D&D 5E Are you a cat person?

[Mephista]

Tell me what the identity of Halflings is, and maybe why anyone finds them remotely interesting, and I'll try to explain gnomes. Deal? Because gnomes are the best DnD race, imo, and I love talking about gnomes.

Okay, go for it. Seriously. As near as I can tell, halflings are basically just "short humans" - unsurprisingly so, since that's literally what purpose they served in Lords of the Ring - while gnomes are basically just either "short fey/elves" and "even more compact dwarves." The division between forest and rock even highlight that more - dwarves are renowned in most lore for being blacksmiths and tinkerers, while wood elves have the whole nature-love thing going on.

Tokein really? So the Hobbit is human-centric? There isn't a single Human PC in the whole book... Maybe Bard, but that's pushing it.

Hobbits are designed to represent a kind of Victorian England countryside folk. They're both literally and figuratively small humans wandering out from their little comfort zone and exploring a greater and wide world.

Also? No book has a PC in it in the first place. No such thing as a player character in novels. If you mean main character? There's only one main character (Bilbo) - Bard is closer to being a secondary main character than the dwarves, since he actually acomplished things on his own without Bilbo, and served as a protagonist / catalist for fighting the dragon and then demanding payment from the dwarves. That's something we never really get from dwarves or elves.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Okay, go for it. Seriously. As near as I can tell, halflings are basically just "short humans" - unsurprisingly so, since that's literally what purpose they served in Lords of the Ring - while gnomes are basically just either "short fey/elves" and "even more compact dwarves." The division between forest and rock even highlight that more - dwarves are renowned in most lore for being blacksmiths and tinkerers, while wood elves have the whole nature-love thing going on.

Hobbits are designed to represent a kind of Victorian England countryside folk. They're both literally and figuratively small humans wandering out from their little comfort zone and exploring a greater and wide world.

Also? No book has a PC in it in the first place. No such thing as a player character in novels. If you mean main character? There's only one main character (Bilbo) - Bard is closer to being a secondary main character than the dwarves, since he actually acomplished things on his own without Bilbo, and served as a protagonist / catalist for fighting the dragon and then demanding payment from the dwarves. That's something we never really get from dwarves or elves.

PCs are the people driving the story, where the focus of the story is. So yes, there are "PCs", of a sort, in novels. I would argue Thorin is a PC.

I know what hobbits are meant to represent, but the fact is that they aren't Human. In fact, most humans in LOTR aren't human in the sense we think, as they're of Numenorean descent, which are verh different from, say, the Dunlanders and Easterlings and Haradrim (though Haradrim are arguably Black Numenoreans).

So while the world may be one with Humans ascendant, the story and parties aren't humanocentric.

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[Salamandyr]

Not really concerned about Tolkien; D&D isn't LOTR, it's Howard, Leiber, de Camp and Pratt, Anderson, and Vance. (insert caveat that D&D is really about whatever you want it to be...and the more your imagination ranges from the modern "House Style" the better your games will be).

Tabaxi are fine, though for my money, the D&D cat race are Rakasta--the desert dwelling cat people who ride sabertooth tigers and fight with steel claws.

Really gratified to see the number of people who prefer humanocentric campaigns. For myself, I'm partial to encouraging the weirdness of nonhuman races...I like "Half-bloods" since it's a valid way to establish a difference that marks the PC out from the common herd while still connecting the character to the overall world. And I like "beastmen" because you can't get around their strangeness. It encourages an other-worldly mindset in a way that saying "elf" (at this late stage in their existence within the fantasy pantheon) doesn't.

So Tabaxi are good, and Dragonborn (though I'd prefer another name), and Tieflings, and Half-Elves, and Aasimar. Even better are Centaurs, Satyrs, and Dryads. Gnomes are a bit of all right (not Tinker Gnomes). I'd prefer a game where my choices consisted of a few different variations of human, and some of these.

