Rover's Reflects

  Stop me if you've heard this one. You've just started a new game of D&D, and one of your players decides he's going to roll up a Human. What kind of human? Well, something vaguely European, probably. What does their culture value? Probably whatever the player does. This is a problem I like to call "Playing a Regular Person". This isn't a problem unique to Humans, but it can exacerbated by blindly picking Human. In D&D specifically, cultural aspects of other races can often be picked up through their descriptions or mechanics. But Humans are made out to be intentionally vague. There are no human subraces, no flavor that indicates a culture. But as much as you can create with a blank slate, in reality, creativity thrives on limitation and guidance. If we take a look at major works of Fantasy, this is almost never an issue. The Lord of the Rings has Northmen, Gondorians, Númenóreans, Haradrim, Easterlings, and more. Many groups of human cultures. The Le

In your world, how do the living visit the Underworld? When Theseus and Pirithous traveled to Hades to kidnap Persephone, they did not take a portal. They took a ship. Sailed right up to the front gates. Olympus itself was often a given name to several mountains, each believed to be the metaphorical (or even literal) home of the gods. In the Lord of the Rings, do the Elves use a Plane Shift spell to reach the Gray Havens? No, they sailed there on a ship.  Sometimes, the metaphysical location of a plane doesn't need to be metaphysical. Sometimes, it feels more real if it's just there .  In the last world that I wrote, there were 3 ways to get to the Underworld. First was dying. Second was Plane Shift or Gate. Third was taking a physical ship to where the sun sets, riding head first into the horrific whirlpool as the sun was swallowed by the sea, and following it on its 12-hour journey through the Underworld. In the Forgotten Realms, the Abyss was physically positioned below the