D&D 5E Humans!?

[The Mirrorball Man]

I had thought "giving some real thought to verbal and behavioral flourishes" was "playing a role." I hadn't realized I have to invent an alien psychology in order to do it, for a non-human. Are you suggesting that roleplay requires the latter?

I'm suggesting that it could be fun.

 

[Hussar]

Hardly. Do you ever partake in any Japanese media? Japanese culture, at least on the traditional side, still bears a pretty heavy anti-foreigner bias. People of dual ancestry--that is, Japanese+something else--can really struggle in Japan, both at school and in adult life. That sounds to me like precisely the kind of thing you'd want to associate with Tieflings--and it allows us to have a commentary on intolerance without nasty finger-pointing or the like. And cultural stigma for what you look like is hardly new to humanity.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?415207-Humans!/page13#ixzz3RY04wTJS

Take a look at where I'm from if you want to know if I partake in Japanese media.

But, there's a significant difference here between just standard racism and what a tiefling should face. Someone who is from another culture living in a foreign culture is going to face all sorts of challenges. But, rarely, can a foreign culture be empirically proven to be evil. Tieflings don't just face prejudice because they're different, heck any D&D race could cover that. Tieflings face prejudice because their bloodline is demonstrably (heh, bad pun) evil. The whole "bad seed" thing.

But, in any case, I'd be pretty okay with the tiefling player associating that struggle with his character. That wouldn't bother me at all. At least it would tell the table, "Hey, I'm not just a human" here. Fantastic. I don't see why you are making such a big deal about cultural vs biological differences. AFAIC, so long as ANY differences get used at the table, I'm pretty content.

Like I said, if an observer at the table could not tell that your character wasn't human just by listening to the session, then I think that the player should put a smidgeon more effort into things.

 

[Herr der Qual]

I think the biggest issue in this topic is that certain people feel that the non-human races in D&D need to be X amount different and Y amount flamboyant about it. It's the "If I forget your player is a non-human for five seconds while your talking..." mindset. The reality is, people play the stereotypes when they play dwarves and elves because few people have tried to delve into the psychology of an imaginary species to a depth of a virtual awakening of an elvish mind in their consciousness, and it's never going to happen. Even if a player were to read every book ever written with an Elvish narrative he's going to get conflicting views, cultures, customs and habits. Which means s/he's going to wind up having to sort through a million thoughts about what an Elf should be.

I play a lot of dwarves, occasionally elves, sometimes halflings. Do my characters exhibit stereotypical behaviours? Yes. Do they have stereotypical names? Most of the time. Do they each have a well thought out background that drastically affects their perception of the world and makes them interact with each individual race differently? YES! Does that same background make them distinguishable from the rest of their own race? YES!

I think that we are forgetting that these character's we play whether they are human or non-human are supposed to be Extra-ordinary, they are not supposed to be like the rest of humanity, they are a special class, they have been selected for a life of super-human, super-dwarven, super-elven deeds that make them legends in the eyes of all races. Which means each character should also be differentiated from his or her own race, they are a step above. Maybe that means that after adventuring with some maniac's of other racial origins for a while they start to express and adapt some of the features of that character's racial background that he admires.

Let's say there's a party composed of two humans, a dwarf and a halfling. Let's start them all off with their perscribed game-fluff for a culture and suggested psychological traits. The humans would likely come to respect the dwarf's hard work, and would try to not falter in keeping up with him, the dwarf would probably come to admire the speed that the humans use to decide their best path, and their joie de vivre. The halfling being very human would probably respect both parties in the aformentioned ways, but would take more from the Dwarf's love of crafting beautiful things and the willingness to go to any lengths to honor his word. The Dwarf and the Humans would probably learn from the halfling how to take the small comforts of life as a necessity to quality adventuring, and admire his crafty, clever nature. For their experiences together the entire party would evolve together, and behave like no other members of their races, instead taking on traits of their unit. As is what happens with military units, you are a blank chip when you enter the machine, you have smooth edges out of boot camp, and your unit, it's motto and the people who serve with you change you as a human being, and you become a member of that team in all that you do, and it remains with you for the rest of your life.

 

[Rejuvenator]

Maybe the term "races" is a misnomer that throws me off. The word "race" (by a modern definition) leads me to believe there should be clear biological and cultural divisions. That should be true for dragons and beholders, but demi-humans and humans share more kinship than not.

