Backgrounds Instead of Races (PDF) (Patreon)

Say you want to do an all human campaign; perhaps you’re doing a modern horror setting or your campaign is a sword and sorcery epic. The problem with that is that there isn’t a whole lot of variety there. In fact, the necessity for having “races” at all vanishes. Humans either get ability score increases across the board or they’re the variant human with two ability score increases, a skill proficiency, and a feat. Yawn. Boring.

However, I think I’ve come up with a simple solution for this. Instead of picking a “race” as normal, characters pick their backgrounds to start. Then, the background does double-duty. First, it offers up all the usual background elements for the character including personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws, as well as starting skills and background features. Then, it offers “racial traits” providing ability score increases and extra features.