Homogenized Races?

[The Session Tapes]

Okay, folks... here's a good discussion topic for you;

Racial languages/religions/alignments.

I personally really dislike the "homogenous" races idea which seems to be present in a lot of TTRPGs, (D&D in particular). The idea that an entire race follows the same pantheon or speaks the same language, regardless of where in the world they're from just doesn't ring very true to me. This is why the idea of "racial" anything seems very incongruous to me. I have a hard time believing that the Elves of Silverymoon and the Elves of Cormyr speak the same language, let alone worship the same pantheon or have the same cultural structure.

Throughout history, we've seen dozens of instances of similar ethnotypes or even communities deeply (and sometimes violently) divided by language, religion, or cultural mores. So why not fantasy worlds? The Forgotten Realms in particular, the only race which seems to follow any sort of "realistic" ethnic divergence are humans. Everyone else seems to just get a new subrace thrown at them for each new region discovered.

As for Alignments, I don't use them anyway... I think they're WAY too "mechanical" to reflect true morality. I think the devs themselves even realised this; adding characters like Drizzt and gods like Eilistraee to pay lip-service to "moral complexity" within the cultures. But for people who use them, do you ever have issues with the idea of an entire race having the same moral compass? Or does it just not come up?

TL;DR, I'm looking for other people's opinions of the "WizardDidIt" way in which non-human FRPG societies seem to be racially homogenous across the world. Is this something you're okay with? Do you mix it up? Take different approaches? What are they?

(Oh, and don't even get me started on the fact that there's a language called "Common" )

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I’ve always thought of Common as either a trade pidgin or constructed language (like Esperanto), the most common primary/secondary language in the world (think Greek, Latin, French, and English, in turn), or a mechanical mesh mash of both.

 

[5ekyu]

In my experience- a lot of modern and alien scifi etc... the language and culture conceits just aide play. The times where anything like the diversity of language possible was put into play without some hand-wave such as universal translator or babble-fish mage rpg more fun on an ongoing basis is small compared to the frustrations of ongoing tries to play thru the "how do we communicate".

It's why so many fantasy and scifi fi novels, shows, movies etc find ways to work around it except for a few rare cases that stand out.

To me this is more a problem of theory vs one of play.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[TwoSix]

I have no problem believing that lexical purity is important to long-lived elder races in a fantasy world where words in ancient languages are one of the keys to eldritch power.

I have a lot more trouble with the idea that all orcs or all gnolls speak the same language. I would assume that most of those humanoid languages, much like Common, are pidgins with a lot of borrowed words from local languages.

 

[dragoner]

(Oh, and don't even get me started on the fact that there's a language called "Common" )

That's Koine, a form of Greek spoken from 3rd century BC to the middle ages, the bible was written in it; it translates as common.

 

[Umbran]

I personally really dislike the "homogenous" races idea which seems to be present in a lot of TTRPGs, (D&D in particular). The idea that an entire race follows the same pantheon or speaks the same language, regardless of where in the world they're from just doesn't ring very true to me. This is why the idea of "racial" anything seems very incongruous to me. I have a hard time believing that the Elves of Silverymoon and the Elves of Cormyr speak the same language, let alone worship the same pantheon or have the same cultural structure.

Well, it isn't like the pantheon and cultural structure are cleanly separable. The gods support particular social structures.

And, in our fantasy worlds, the gods have a say in things - if a god gives spell power to elvish worshippers/clerics, and does not give power to non-elves, that's going to reinforce religion being a racial characteristic.

(Oh, and don't even get me started on the fact that there's a language called "Common" )

Um... we have the phrase lingua franca for a reason....

From there, there's the simple matter that this is a game. We are at play. There are parts of the real world that are not really all that much fun as elements of play, so... they don't show up so much in our games. Accuracy is only useful to us insofar as it is *fun*.

 

[Jer]

TL;DR, I'm looking for other people's opinions of the "WizardDidIt" way in which non-human FRPG societies seem to be racially homogenous across the world. Is this something you're okay with? Do you mix it up? Take different approaches? What are they?

