New Rules: Cultural & Tribal Feats

Our Bukana game uses the Feat rules presented in the 5E Core Rules. Instead of being optional, as they are in that document, they are the standard for us, although we will present optional rules for NOT using them.

The portrayal of race has been a hotly debated topic in roleplaying games for years for obvious reasons. The mere use of the term “race” to designate members of different species and the assignment of predetermined ability score modifiers has been extremely problematic. While this practice is largely baked into most early games (especially Dungeons & Dragons), today many of us bristle when anyone states that all ___ are good at ___. Although negative racial ability modifiers have been removed from 5e, is it any better to say that “all Elves are dextrous?” Even if you establish that the unique physiology of elves allowed for fast reflexes and manual dexterity, aren’t adventurers supposed to be exceptional characters? Fifth Edition makes numerous allowances for customizing characters, especially with GM approval. However, Secret Garden Games wants to make our games more inherently open to building unique character origins.

  So we introduce to you our Cultural and Tribal feat system. Here, we boil down each Ancestry (race) to a couple of traits that are inherent to their physiology such as darkvision, resistances, and unique movement speeds. These are supplemented by two feat slots which must be used to select a Cultural Feat and a Tribal Feat. These special feat types can only be chosen during character creation, so have a prerequisite of “Starting character.” Beyond that, cultural feats generally only require the ability to speak the appropriate language of the culture, so if an elf wanted to take the Dwarf Society cultural feat, they would only need to be able to speak Dwarfish. The tribal feats are a bit less straightforward, These have prerequisites of a bloodline (subrace) OR an associated cultural feat. For instance, the Dalaketnon tribal feat requires that the PC is either a Bane Elf or has taken the Elven Society feat. For those who want to make characters that balk at societal norms or who are from a less populous culture, fear not, because there are “build-your-own” cultural and tribal feats. These sacrifice benefits for versatility, but are perfect for those players who don’t let others’ expectations determine their destiny.

  Let’s look at some examples. Here are the Dwarf and Elf entries in our Player’s Guide:

Here are the cultural feats associated with the overarching traditions of the dwarves and elves:

Here is a selection of tribal feats for dwarves and elves:

With this handful of options alone, you could create a wide range of character origins. For instance, if you want to play a bane elf, you could play an archetypical Dalaketnon, who has spent their entire lives in cutthroat intrigue with the Elven Society and Dalaketnon feats. Alternately, you could have been captured by blood dwarves and raised as one of their own by taking the Dwarven Society and Sagay feats. Or perhaps you are a member of a minority community of Dalaketnon who live within a Calanget community, you could take the Dwarven Society feat, but then choose to take the Dalaketnon tribal feat to show that while you are part of the larger Calanget culture, you still maintain many of your traditional ways.

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