Quote Originally Posted by Camelot View Post
I also buy the books for the mechanics, but I love it when they put story into mechanics. A dwarf's Stonecunning ability is very fun when it comes up in play, and if you're playing in a setting in which dwarves don't live underground, it's pretty easy to make up a parallel feature for that setting. Sure, they could have gone with a Stand Your Ground type ability, but it would be more bland.
And the thing is, I hate those kinds of mechanics. Why should my dwarf who grew up in a human city know any more about stonecutting than the average human? What is there in dwarven physiology that actually makes them inherently better at stonecutting, or recognizing the culture that worked a given piece of stone?

These are things that come from study, not native instinct. They are things that should be represented via background, or knowledge skills. I would have no problem with them providing a list of racial backgrounds, and said "Most dwarves have this background" etc, but those things should definitely be interchangeable. And by making it interchangeable you make it infinitely easier to adapt to a new campaign setting, because you simply introduce new backgrounds for that setting rather than needing to rewrite each race, or force each race to adhere to the traditional conventions.