I mix it up depending on how far up the magic scale the beings we're talking about are - the more magical a group of beings are, the less naturalistic I play their cultures and languages. For example, elves in my worlds tend to be pretty magical and tied to the rest of the fey, so the idea that they all speak a magical language that hasn't change since the dawn of creation is generally fine to me - likewise things like Draconic, Celestial and Infernal and other planar languages. Although if there's a reason to play the elves more naturalistically then I do that - for example when I run games in Mystara elves have different languages because elves aren't as tied to the fey and there are different groups of elves who have been separate for millennia and have allowed their cultures to evolve down different paths.

Dwarves are a bit of a different story for me, since we generally play them a bit more "down to earth" than the elves (HA!), but since in most of the worlds I've run there is exactly one place in the world where dwarves hail from, it's usually not an issue. They all speak the same language because they're all from Dwarfheim or Rockhome or whatever and so it doesn't matter.

For creatures like goblins, ogres, giants, etc. - generally I figure the creatures of the same type speak the same language, and adventurers identify that language as "goblin" or whatever. Basically just like there's a "common" for humans in a particular geographic area, there's also a "common" for humanoid types in a geographic area that may or may not be related to the human "common" (sometimes humanoid languages are a "pidgin" or a dialect of "common" or Elvish, sometimes it's their own thing - it depends on how I want to play it or if my players have ideas that would lead us down one path or another).

(Oh, and don't even get me started on the fact that there's a language called "Common" )

I've always taken "common" to be a family of languages and dialects - like Latin in Europe. The game doesn't really handle tracking individual languages at a granular level, and stopping play while characters try to mime what they want to shopkeepers and blacksmiths is fun maybe once in a while. As long as you're within a particular geographic area, all of the languages are related back to some common language so everyone can kind of figure out each other well enough to be able to trade. If you travel too far away from your home, you're going to find unfamiliar languages (but games don't usually go that far away, so it doesn't matter, and if it does then you use spells or magic items to deal with it).

 

[steeldragons]

As others have said, part of the issues you raise are due to simple mechanical need. You need, barring interesting special scenarios/circumstances, for the characters to be able to communicate with most of the things they encounter...and "civilized" peoples/nations (presumably with hundreds of years of history) need to interact. So, "Common" trade tongue is an easy way to do that supplemented with PCs knowing multiple languages so, presumably, at least one or two characters in a group could understand/translate for others when you need to eavesdrop on the goblin guards or overhear demonic cult leader laying out schemes/directions, in Abyssal, to his demonic minions.

It just...moves the play along without turning into Translator the RPG [tm].

As for the homogany of races, that has something to do with a couple of different issues.
#1: the simplest and most obvious being that the players are humans. They can only play/experience the game, different species, different cultures, different religions through their own experience/understanding. So, for most players, elves are going to "feel"/play/sound like humans are going to "feel"/play/sound like dwarves or halflings are going to "feel"play/sound...individual "character/personality" idiosyncratic stuff and fantasy world homebrewed creative/exotic culture stuff aside, because they are all being played by..human players.

#2: It goes to the origins of the game and its source material...predominantly Tlkien's work, when we're talking about Human/Elf/Dwarf/Halfling being the racial spread for heroic player characters. There is literary sourcing, as well as mythological and folkloric materials, as to the origins and "nature" of these various beings.

Simply put, Humans (harkening back to religion) were the ones "unique" in that they possessed "Free Will." They possess a "noble spirit/soul/what have you" that is special. Dwarves, essentially, are carved stone with a specific "spirit"/life breathe into them. [Not to mention the generally immutable nature of stone/rock.] Elves were, similarly, created by some special magical means that dictates -again for the most part- their nature- their love of twilight and stars and the cool woods and soft breezes -magic, love, beauty, and all that other "perfect world/goodly deity space before "Evil" and "Man" came around" stuff. That is "what" they are, as much as "how" they act. All elves are "elfy." All dwarves are "dwarfy." They cant help it.