Perhaps dwarves are an ethnic group highly adapted to life deep underground. Elves are essentially forest-centric humans transformed by fey energies. Halflings and gnomes have short statures as a parallel creationist strategy. And humans are pretty much the same now as the original versatile proto-human.

In the same way that they are superficially drawn from the same human form, they all share the same human essence. For it is the gods that created humanity in their image and the gods themselves seem to belong to the same ancestral (?) origin. And there seems to be no evidence of evolution going on in D&D settings, so humanity remains essentially the same over the centuries, perfect unchanging products of intelligent design. (Later, the "corrupted" "races" like tieflings at least retain that core humanity.)

By that paradigm, I can feel fairly comfortable roleplaying an elf as basically a human with pointy ears and a niche cultural outlook.

That leaves me with only one thing left bothering me: that elves are the biggest time wasters I could possibly imagine. It is purely gamist that a 500 yr old elf isn't more knowledgeable than his 30 yr old companion. By all plausible accounts, a wizard elf has a bounty of years to memorize numerous more spells (common and rare) than his human counterpart, and a fighter elf had centuries of practice to learn a hundred combat maneuvers. There really is no excuse for this glaring "plot hole" in the game setting... unless elves grieviously waste the grand majority of their time on a fantasy equivalent of Minecraft BUT I see zero evidence in-play of elf PCs idling and daydreaming the hours away. Edit: And dragons are the laziest of them all, uselessly hibernating for years instead of being productive.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The reality is, people play the stereotypes when they play dwarves and elves because few people have tried to delve into the psychology of an imaginary species to a depth of a virtual awakening of an elvish mind in their consciousness, and it's never going to happen.

Fantasy race tropes are a convenient short-hand, to get everyone on the same page without requiring superfluous effort on the part of the actor/player.

I think that we are forgetting that these character's we play whether they are human or non-human are supposed to be Extra-ordinary, they are not supposed to be like the rest of humanity, they are a special class, they have been selected for a life of super-human, super-dwarven, super-elven deeds that make them legends in the eyes of all races. Which means each character should also be differentiated from his or her own race, they are a step above.

YMMV, but that's not a given. The PCs are our perspective characters within the world, but they aren't necessarily special in any meaningful way. They can be, of course - and if they are, then it will be more noticeable since they get more screen time - but it's not required.

 

[Herr der Qual]

What I meant by that is our characters take exceptional careers and go on epic quests in search of fame and glory or mystical knowledge and rare items, quest to defeat a great foe things that are extraordinary. I don't know about you but I have never played a cobbler, baker or stableboy class. There are NPC's that do the same things as the PC's but they are vastly the minority and are as interesting and varied as the PC's.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

What I meant by that is our characters take exceptional careers and go on epic quests in search of fame and glory or mystical knowledge and rare items, quest to defeat a great foe things that are extraordinary.

Ah. What I'm saying is, if you're playing a knight errant, then there's nothing special about you just because you're a PC; you're just doing typical knight errant stuff. Destiny and plot-armor aren't real things which protect your character, unless that happens to be the kind of game you're playing.

You're not better than anyone else, just because you're a PC.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

You're not better than anyone else, just because you're a PC.

Philosophically speaking, no, you're not. Mechanically speaking, even a young and experienced PC is more powerful than most commoners. Dramatically speaking, PCs are the most important characters by virtue of being the protagonists of the story.

 

[Nellisir]

Like I said, if an observer at the table could not tell that your character wasn't human just by listening to the session, then I think that the player should put a smidgeon more effort into things.

(Having skipped the first 12 pages or so of this thread...) I can basically agree with it, subject to the usual caveats. My 3e character is a tiefling beguiler. She doesn't play up the tiefling aspect, and as a more 2e-ish tiefling, lacks the big tail and horns of later tieflings, so it's not readily apparent - or it is, but she shifts appearance (and speech) so often that it's assumed to be another guise. The only time it does come into play is when she goes for the heavy duty intimidate check and I drop into "dragon voice" and reel off her bloodline, along with assorted threats and other stuff. So...every other session?

 

[Hussar]

Cool [MENTION=70]Nellisir[/MENTION]. That's what I'm talking about. No one at your table doesn't know your character is a tie fling.