Athasian Elves are savage desert nomads.

Athasian Halflings are feral cannibals – except the ones who aren’t, if you ever find them.

Okay, they all had a monoculture within that, but at least they are different from their Forgotten Realms counterparts…

In addition, I strongly agree that 4e really punishes playing against stereotypes. I enjoy making powerful, effective characters, as do most of the people I play with, but I get tired of elven archers and dwarven fighters and halfling rogues. Twice now I’ve sat down to make a dwarven rogue, and given up in frustration at the inability to make such a character that can keep up with the stereotypical characters next to me at the table. A bonus to Con and axe proficiency don’t help on a character that uses Dex and daggers.

I’ve considered separating bonuses from race entirely, and just letting my players put two +2′s anywhere they want, the argument being that training and individual characteristics vastly outweigh racial norms. I’d likely have a much higher strength and lower intelligence if I’d spent my life playing sports and working out instead of reading books. If 5e is really going to be modular, I’d love to see optional character creation rules that allow for mixing and matching as Draco suggests, or rules that use both race and culture to determine starting benefits, or a creation tree system similar to the one in Heroes of the Feywild but more impactful.

On the rolling vs. etc. Matter method 1 is listed as std array, method 2 point buy and method 3 rolling as far as default method er who can say but I will admit the lack of a random generator and my experiences point to point buy as the preferred method ( pun not intended).

The method you propose for separating race and culture seems more like a stylized background/theme component. Rather than a display of culture.

Traditions, general moral fiber viewed thru law written and of the group, and long term goals of a society or organization are the cornerstones of a culture. Dnd racial stero-types peripherally brush these but more thru the “Play this race if you want…” sections and fluff than via actual mechanics. In past editions this was more prevalent but 4E has tabled much of this into feats.

@Obsidian the Kingdoms of Kalamar 4E setting is styled this way with names for each god based on race, location and language. The book is a great resource for mining ideas but a daunting set of lists to memorize for the average player and Dm. Though I believe this adds to realism I also find it impractical for it to ever be mainstream in wotc production plans.

On Race…. curiously enough from an entirely biological perspective elves, humans, and orcs are all the same species (they can breed and the children are fertile) which makes race a useful term in dnd.

Aside from scientific pedantry I would very much like to see culture and race separated. The core could present them as follows:
Elves
Some fluff about elves living in wandering tribes in forests.
Racial Abilities
- Ability Score Modifiers
- Elven Accuracy (or something like it)
Elven Forest Tribe Culture
The typical bow etc bonuses for elves.

Dwarves, halflings, and gnomes would then have specific Culture packages as well to reflect their stereotyped background fluff. Humans could then have 2 or 3 culture options (City Folk, Villager, Tribesman). Half-orcs can then have a couple of options (City Folk, Tribesman, Savage Orc Tribe), and similarly Half-Elves might have (City Folk, Villager, Elven Forest Tribe).

Finally there can be a note that any culture can be taken by any character with the DM’s permission.

Setting books can then introduce culture packages for the distinct cultures of the setting along with their typical races. Other races would need DM concent to choose that culture.

Eg Cormyrean Noble (Human), Dalelands (Any), Myth Drannor Court (Elf)

Another good thing about cultures is you can, if appropriate have more languages. Dale Tongue might be a different language to Cormyrean. All PCs might know Common (Trade Tongue), but regional languages work still because everyone from the region gets the language through their culture.

Recent editions of D&D have provided some races are provided with automatic proficiency in weapons which if a player chooses to ignore doesn’t generally affect the player in a negative, way most of the time.

Other editions of AD&D generally avoided this, possibly intentionally or coincidentally, provided races with benefits that generally seemed either “biological” or mystical. This is often more palatable given the creation mythologies of these races, the whole made in Corellon’s image type of thing.

I think this religious aspect having a patron deity or pantheon helps to explain some of the mono-culture that is also addressed in the article. It would probably be much easier to envision a culture that stay more consistent across a world if there are physical/deific manifestations the ideals of a fantasy race.

However one aspect isn’t addressed why do human’s not have a patron as well? That is a hole that has yet to be addressed and I don’t think I can right now. But all of these aspects help show this isn’t a cut and dry easily solved problem for D&D. There are many pros and cons to each way of looking at it and eventually one personal preference will have to be implemented.

I hope I don’t sound contrarian you had some things that made me think and hopefully I addressed some justification for why things have been presented the way they have.

WOTC: learn from the indie games!