Cultural Backgrounds: how much can they be customized?

[Hermes Serpent]

Survival seems like a best choice option for the sort of character you suggest he wants to be, Hunting, Healing and Explore fit with what you've indicated his preference to be.

I'm still wary of letting him have access to the benefits of being a member of the Lake town bowman's guild when he so much want's to be the loner. +1 Standing and the ability to spend a Hope point to move a success to great success etc. effectively adding 5 Bonus damage to every successful attack is quite a powerful Virtue when you have 14 Hope.

[Woodclaw]

Yep, definitely has all the signs of a special snowflake: chooses a culture not in the core rulebooks, wants to play a grim loner, refuses any package offered. Special snowflakes usually aren't power-gamers; power-gamers don't care whether they're shaped from cookie-cutters so long as they WIN.

Oh boy. Don't get me started, I had this discussion with a friend last night and he pretty much stated that in almost any setting playing the wizard not to win is like not understanding the game ... sad

Loners don't work well in this game. (They tend not to work well in most games. Players who want to be loners tend to be disruptive as they constantly want to shift attention away from the party and toward their own doings.) He won't be able to have a fellowship focus, or else he's going to have to explain why his focus has changed his ways.

Having played the loner sometimes I have to partially disagree with this statement. I agree that TOR isn't a game for loners -- although I think that playing a character going from loner to trusty might be fun. On other games I'm not so sure.
In general I encountered two kind of loner characters: those who want the focus to be on them all the time, which is very distructive to the story due to their need of constant spotlight; and those who actually play the loner because they think that it helps the story, who actually accept that the focus won't be constantly on them and don't get antagonistic because of it.

[Woodclaw]

On the subject of the thread I'm tinkering with the Cultural backgrounds myself.
One of the ideas was to link to each set of Attributes a Skill Group, among which the character can choose his favoured skill (like with a call). The idea is that the skill group that are more focused (7/5/2) should be linked to the skill groups more prevalent in that culture (e.g. Survival skills for a Woodman).

[Michebugio]

In the end, I'm increasingly convinced that the sets of backgrounds in the Adventurer's Book are good canvas to start with, but the Loremaster has ultimately the power to create his own, maybe developed around his player's idea.

For example, maybe the description written by a player yields a character that is both an incredibly talented riddler (Favored Riddle), while also passionate and energic (a good score of Heart), but you as a LM couldn't find the right combination among the pre-set backgrounds: either there is none with Favored Riddle, or the one that has it has also the worst Heart score.

Or look at the reversal: maybe your player's character is a cripple with a gift for Lore (so it should be Favored), yet the only background with Favored Lore has the highest Body score available for that culture!

I think that, while paying attention to avoid min-maxing, Loremasters should be ultimately allowed to craft their own backgrounds, choosing between the 6 existing combinations of Attributes, then adding the Favored Skill and Traits that more accurately reflect their player's REAL background.

[Corvo]

Going back to the original question, Lakemen and Bardings use the same basic "template", so it's not a big problem putting A Patient Hunter in Esgaroth.

To me, the main point to keep in mind is that Heart is the basis for Heart and Endurance. The basic cultural values (20 endurance for woodmen, 22 for bardings, etc), or many special powers, are calculated to give a definite "range". So I'm wary of giving, say, Heart 7 to Dwarves or Beornings!
Lakemen for Bardings is pretty kosher to me

[Robin Smallburrow]

In my Fan Supplement on my Resources page, Alien270 provided some advice about Customising Backgrounds, and in a following section FrodoLives provided a guide for creating new cultures - these might help!

Robin S.

[Jakob]

As a footnote to customisation within cultures and of new cultures: If you analyze the Attribute values given for the different cultures, it becomes clear that there is a system for them: Each culture has fixed attribute base values of 1-3-4 that stay the same within the culture. To these, 1, 2 and 3 points are added (much like when assigning favoured attribute scores). The attribute scoores in the backgrounds provide all possible combinations for the culture.
For example, Bardings have Body 3, Heart 4 and Wits 1 as base values. The Hammer and Anvil Background adds 2/3/1 to these, so you arrive at 5/7/2. If you're a Patient hunter, then 2/1/3 are added, so you end up with the more balanced 5/5/4.

Based on this, you can figure out which attribute scores should be possible for the different cultures.

[Rich H]

There are also a load of additional backgrounds in my Additional Rules supplement that Poosticks7 put together. These illustrate how other backgrounds can easily be developed.

[Michebugio]

Yep, thank you all. I did already find out the mechanics for backgrounds, as there are simply 6 combinations of scores for Attributes: 7/5/2, 7/4/3, 6/6/2, 6/5/3, 6/4/4, 5/5/4.

Reading the previous as A/B/C, A is the high score, and it is assigned to Heart for Bardings and Hobbits, to Body for Beornings and Dwarves, and to Wits for Elves and Woodmen; B is the average score, assigned to Body for Bardings and Elves, to Heart for Beornings and Woodmen, to Wits for Dwarves and Hobbits; and C is the low score, assigned to Body for Hobbits and Woodmen, to Heart for Dwarves and Elves and to Wits for Bardings and Beornings.

This is fixed: for example, a Barding will never have a Wits score above 4, or a Heart score lower than 5.

Then you simply have to choose which ability to assign as a Favored to your custom background.

Given the rules above, it's practically impossible to min-max a character, as your choices are actually very limited. But you now have the maximum freedom into making custom backgrounds, which is something I kinda value.

[Láthspell]

Funny, that you should say that none of the backgrounds fit, because I immediately thought that the Watchman (or Sentinel, as you called it) fit the character perfectly. Granted he would be a Watchman on the shores of Long-Lake instead of in the city of Lake-Town itself, but the principle is the same. All the character traits you wanted are in that background, as you pointed out.

As for the attributes, I've also had a couple players take issue with the low Barding/Lake-men wits. However, keep in mind that attributes have favored values. Sure the base Wits might be 3, but if your player puts the +3 bonus into Wits, his Persuade and Hunting skills are now both at 6. Body 5(7) Heart 6(7) Wits 3(6) Leaves the attributes quite balanced.