Dom said:
I don't see the problem. Our planet (Earth that is) is full of very different cultures, yet all of the same race, each with very different ideas of creationism.
Why can't Fortanis have Dwarves from one land believing something different than another and still have the same built in racial capabilities because they are of that specific race? In the grand scheme of things, each race's beliefs only matter to themselves the same as any one person's religion is their own business. Now if I take a Hindu and Mormon and put them in a box and pump carbon dioxide into it there is a good chance they will experience similar effects because they are both human and not plants.
I'm referring to things like high ogres being necromancers in some places or (as what really happened) biata being descended from harpies instead of gryphons or barbarians being descended from space aliens. Seriously, we had chapters doing that kind of thing before.
The "creation myths" should be similar. Stone elves shouldn't think they're descended from humans, MWEs shouldn't think they have nothing to do with fae, and dwarves shouldn't believe that they're just humans who grew beards.
Barbarians who come from space ships are not barbarians. They're something else. Biata who aren't from gryphons aren't biata, they're some new race.
There's still plenty of room for chapter cultural differences. We have three separate elf packets in Ashbury based on what culture you have, and there are four different dwarf cultures living to our north that do not all get along with each other. It's always fun to meet other characters of your race from other chapters and learn about their cultures. But we don't want dryads in one chapter talking about the "first forest" and dryads in another chapter claiming they're all descended from elves who really, really liked living in the woods.
Having all races with the same origins makes our game more of an Alliance instead of just a bunch of chapters using the same rules. It allows players to transfer their characters from one game to another and have consistency, where those of their same race in the other chapters will be able to relate to them and bring them into their own plotlines. It encourages inter-chapter plots (which is something just about everyone here has said they enjoy and want more of).
I see nothing but good things for the players when chapters work together to make things consistent, especially when it involves very basic stuff like the race your character plays 100% of the time (as opposed to a chapter-centric plotline having to do with which planes of existence certain monsters come from).
