D&D 5E (2014) MTOF: Elves are gender-swapping reincarnates and I am on board with it

[TwoSix]

I'm quite happy to see gender-fluidity in the lore.

I do wish it wasn't elves though. They seem to get everything.

It should have been dwarves. It would have explained the classic trope of "Where are the dwarf women at?"

 

[jayoungr]

Seriously. It's 2018, and I'm ready for elves that aren't just two or three familiar Tolkeinesque subraces or 1990s drow cliches.

Golly, if only this were the sort of game where you could just create such a thing for your own table without waiting for a published book! Oh wait ...

 

[Yaarel]

I did have a weird idea, should The Blessed of Corellon count as Shapeshifters for the purposes of game mechanics that effect shapeshifters?

They probably should get the shapeshifter mechanic. At higher levels, this might extend to Alter Self Change Appearance and Polymorph.

 

[Yaarel]

Personally, I like the *addition* of a gender-fluid character concept.

I lament the *loss* of the kinds of D&D elves that I wanted to play. Namely, the magic race of Charisma and Intelligence, the Grey Elf, Sun Elf, Eladrin Elf.

Now the only magical races are monstrous (tiefling) or little people (gnomes).

There are no ‘jock wizards’ sotospeak, or even artist wizards.

 

[JPL]

Somehow I doubt you complain about African fiction or Asian fiction featuring characters that look more like their majority population. I also assume you are well intentioned.

i saw several female character in Conan stories and even the movie as quite capable. I am thinking of the pirate captain as wel as his party member in the film.

I don't know if it is pandering per se but have a strong suspicion that gender changing elves are not archetypal and desirable for most players whether they speak up in a forum like this or not. If that is the case what is the point?

D&D is not "white fiction," is it? It's rooted in a lot of European mythology and history, and in various early fantasy that drew upon that same European mythology and history, sure . . . but the game has continuously moved toward more diversity, more inclusion.

Howard had some specific ideas about how cultures arose and degraded over time. Fall too far, and a mighty people can become nearly subhuman, like the Picts, but get too civilized and a culture can become soft or corrupt . . . so what you really need is an infusion of barbarian vigor every so often. It's not all bad, compared to Lovecraft especially.

Gender-changing elves aren't something that Tolkein picked up on, sure, but the older legends where they are changelings or tricksters, and are more spirit-creatures than solid folk, are all part of the lore, too, albeit de-emphasized in D&D.

I don't know about "barbarian vigor," but I think stories can benefit from new ideas --- or new takes on old ideas --- and new perspectives.

 

[JPL]

Golly, if only this were the sort of game where you could just create such a thing for your own table without waiting for a published book! Oh wait ...

I like the idea that the default world for D&D is becoming more inclusive. If someone else wants to go back to Strength limits for female characters and tales of orc rape, go ahead, but I think it's good for game to try to change with the times.

 

[Umbran]

I hate to break it to you, but Tolkien's elves reincarnated too.

Sort of.

For the period of Middle-Earth history most people are aware of (The Hobbit and LotR trilogy) if an elf died, their spirit went across the sea to the West (to Aman, for those who know the lore) and might be placed in a new body (that was exactly like the original body), but returning to Middle Earth again was not allowed.

 

[cmad1977]

As only one of the resident trans gamers her, I won't speak for everyone else. However, for me, fluid elves are rad as hell and should become the default in future publishings. The bigger thing to me, though, was that aside from calling Corellon a father figure (and a couple lines that seem more like slip ups than deliberate), they made great lengths to avoid referring to the god by a given gender in this book. This seems in line with the concept of mutability the book goes for and in some incredibly small way validates the NB friends I have.

As probably on of the ‘cissest’ of white males....
I agree

 

[flametitan]

I suggested the big sex charging quest to simulate a fantasy equiviliant to the challenges of surgical sex changes, but its an entirely optional thing, especial of changing the physical sex to match the gender is something the character doesn't want to do.

Again, I can only speak for myself, and not all Trans gamers, but I'd rather not. I'd rather have the mutability of your character's gender and physical sex to be taken for granted. I want to play in a world where being who I am isn't the basis of some epic quest, but just accepted. I struggle through the quest for acceptance and not hating my body on a regular basis; I'd rather not have it have to repeat it when I'm trying to have fun. I know that the game provides a safe place to confront and tackle the issues of bigotry, and there are plenty who want that, but that's not for me.

I did have a weird idea, should The Blessed of Corellon count as Shapeshifters for the purposes of game mechanics that effect shapeshifters?

No, the mechanics of shapechangers and spells that interact with shapechangers implies that there's a "true" form, and for something like this, that'll raise... concerns.

 

[JPL]

Personally I'm fine with all of it and I'm fine with hypersexual characters too, its a freaking fantasy for goodness sakes.

Chainmail bikini, but she can't lay with a man until she's beaten him in combat, or she loses her might in battle. The Red Sonja comics have recently done a riff on this with a man --- Osric the Untouched --- but Conan never had that kind of limitation.

Not bashing white male lead characters as such, just saying that after 100 years of Tarzan and 80 years of the Phantom, they finally made a movie called Black Panther, where the most awesome guy in Africa is black, and it turns out there was an enormous audience for that story. It's not just that it was politically correct, it's that this was a story the audience hadn't heard already.

So my point in all this is that making D&D more inclusive is not just great because it brings more people with new perspectives into the game, but also because those new perspectives can lead to some fresh new stories.