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Are the Races of D&D races of Human or seperate Species according to lore?
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<blockquote data-quote="Dire Bare" data-source="post: 7792057" data-attributes="member: 18182"><p>The scientific concept of species isn't really a part of the game. The term "race" itself isn't a scientific concept, but rather a social one.</p><p></p><p>From a meta perspective, the various fantasy races are embodied stereotypes of humanity, and humanity's aspirations and fears. From a mythic perspective, the various races are separate peoples and the idea of interbreeding doesn't come into the genre until Tolkien's Middle-Earth stories (I'm fairly certain). D&D picks up where Tolkien left off.</p><p></p><p>Many gamers, even back in the early days of the game, equate and/or confuse the concepts of race and species, sometime even on purpose! This happens a lot in the wider fantasy and sci-fi genres as well (half-Klingons in Stark Trek, anyone?) So, ARE the various fantasy races closely related human species? That's entirely up to the DM and how they want to build their world. It isn't clearly defined in the game itself.</p><p></p><p>In my own world-building, most of the races are various human species, which allows for the rare-but-possible interbreeding. I start with the scientific concept of species and add the fantasy magic to that. In the real-world, there actually were several different human species in the ancient past that developed in different parts of the world, that were eventually out-competed by, or absorbed into, homo sapiens (<em>if you have European ancestry, you probably have a little neanderthal in your family tree</em>). The difference in my fantasy world is that some of those species managed to stick around, and in some cases got a magical boost of one sort or another.</p><p></p><p>There's no right way or wrong way to do it, although a <em>stick-to-the-tropes</em> approach embodies some racist modes of thinking, in my view and makes me uncomfortable despite my love of the genre.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dire Bare, post: 7792057, member: 18182"] The scientific concept of species isn't really a part of the game. The term "race" itself isn't a scientific concept, but rather a social one. From a meta perspective, the various fantasy races are embodied stereotypes of humanity, and humanity's aspirations and fears. From a mythic perspective, the various races are separate peoples and the idea of interbreeding doesn't come into the genre until Tolkien's Middle-Earth stories (I'm fairly certain). D&D picks up where Tolkien left off. Many gamers, even back in the early days of the game, equate and/or confuse the concepts of race and species, sometime even on purpose! This happens a lot in the wider fantasy and sci-fi genres as well (half-Klingons in Stark Trek, anyone?) So, ARE the various fantasy races closely related human species? That's entirely up to the DM and how they want to build their world. It isn't clearly defined in the game itself. In my own world-building, most of the races are various human species, which allows for the rare-but-possible interbreeding. I start with the scientific concept of species and add the fantasy magic to that. In the real-world, there actually were several different human species in the ancient past that developed in different parts of the world, that were eventually out-competed by, or absorbed into, homo sapiens ([I]if you have European ancestry, you probably have a little neanderthal in your family tree[/I]). The difference in my fantasy world is that some of those species managed to stick around, and in some cases got a magical boost of one sort or another. There's no right way or wrong way to do it, although a [I]stick-to-the-tropes[/I] approach embodies some racist modes of thinking, in my view and makes me uncomfortable despite my love of the genre. [/QUOTE]
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Are the Races of D&D races of Human or seperate Species according to lore?
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