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(some examples to start us off)

In our campaign, I play a wind genasi taclord. Most of my examples from playing him came about by accident..... I didn't set out to invent random racial fluff, they just sort of occurred to me (often after the fact).

For instance.... from his backstory, my character was travelling with a couple other wind genasi before joining up with the party. These other genasi died of the plague (plague features pretty heavily in our setting), and I had a sentence about him going off to the highest hill in the area to bury them. It later occurred to me that cremation would probably be more aesthetically and spiritually pleasing than burial for a wind genasi. I quietly went back and swapped "buried" for "cremated." That got me thinking about how genasi conduct funerals in general. Fire genasi would also favor cremation, probably, and water genasi might do an over-the-waterfalls type thing like they did for Boromir in LOTR. Earth genasi would probably still prefer burial, though.

Similarly, the first night we made camp during the campaign, I assumed my character used a bedroll like everyone else. I've since decided that he sleeps in a camping hammock instead. In fact, he prefers hammocks to normal furniture in general, even if we're staying in a city.

The only time I've come up with one of these factoids on purpose was when I was brainstorming his background and family history. "Ecology of the Genasi" makes it sound like wind genasi are restless types who don't like to settle down. Which is fine if you're an adventurer, but most people aren't. What kind of day-job would such people gravitate towards? Once I thought about it, the answer was obvious. Sailor.

My last example isn't exactly a cultural quirk, but I'm including it anyway. I've decided that my wind genasi character is mildly claustrophobic. This should be fun when our party does the inevitable dungeon crawl.

Ogre's like HEAVY spices in there food if they can get it.
Oni are similar in temperament in regards to there food as well,but prefer there food a tad milder.

Xenophile wrote:

Alternatively, the 4E MM states that most goblins eat and sleep in shared quarters. From there, I theorized that goblins had no concept of personal space, which meant that if you had a goblin rogue in your party he would see nothing wrong with sitting on your paladin's lap.

I've used this with several of my goblinoid characters, not worrying for example that there are 6 party members in a 2 person tent, or continuing a conversation even though the person your talking with is going to the bathroom. Likewise, I see Goblins as extremely thrifty creatures (it'd most likely be a survival trait) so when a goblin is prying the nails out of the floorboard of an abandoned house to sell to a blacksmith just say "It'll pay for my ale".

Nice... these are awesome, guys.

Interesting how we have two opposing interpretations of goblinoids and their attitude toward personal contact. Someone on a different message board posted essentially what Xenophile said, but with a twist... although goblinoids are indifferent to physical contact in general, being allowed near a mother orc's children is a sign of intimacy (similar to how mother bears are super touchy when it comes to their offspring).

Anyway, some more genasi stuff:

By RAW, all wind genasi have Windwalker -- a racial power that lets them fly 8 squares and take no falling damage upon landing. I thought it would be cool if this power didn't show up until puberty, so that culturally, it becomes a sort of coming-of-age thing that signifies the ascension to manhood / womanhood. I don't know if this violates RAW in any way, but I wouldn't think so.

Relatedly... my DM has decided to interpret the "take no falling damage" clause to its logical extreme, meaning the power lets you float down an arbitrarily long distance. My particular genasi character is from a town located at the top of a flat-topped mountain. This particular town expects its youth to leave and seek their fortunes elsewhere the moment they come of age (it's a very hot piece of real estate, by wind genasi standards... this arrangement helps maintain equilibrium). So once a year, there's a special ceremony. All the young genasi who manifested their Windwalker power that year line up, have blessings and gifts bestowed upon them... and take a running leap off the edge of a cliff.

Ok, so maybe it's corny as all hell. But damn if it doesn't make all other coming-of-age rites look lame. :D