 

[Argyle King]

Huh. Idk, seems pretty strait forward to me. There are three kinds of Gnome, and each has a distinct ID. And each is actually distinct from other races by things other than size, which is why I prefer them to Halflings. And also, what is the identity of elves, or dwarves, or even humans? Generally, unless a setting is very boring, it depends on setting and which culture within a setting you look at.

That's a good point. I have some ideas for how I'd like to use dwarves differently in my home games, but I'm not sure if it's too different from the dwarf stereotype to be rejected.

As far as D&D: everything you've said about gnomes makes sense. I think 5th Edition has done pretty well at including everything. In some of the older D&D stuff I have, it wasn't always clear which direction the PHB Gnomes were going in. Elves often had the same issue. That's not necessarily bad, and some amount of vagueness can help cover more fantasy ideas. That's actually part of my reasons for supporting Tabaxi. I guess I just don't have much experience with "gnomes" in fantasy to have a solid idea of what they are to me.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

"Short humans" isn't a racial identity. It's just...a description of some humans.

Also, personally, as someone who loves the works of Tolkien, I really don't care (in the context of DnD) about what something represented in his works, unless I'm literally playing in Middle Earth.

DnD Halflings aren't even hobbits, anyway. Gnomes are closer to hobbits than Halflings are, in the core fluff. They live in burrows, hide from big folk, etc.

Halflings don't have their own lands, tend to wander, and have been heavily influenced by Kender over the years. Which is good, because actual hobbits are incredibly boring as a player race. Their identity may as well be "intentionally boring humans", if we insist on using uselessly superficial "identities" for the races. As boring as I find core Halflings, they're definately more interesting than hobbits, in the context of a roleplaying game.

At least Gnomes have actual cultural distinction, and their physiological nature is different enough that only an indifferent player is going to play them exactly as they would a human.
[MENTION=58416]Johnny3D3D[/MENTION] there are a few races I have the same lack of experience with. I feel ya.
On Dwarves: I outright ban stereotypical pseudo-Scottish dwarves in my games. When world building, I look to northern and Eastern Europe for Dwarves, if I look to Europe at all.
The main things that stay the same are: tough, somewhat insular, some degree of greed/hoarding/vault-building tendencies, clan/tribe based mindset.

Tabaxi are cool, imo, because their stats don't really tie them to an environment. Like real cats, you can put them in any biome, and they will thrive. Want desert tabaxi, give them smaller bodies, a sand-cat look, and fur on their paws to shield them from the hot sand. Or they can be deep forest cats, or river fisher cats, etc with no mechanical difference required. They just look different.

General thread comments:

I still don't get what the deal with humanocentric campaigns/worlds is. Why do players need to play non humans as noticably alien? I don't understand what the premises and logic are that underpin the common response, "well if they aren't alien/strange/other, what's the point?"

There is a whole fundamental mindset here that just....I have no intellectual common ground with it, and thus no real tools for trying to understand it?

Help? I feel like I'm discussing beverages with someone who thinks that in order to be good a beverage has to be vinegar. It just doesn't grok, in even the very most basic way, for me.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Intentionally boring human. Hmmmm.... sounds like some of my co-workers. Not sure that "co-worker" is a race. I'll get back to you on that.



Gnomes are distinctive! As is- what race would best be served .... as an appetizer? TASTY! Once you get past the red hats, and all.





Serious hat on, now.

Let me try and explain it by analogy. There's different types of science fiction. For example, in some types of science fiction, aliens are, for the most part, humans, but with certain attributes accentuated or lessened.

Like Star Trek! Aliens are almost all humans, with funny foreheads (or other small distinguishing features), and a "trait." Klingons are humans ... but they like war! Vulcans are human ... but all logical! And so on.

And that's fine for that fiction. Because it's hard to imagine what truly non-human is like.

But in some hard sci-fi, people really grapple with what it would be like to be "alien," to not have the same understandings and drives that define humanity.

It's not better or worse, but it is notable.

