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Yay, been mad busy at work and haven't had a chance to look at the Cubicle site for ages.

Come on today and spotted the Adventurer's Companion, very happy chappy!!!

Otaku-sempai wrote:I think that folks were just surprised and confused (with some reason) to learn that only four of the five "brand new playable cultures" seem to actually be brand new. This seems to be a definition of 'new' of which I was previously unaware (to paraphrase Arthur Dent).

The Core Book already presented Backgrounds for the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain to be played as Iron Hill dwarves (A Life of Toil), an exiled dwarf of the Grey Mountain Narrows (Bitter Exile) or a trader of the Blue Mountains (Far Trader).
But the release of those "sub-cultures" fully depicted, with their own Starting Skills, Starting Weapons, differential Virtues and Rewards, etc in Erebor and now in the AC have been received without anger as New Playable Cultures.

Wayward Elves were just a Virtue, that didn't even substitute another one from the Mirkwood Elves' Culture.
I don't see why they can't be understood also as a New Playable Culture.

I am very happy about the inclusion of Wayward Elves as a full playable culture seperated from the proper Mirkwood Elves that are Thranduil's subjects. I love Elves and I love how TOR handled the Wayward Elves so I am super excited for this!

You guys are adept at splitting hair? Four or five or π doesn't matter. All that important is The Adventurer's Companion, and voila, I'm happy

Totally correct! The only things that really matter in my opinion is: The AC will be out before Chrismas, there wil be bew exciting content in there and last but not least we get the things we waited a long time for (Men of Bree, Men of Minas Tirith, Lorien Elves and the Leader calling)!
And this is great news!

Enevhar Aldarion wrote:That new cultural virtue is only for Wayward Elves to use. If you take the virtue, it automatically makes your elf a Wayward Elf. Everything else in character generation for a Wayward Elf is the same as for a Mirkwood Elf.

Ah, I see. That is not at all clear in the text. Is "The Call of Mirkwood" supposed to be a Cultural Blessing instead of a Cultural Virtue? If it's really a Virtue, then Wayward Elves aren't a separate culture; they're just Elves of Mirkwood with an attitude problem. Until I saw the bit in the ad about them being a new variant culture, I thought they were just annoying Elves of Mirkwood.

Stormcrow wrote:Until I saw the bit in the ad about them being a new variant culture, I thought they were just annoying Elves of Mirkwood.

They still are, but now they're a whole (annoying) Culture!

To be honest, I'm surprised that Changelings werent made a culture... They're different enough. Skills from Mirkwood Elves, Stats from Bardings, Rewards from Elves, and Virtues from Bardings. Could toss in some unique virtue in there and bam, limited access culture.

That actually brings me to another point about inheritance and the like - its encouraged for the next PC to be the child of the PC's old char, for example, but what would even happen if they're of different cultures? I'm not even gonna go into the half elf thing since thats exceedingly rare - but for example, mother is a Beorning and father is a Woodsman. Child inherits mother's side, and is basically a Beorning with no change? Use the same kinda swap as Changelings? Something else?

Kullervo wrote: That actually brings me to another point about inheritance and the like - its encouraged for the next PC to be the child of the PC's old char, for example, but what would even happen if they're of different cultures? I'm not even gonna go into the half elf thing since thats exceedingly rare - but for example, mother is a Beorning and father is a Woodsman. Child inherits mother's side, and is basically a Beorning with no change? Use the same kinda swap as Changelings? Something else?

Remember that TOR doesn't speak of Races, but of Cultures.
So, it would depend on the situation and be very ad hoc for each player. But probably starting common and weapon skills, and also Rewards, should correspond to the culture where he/she was raised.
Other aspects (Attribute ranges and Virtues) should be decided between the player and the LM, I guess.

Falenthal wrote:

Kullervo wrote: That actually brings me to another point about inheritance and the like - its encouraged for the next PC to be the child of the PC's old char, for example, but what would even happen if they're of different cultures? I'm not even gonna go into the half elf thing since thats exceedingly rare - but for example, mother is a Beorning and father is a Woodsman. Child inherits mother's side, and is basically a Beorning with no change? Use the same kinda swap as Changelings? Something else?

Remember that TOR doesn't speak of Races, but of Cultures.
So, it would depend on the situation and be very ad hoc for each player. But probably starting common and weapon skills, and also Rewards, should correspond to the culture where he/she was raised.
Other aspects (Attribute ranges and Virtues) should be decided between the player and the LM, I guess.

I hope these rules also cover not just blood heirs, but also adopted children. This would be most common among Mannish Cultures, but could rarely happen between other Cultures as well. Look at Aragorn as an example. He already spent so much time with the elves that a little change in the story by Tolkien and he could instead have become the adopted son of Elrond. Game mechanics-wise that could greatly change what the character would be and start with. I know this example is a little outside the probably planned "new character is the child or grandchild of a previous, now deceased, character", but still.