Your Tropes are Touching Me!

[Fauchard1520]

All these years of gaming later and I still find myself wrestling with the idea of race-based tropes in fantasy games. When every dwarf is Scottish and every elf comes with matching bishounen sparkles, how do you keep things fresh? Any advice?

(Comic for reference.)

 

[Ryujin]

... and every Drow actually a misunderstood Chaotic Good hero.

Play against (stereo)type. The toughest warrior they meet is a woman. Elves in heavy plate, who don't rely on bows as their main weapons. Dwarven Sorcerers. Not everyone comes out of the same mold in the real world; nor should they in a fantasy world. Samurai Haflings? Why not?

 

[Fauchard1520]

Samurai Haflings? Why not?

The Shire as Rokugan is everything I never knew I wanted.

 

[Ryujin]

Wait until you start imagining the Gnome Ninja

 

[KentheDM]

One of the things I really like from Freebooters on the Frontier is that they used the term "heritage" instead of "race". That really got my mind going. Suppose most of the mechanical traits a character gets is from where they live and whom they grew up with. It involves some hand waving and DM Magic, but it's reasonable to say that a human that grew up with, say, dwarves is hardier than the average human (remember Carrot from Discworld?). It doesn't completely solve your problem, per se, but i think it adds a bit of depth and starts moving away from stereotypes.

 

[Jhaelen]

Stop playing in vanilla settings.

Have a look at Dark Sun or Eberron to get an idea how to re-imagine fantasy races. There's more options beyond D&D, e.g. Glorantha or Earthdawn.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

If you’re having trouble breaking with established tropes, I think it’s totally possible to play with tropes in subtle ways, while still paying using them. Little things can add up – like say that dwarf with the Scottish accent who’s also a vegetarian, or only uses swords, and is really particular about them. Or the fey elf that is completely bloodthirsty (perhaps literally?) in battle.

Though in all honesty, I hate the all dwarves have Scottish accents thing. An accent is not a personality.

 

[Dioltach]

Though in all honesty, I hate the all dwarves have Scottish accents thing.

Stay true to the Germanic roots, and give your dwarf a German accent. Preferably a slightly camp one.

 

[Kramodlog]

Cannibal barbarian halflings make Dark Sun awesome!

Dark Sun truly did try to subvert many fantasy tropes. Ashame the first novels made the original box obsolete and that many of the source and splat books were terrible.

 

[Tonguez]

Stay true to the Germanic roots, and give your dwarf a German accent. Preferably a slightly camp one.

I agree, I've never understood why the Germanic dwarfs were made scottish - indeed I've always tended to think of Dwarfs in terms of Prussian Virtues

But two paths is either choose a different real world culture/trope upon which to build your race profile (like Cannibal Halflings who live as seabourne pirates, Dickensian goblin urban sewer rats, Elves as soul-sucking leannán sí) or examine the race mechanical desriptions and ask yourself Why did that develop? and what would it mean in your world