Basically, initially in the game at least, the most "alien" thing about non-human characters is - There is only so far they can stretch/comprehend outside the "mold" of their creation. Whereas humans, curiously to other races, either by design or accident of their creation, dont seem to have a "mold." Humans can do whatever they want, adapt, effect change... where elves and dwarves (to an extent halflings, and all the other fantasy RPG races that have come since) are somewhat baffled or incapable once you get too far outside the mold of the nature in which they were generated. By extension, everything that is spawned by that creation -language, culture, [religion if there is one], etc... is similarly..."stunted"/limited to the bounds of that creation.

So, all that long wind to say, Yeah! The races get homogenized. Some consciously. Some not.

You can certainly work, consciously, to not play that way. Not to have a singular "surface elf" culture/language/religion or a single "dwarf" culture diaspora that managed to spread around any corner of the setting.

I do it in my setting.

There are [a known minimum of] 4 distinct language branches of "Elfin" spoken by no fewer than 6 distinct cultures of elves. The setting's "Wood [analogue]" elves follow a shamanic ancestral and nature spirit worship kind of religion and eschews arcane magical teaching/practice. The "High" elf culture is not particularly religious at all but the cerebral or spiritual among them "revere" some of the old deities of things elves have affinity (the moon, knowledge/magic, the forests/hunt, etc...) but there's not what we would call "organized religion." So called "Dark Elves [Drow]" were banished from the surface ages ago and have passed [for all but the eldest of "grey analogue" elves who will not speak of them] into the world of myth and legend, if they are heard of at all.

There are 6 distinct human ethnicities, spread across some 8 [established] "nations" with at least 10 various languages spoken among them...and theres a "Common" [which all PC's of every race know] in addition to at least one of their human "Homeland Tongue."

Halflings are, generally, similar...sequestered in secluded small enclaves, though there are two [known/for PC] sub-races. The majority traditionally, are a matriarchal polygamous culture. Linguistically, the western halflings have a distinct dialect and are prone to worship more elfin and human inspired divinities -melding and grafting like characters to their own traditional deities. While the eastern halflings worship "their" [halfling] gods by "their" [halfling] names and steadfastly unequivocably assert they are separate -halfling- gods (the first great halfling clan of heroes who defeated the demon-goblin deities who stalked the earth at the beginning of time and rose to celestial power).

All or most of these (or dwarven or gnomish or lizardman or goblin or) deities simply being the appropriate race's "aspects"/manifestations of the singular pantheon of divinities that supervises the known world (he third, give or take, such "generation" of entities to do so)...though even the gods' aspects themselves sometimes forget that. There are exceptions: elder ranks of gods, lost/dead gods, demons, devils, elemental lords, demigods/ascended mortals, etc...who have added to the mix and may have mortal followings from a single local region to multiple nations. But for the most part, the primary pantheon of [human] gods are just various faces/facets of the same divine entities worshiped by different names in different cultures.

And so on, and so on...established dwarf kingdoms of feuding alignments, 5 classifications of gnomes each with distinct cultures and languages, shamanic centaur tribes being driven to extinction and/or cultural annihilation, immortal elves that speak [to humans] so slowly it'll make you tear your hair out. You can make language and culture [and Alignment plays in, a lot, to what a culture shapes into] as diverse and fantasized up as you want.

But in the end, you are a group of humans sitting around a table playing make believe. Humans, if nothing else, are creatures of habit. For the most part, people play what they "know"...and that's just...human.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I tend to use regional languages, so both elves and orcs from Austland will speak Austlandic, while those from Lutresh will speak Lutreshan.

In order to facilitate ease of communication in play, I usually give all creatures at least a couple or regional languages for free.

This allows players to choose unusual dialects for privacy / subterfuge purposes while also being able to pretty much speak with anyone they need to speak to.