Quote Originally Posted by noparlpf View Post
If I were roleplaying a Canadian I would definitely think, "What would a Canadian do?" Their culture is different from mine, so there are a variety of things the average Canadian would do differently. Yeah, "average"--that means that there will be exceptions, but in general, more Canadians will be like that than, say, Australians.
That's not how culture actually works. Allow me to illustrate.

"All dwarves are short and have long beards. They all live underground and are proud of their fine stonemasonry work. They drink large quantities of alcohol, are fiercely obsessed with clan honor, and will start a fistfight with anyone at the slightest provocation."

"All Frenchmen are smelly and don't shave their body hair, aside from that on their face which doesn't grow in anyway. They wear silly hats and are proud of their superior fashion sense. They live on fancy cheeses, are obsessed with preserving their language and heritage from pollution by dirty foreigners, and whenever threatened will surrender to their attacker instantly."


Why is one of these descriptions standard and accepted while the other one horribly offensive?

Further, dwarves, elves, and humans are all physiologically and neurologically different. Dwarves may well have a neurological predisposition to gruffness, beards, and alcohol.
Ah, the old "neurological differences" card. It's like magic fairy dust you can sprinkle on a setting to sweep these things under the rug, because then you don't have to do any actual work of designing a real people. It's lazy. Ehl. Eih. Zi. Wai. Funny how these "neurological differences" always mean the fantasy race brain is confined to being a subset of the variety you see in humans.