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No More "Humans in Funny Hats": Racial Mechanics Should Determine Racial Cultures
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<blockquote data-quote="D1Tremere" data-source="post: 8375608" data-attributes="member: 61148"><p>I think a lot of the discussion and debate melt away with specific framing of the intent behind Ancestry instead of race. For example, I think the intent is not to remove common tropes entirely but instead to differentiate player characters from those tropes. There is also a desire to move away from tropes that are tied to real world prejudice, such as we see with the Vistani.</p><p></p><p>I think of it like this. A hill giant may be dumb but incredibly strong compared to an elf when we look at stats, but that doesn't <strong>always</strong> have to be the case. Whenever you have a species that is more defined by sociocultural forces than biology you get a lot of variance. A hill giant may be medium instead of large due to magical intervention, or simply having an ancestor who was from a shorter lineage. They may be smart due to living in a group that favors reading and learning, but not physically gifted.</p><p></p><p>The question of how to keep everything from appearing as "humans in funny hats" is a framing problem. Any species driven by culture is highly fluid. That is why there are so many differences in appearance and talents within humans. In other words, they really are just humans. Or, humans are capable of great diversity. This only increases when you add more lineages into the mix, and add magic. One dead giveaway is that, in D&D, humans can reproduce (in theory) with any other "species". In fact, we have seen that pretty much all of the different "species" in D&D are capable of true reproduction with one another over the years. This would mean that they are not separate species at all, but different members of the same clade.</p><p></p><p>I know we can't really turn to human evolution in a fantasy game like this, and that magic makes it even more explainable, but that is precisely the point. A village of Halfliings in D&D can still be a village of typical halflings, or not as the DM sees fit. A player character can come from such a village, and be vastly different or not. It reminds me of the Adams family or the Munsters.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="D1Tremere, post: 8375608, member: 61148"] I think a lot of the discussion and debate melt away with specific framing of the intent behind Ancestry instead of race. For example, I think the intent is not to remove common tropes entirely but instead to differentiate player characters from those tropes. There is also a desire to move away from tropes that are tied to real world prejudice, such as we see with the Vistani. I think of it like this. A hill giant may be dumb but incredibly strong compared to an elf when we look at stats, but that doesn't [B]always[/B] have to be the case. Whenever you have a species that is more defined by sociocultural forces than biology you get a lot of variance. A hill giant may be medium instead of large due to magical intervention, or simply having an ancestor who was from a shorter lineage. They may be smart due to living in a group that favors reading and learning, but not physically gifted. The question of how to keep everything from appearing as "humans in funny hats" is a framing problem. Any species driven by culture is highly fluid. That is why there are so many differences in appearance and talents within humans. In other words, they really are just humans. Or, humans are capable of great diversity. This only increases when you add more lineages into the mix, and add magic. One dead giveaway is that, in D&D, humans can reproduce (in theory) with any other "species". In fact, we have seen that pretty much all of the different "species" in D&D are capable of true reproduction with one another over the years. This would mean that they are not separate species at all, but different members of the same clade. I know we can't really turn to human evolution in a fantasy game like this, and that magic makes it even more explainable, but that is precisely the point. A village of Halfliings in D&D can still be a village of typical halflings, or not as the DM sees fit. A player character can come from such a village, and be vastly different or not. It reminds me of the Adams family or the Munsters. [/QUOTE]
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No More "Humans in Funny Hats": Racial Mechanics Should Determine Racial Cultures
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