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Chronicles of Eberron Is Keith Baker's New D&D Book, out now!
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<blockquote data-quote="Thommy H-H" data-source="post: 8840213" data-attributes="member: 6797019"><p>I think the only way to handle it, ultimately, is the way that Eberron does it (albeit not in so many words): by making those half-races into distinct populations and societies, and giving them names that don't sound so...uncomfortably essentialist. But if you have "Khoravar" or something similar in place of "half-elf", it does rather beg the question of what mechanical purpose having that as a separate category serves. What is inherently appealing about playing someone from a culture whose ancestors are a mixture of human and elf/orc/whatever, when you can equally just be an elf, an orc, or a whatever?</p><p></p><p>The bottom line is that D&D has, at its core, concepts of racial essentialism that were part of the fantasy milieu from which it arose. From Tolkien's obsession with bloodlines and categories of people, to pulp adventures and their colonialist antecedents, to Gygax's own cultural biases, we've been left with a pretty uncomfortable legacy. I don't know how you fix that without just abandoning the whole idea of fantasy 'races'. I suspect One D&D's first playtest was trying to go that way by establishing that they were, indeed, <em>species</em>, and that any viable interbreeding required <em>Bigby's benevolent biomancy</em> or whatever but, as has been pointed out, you run the risk with that of alienating a whole different group of players who have a personal connection to the idea of a blended heritage.</p><p></p><p>Basically, Eberron does it better than most of the settings, and Keith generally has his head screwed on with regard to these issues, but there's really no way to square the circle on this one.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Thommy H-H, post: 8840213, member: 6797019"] I think the only way to handle it, ultimately, is the way that Eberron does it (albeit not in so many words): by making those half-races into distinct populations and societies, and giving them names that don't sound so...uncomfortably essentialist. But if you have "Khoravar" or something similar in place of "half-elf", it does rather beg the question of what mechanical purpose having that as a separate category serves. What is inherently appealing about playing someone from a culture whose ancestors are a mixture of human and elf/orc/whatever, when you can equally just be an elf, an orc, or a whatever? The bottom line is that D&D has, at its core, concepts of racial essentialism that were part of the fantasy milieu from which it arose. From Tolkien's obsession with bloodlines and categories of people, to pulp adventures and their colonialist antecedents, to Gygax's own cultural biases, we've been left with a pretty uncomfortable legacy. I don't know how you fix that without just abandoning the whole idea of fantasy 'races'. I suspect One D&D's first playtest was trying to go that way by establishing that they were, indeed, [I]species[/I], and that any viable interbreeding required [I]Bigby's benevolent biomancy[/I] or whatever but, as has been pointed out, you run the risk with that of alienating a whole different group of players who have a personal connection to the idea of a blended heritage. Basically, Eberron does it better than most of the settings, and Keith generally has his head screwed on with regard to these issues, but there's really no way to square the circle on this one. [/QUOTE]
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