Caveman wrote:

I kind of agree, should not huntsman and Cryomancer be better for an snow dwelling person?

No. One can easily imagine an African hunstman. Also, I know from living in icy Minnesota with it's immense East African population, genetics plays very little into climate adaptation. They get cold, they layer up, just like the Scandinavian descended folk. Living then in Israel for awhile I was surprised to see everyone hates the midday heat pretty much equally, natives and expats. It takes a very long time for climate to affect isolate populations evolution-wise.
 

Even if, for the sake of argument, some classes are more common among certain races, that wouldn't necessarily make them mechanically better in a way that mattered to adventurers. This is particularly true since adventurers in general are superior to the common run of humanity because (given that we're talking about Old School D&D and not something gorge-elevating like 3e, with its 5th level farmers and 8th level blacksmiths) they have the ability to gain levels.

Jimm.Iblis wrote:

What I wound up doing recently was adapting Thulsa's (Morten Braten's) "cultural background" system he uses for Xoth (@xoth.net), converting it to OSR/AS&SH. We'll see how it plays out in my upcoming Zothique campaign.

So how did you convert these to AS&SH? I have these resources, too, and occasionally eye them for my AS&SH Atlantis game.

Caveman wrote:

Blackadder23 wrote:

Even if, for the sake of argument, some classes are more common among certain races, that wouldn't necessarily make them mechanically better in a way that mattered to adventurers. This is particularly true since adventurers in general are superior to the common run of humanity because (given that we're talking about Old School D&D and not something gorge-elevating like 3e, with its 5th level farmers and 8th level blacksmiths) they have the ability to gain levels.

I agree.

Not to mention that by eschewing any kind of mechanical advantage you've maximized the variability of combinations of class and race, since all are equal mechanically. Want an Ixian Barbarian or Amazonian Magician? Done. With any sort of mechanical advantage those sorts of combinations would be less likely to be played, since players may consider every advantage they can get, rather than an interesting role to play.

Iron Ranger wrote:

rhialto wrote:

Caveman wrote:

I agree.

Not to mention that by eschewing any kind of mechanical advantage you've maximized the variability of combinations of class and race, since all are equal mechanically. Want an Ixian Barbarian or Amazonian Magician? Done. With any sort of mechanical advantage those sorts of combinations would be less likely to be played, since players may consider every advantage they can get, rather than an interesting role to play.

I agree that with evened mechanics you may have maximized equal desirability of the races and classes, but I disagree that all might ever be equally common and personally lean heavily on the Attribute Requirements, even adding points for creations during the darker years.

Yes, I agree with that. I was focusing my attention on PCs, and not the overall distribution of classed NPCs. I guess I should mention that only my significant NPCs have a class: the vast majority of NPCs are 0-level, with whatever abilities I think they need for the game (which is one way I highlight how even a 1st-level PC is exceptional).