the So-and-So Ancestry lens, then use the Dwarf of Such-and-Such cultural template.

[Kesendeja]

I did something like this in my high powered game, but it works just as well in the more moderate one.

Physical characteristics became the racial template, and I had two types of lenses: Sub-racial for physical modifications to the race, and Culture for most everything else about the race, skills, techniques etc..

So far it's worked great.

[lugaid]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf23k

The Ancestry Template could include the following traits:
Attribute Modifiers: HT+1[10]
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: SM-1; Will+1 [5]
Advantages: Extended Lifespan 1 [2]; Longevity [2]; Night Vision 5 [5]

An argument could be made that the Will bonus should be cultural. Not a major issue, but something to consider when making this sort of design.