Hard Boiled Ideas±m Cultures is a 4th edition supplement writing by Fred Hicks and Jonathon Walton for One Bad Egg. It is 14-pages in length and runs you about $4 at Rpgnow and the One Bad Egg store.
This product is a bit different from most 4th edition supplements I’ve seen. It is not a crunchy book filled with cultural options (as one might expect from the title) but instead is more of a design essay and guide for creating and customizing the races in your campaign world. Though written from the perspective of 4th edition (whose races lack differentiation within race) this product is probably useable for anyone looking to add variant to the stock races.
Without revealing too much, the text suggests that are four main ways to affect the cultural context of your races. First you need to state a cultural norm for your you race. I’m going to use elves and make adjustments for them in my Eldfjallon setting. The norm I’m working from is: Elves are freedom-loving wilderness folk. For adjustments the text suggests that I can embody or strengthen that norm, twist or be heretical to the norm, break from the norm completely or be changed by the expectations of the norm.
For Eldfjallon, I’m going with the break approach – the elves that first encountered the elemental invasion became transformed, now called Litalinyna or “Betrayers” by their southern cousins. The Litalinyna have embraced life under elemental rule and seek to teach others about the value of service to our elemental masters. There that’s pretty good.
In HBI: Cultures there are ideas on providing mechanical adjustments for the cultural offshoot from ability scores, skills, languages to racial powers. Though written for 4e, these could be also adapted to fit with your own campaign in you are not a 4e player. The book ends with an extended example of culture building using One Bad Eggs own Apelord race and a Dwarf example. I found the book at little pricey at $4.00 and may have passed over it initially but I think there are good ideas in here that are easily used for any system.