It's perfectly fine to define the other playable races in relation to humans. After all, it's hard to imagine how something "not human" would truly think and feel, because (ahem) we are human. But far too often, people end up defaulting to one of two modes-

1. Non-humans races are simply played for their stats and abilities.
2. Non-humans races are played as stereotypes. In other words, it would be like saying, "I'm playing an Australian," and then just having every in-character comment end with, "And put a shrimp on the barbie." Or something. Not truly envisioning the differences, but aping a stereotype.

I'm not saying it can't be done correctly. And I'm not saying, even, that there is a "correct," way to do it. But just as you've banned "Scottish," dwarves, other people generally default to human.

Ok, I get that hose are different things.

I'm not sure I agree about Klingons and Vulcans, because they are both *much* more complex than that suggests, though.

Like...how different do we expect social, bipedal, tool using, cooperatively building/farming, mammalian animals to be from eachother?

Idk, I also haven't seen much of the DnD equivalent of the Australian example. Even the dwarf thing is more Salvatore's fault than any players I've seen/played with. I really despise his dwarf writing. It's awful. To a degree that makes me genuinely wonder if people who like it are reading the same books as me.

When I do encounter dumb stereotypes, it's from players who do the exact same thing with human characters.

<lightbulb turns on over head> is there a mindset that the default should be human, rather than human vs non human being a neutral/equal choice? Is that what I'm missing? Is it that simple!?

Like, are ya'll sitting here, going, "if there is no specific reason for this character to be non human, it should be human"?

if not, I still got nothin' here. The problem seems to be the specific players, not having other races available. And even then, why is a stereotyped elf worse than a stereotyped human?

 

[Mephista]

At least Gnomes have actual cultural distinction, and their physiological nature is different enough that only an indifferent player is going to play them exactly as they would a human.

As far as I can tell, the gnomes were designed specifically to be a mix of halfling, elf and dwarf cultures into one. How is that distinct?

Why do players need to play non humans as noticably alien? I don't understand what the premises and logic are that underpin the common response, "well if they aren't alien/strange/other, what's the point?"

Because we're tired as hell of humans and want to do something different? Because its interesting and challenging and pushes boundries of what's familiar and rote?

Help? I feel like I'm discussing beverages with someone who thinks that in order to be good a beverage has to be vinegar. It just doesn't grok, in even the very most basic way, for me.

I think most takes like swill. Do you like beer? People have different tastes. Telling someone that you think they're drinking watered down piss is kind of...

 

[doctorbadwolf]

As far as I can tell, the gnomes were designed specifically to be a mix of halfling, elf and dwarf cultures into one. How is that distinct?

Barring the most superficial possible understanding of all of those races, I'm not sure how you could possibly come to that conclusion.

Because we're tired as hell of humans and want to do something different? Because its interesting and challenging and pushes boundries of what's familiar and rote?

Cool. So....go ahead and do that. What's it got to do with how another player plays their character?

For that matter, I don't know about anyone outside my group, but I know that we manage to do that just fine while playing humans.

Lastly, none of that relates to the question of why elves or gnomes or Goliaths "need" to be alien, rather than just different. Which they already are.

You just think about your dwarf living underground, being a person who is comfortable in tight corridors, with parents and grandparents and greatgrandparents around who are or will be a few hundred years old, as members of a race that has a natural knock for stonework and smithing. and then you imagine a complex character. It's not...hard.

There's no need for him to also be totally alien in mindset to a human. You can do that if you want, obviously, but the idea that others need to in order to be roleplaying right or whatever is just plainly nonsensical.

Also, try to remember that what you're replying to is a request for an explanation of the "dnd should be humans playing humans" mindset. I'm not sure how your response even relates to that?

I think most takes like swill. Do you like beer? People have different tastes. Telling someone that you think they're drinking watered down piss is kind of...

If I'm parsing what you meant to type correctly, you just made my point.

The folks who say that dnd should be humans because otherwise it's just steroetypes or whatever are doing the thing you're making faces at. I'm challenging the idea, and asking for a basic explanation of the mindset that underpins it.

 

[jgsugden]

I have no problem with a cat race. I do see an issue with a racial mechanic that doubles movement. It should have added 30' to movement.

However, LEMON CURRY.