This is more about fantasy more broadly than D&D's genre. In many fantasy games, fantastical traits come from either one's race or one's profession. This takes after Tolkien and many imitators. But in myth and fantasy more broadly, there are a lot of different ways that a character can be special. Sources can be things like:


1) Unique inborn trait: This could be having True Sight or being born lucky or having the gift of prophecy. The D&D sorcerer class is this, but it's an oddity in that one can't be born with any unique trait other than being a sorcerer.

2) Gift and/or Curse: This could be a fairy's blessing, or a deal made with a devil, or a god's gift, or similar. The D&D warlock is an example of this, but it is an oddity since one can't have a trait from any power except to be a warlock. In stories, there are a variety of traits that can be given by powers like gods, devils, fae, or others.

3) Birthplace and/or Culture: This is how one is raised. In fantasy, being raised in a fantastic culture can give special skills or even supernatural abilities. 7th Sea does this, as the national traits are based on how one was raised rather than one's bloodline. Tarzan would be a classic example of unusual upbringing.

4) Family bloodline: In many mythologies and fantasy, characters have a unique bloodline that isn't a separate race. One could be descended from a god (Hercules) or a demon (Merlin) or other creatures, but such a family history isn't considered a race. Roger Zelazny's princes of Amber are also a magical family, but "Amberite" is a unique family rather than a race.


The list could go on. Chivalry & Sorcery and Fantasy Wargaming have astrological sign as an important modifier for every character. The Werewolf Storyteller game has a character's moon phase as an important trait.

The example of D&D and the mechanic of race + class can funnel games into not having these sort of traits, which misses a lot of fantasy and myth, I think. Even in games like GURPS or Savage Worlds, where these could easily be incorporated into the mechanics of traits and flaws, there's often a tendency for Tolkien influence to still have characters mainly differentiated by race and profession.

Do others see this as a trend? What games put in more variety of sources? I'd say Ars Magica. 7th Sea emphasizes birthplace/culture. Numenera has Focus which can be from a variety of sources. Are there other more recent games that draw on more of these?

Dragon Quest edges into something different with its "talents".  I say only edges, because talents are typically picked up because of race or "magical college" which is akin to a profession in some ways.  Where it's different is that it is left ambiguous with the magical colleges whether you have the talent because you learned it as part of the college or having the talent was what allowed you to be in the college.  It reads more like the first one, but leaves it open to the second. 

DQ also has "aspects" which are traits from moon/sun, season, and so on that are similar to astrological, but not exactly.  They are more broad.  They also include a death/life pair of aspects that have serious consequences for some activities.  Combined with the LeGuin Earthsea influence in the Naming college and related rules, it is a huge affect on what can be done at select times.  In a game where you have percentages for powerful magic ranging from -40 to near 100, roll under, a sun aspected character on a mountain top at noon on the summer solstice, summoning a powerful air spirit for whom they know the true name, could be looking at something like a +50% bonus to their roll.  Failure on such spells have increasingly nasty backfires. 

So the upshot is that really powerful magic is only done by Merlin-like wizards or by the right person in the right place at the right time or by someone who has very little chance but is so desperate they try it anyway.  There's nothing really overtly pulling from myth and tales for much of this, but the mechanics are rigged to produce similar things.

PDQ System Games (Questers of the Middle Realms, Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, Jaws of the Six Serpents, etc.) offer a lot of options to drop things like that into character design, because almost all ranked character abilities (including race and profession) are defined simply as Qualities, with numerical values ranging from -2 to +6. (Hence the meaning of the system's name, Prose Descriptive Qualities.) There is no reason a PC couldn't have a unique trait born of his bloodline or astrological sign or family curse or anything else, as long as it's something useful enough to take up one of the allocated slots for that Quality and the GM agrees with it.

I often tout the merits of Artesia, and it fits here as well. It's been a long time since I played it, but your lineage and birth sign both play a part, as well as your culture. Most families trace lineages from some ancient hero. It actually fleshes out the character quite well during character creation.

The new game "Swords & Chaos" allows you to choose a feature (from two options) based on your homeland.  You also get a choice of languages based on that.  It's a Swords & Sorcery game so the features reflect certain traits associated with that genre like
Black Tongued: Yours is a culture steeped in ancient lore and near-forgotten mysticism. Those with the Black Tongued trait can read and write in one of the following languages: The Wicked Tongue of Demons, High Atlantean—the Language of Sorcery, Giantspeech, The Black Speech of Ghouls, or the Gibbering Tongues of the Void Between Stars.

You also roll for your background, which adds potential roleplaying details like "abandoned the throne," or "former gladiator."

Mythus has Birth Rank. Special benefits for being a 7th son of a 7th son. That sort of thing.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 13, 2022, 04:50:53 PM
PDQ System Games (Questers of the Middle Realms, Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, Jaws of the Six Serpents, etc.) offer a lot of options to drop things like that into character design, because almost all ranked character abilities (including race and profession) are defined simply as Qualities, with numerical values ranging from -2 to +6. (Hence the meaning of the system's name, Prose Descriptive Qualities.) There is no reason a PC couldn't have a unique trait born of his bloodline or astrological sign or family curse or anything else, as long as it's something useful enough to take up one of the allocated slots for that Quality and the GM agrees with it.

Cool. Of the ones you listed, I've played a short campaign of Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, but am not familiar with the others. And yes, it had magical gifts that were possible - and being a magician was just a higher cost quality of magical gifts. All characters were human, but there were qualities for different nationalities. So that fits well.

This isn't really about the mechanics, though. Many systems have a mechanic for advantages, flaws, and other freeform traits. It's more about which ones use those mechanics to have special fantastical traits to PCs other than race.

Didn't Vampire the Masquerade have a mechanic for what generation of vampire the character was, and that changed all kinds of stats? It's been ages since I played that game.

Yeah, I feel the systematization brought by gaming has sheared away a lot of the uniqueness from fantasy.