D&D General DnD Stereotypes In The Home Game

[Bitbrain]

I try not to use the traditional fantasy stereotypes on my campaigns.


In my Dark Sun-inspired campaign:

1). Elves are desert nomads who never display a trace of arrogance or xenophobia. Most monsters in the world prefer elf-meat to all other sources of nutrition, so for an elf to behave dismissively towards humans, halflings, and muls really isn’t a good idea.
2). Halflings are most definitely not hobbits. They prefer to walk on all fours, they see nothing wrong with eating their dead, and only one subrace wears clothes.


In my Eberron campaign:

Eberron is built on the premise of turning traditional fantasy stereotypes upside down, so the only thing I changed in my campaign was the setting-specific stereotype of Zilargo gnomes (since they are the one part of Eberron I don’t like). Instead of a police state, my version of Zilargo is basically a nation-wide opium den.
The idea is that the gnomes and eladrin both originated from Thelanis, but where the giants mutated the eladrin into elves, the gnomes are still “genetically unchanged” and every single one of them wants to do one thing: return to Thelanis.

Sadly, since most of them are unable to do so (not having access to planeshift), they spend their days stoned out of their minds on dreamlily.

 

[DND_Reborn]

They come up in threads all the time, but I have a wonder.

That is, how often do the various stereotypes of DnD actually play out in your home games?

Now, that’s a very broad question, so I’ll throw out some examples of what I mean.

1) Dwarves and Elves are racist toward each other

2) Half-orcs whose parents love each other are a rare exception, or even just nonexistent.

3) Halflings are just hobbits.

4) Villagers will literally attack “ugly” races on sight, even if they aren’t doing anything threatening and are well groomed and dressed. Ugly here means “monstrous” or otherwise very very not human (anything from Gnolls to Dragonborn)

Likewise, how have you rejected or subverted the stereotypes in your games?

Maybe not to the extent others think of these, but we play with most of them to one degree or another, of course there are always exceptions.

 

[Seramus]

1-3) If I'm playing with a bunch of new players I lean a little more heavily upon established tropes to make the game more familiar to them. The more I know you was a player the more likely I am to mix up the setting. Geography and culture also has a lot to do with it. A tribe of mountain orcs might raid for food every winter, while agricultural minded orcs 1000 miles to the west haul trade wagons into town peacefully every week.

4) I lean on this one more heavily. People in real life are massively condition to react a certain way to ugly or beautiful people. While I do not include things like sexism or familiar racism in my games, this particular 'ism' is hard to remove without social interaction starting to become unrecognizable.

Of course, familiarity breeds apathy so a large cosmopolitan city is going to be more tolerant... but usually not to the point of everyone being totally woke, because that tends to make for poor stories.

 

[Oofta]

Wherever you want it to?

Then I guess I would say that I stopped at making minimal changes because I don't see any reason to do more. I'd rather focus on telling stories. I can describe a gnome city as "Tinker gnome version of Las Vegas", and people know what I'm talking about. I want races to be distinct for reasons other than culture (although culture does come into play as well), and the base assumptions of D&D do an acceptable job of that. One of the things that always bugs me about sci-fi TV like Star Trek is that all aliens are basically humans with prosthetics. Not just physical form but attitudes and societies as well.

I have modified the world from basic pseudo-medieval society because magic is going to change society. I've put a lot of thought into how existing races are going to interact, how various races are going to integrate into human dominated societies. Elves are stand-offish because they don't want to become attached. They come off as aloof because they live in the moment and may enjoy your company but know humans will be gone in the veritable blink of an eye. Dwarves are pragmatic to a fault, and embrace order because they need to function in a society with limited resources, cramped quarters, generally in a areas under constant threat.

I also think common tropes can be useful, it helps people come up with variations on the theme that are more interesting.

But that's just me. Want to rewrite every race, stand every trope on it's ear? While I don't see the point if you and your group enjoy it that's fantastic. Different people play for different reasons with different expectations and with different styles.

 

[Retreater]

My setting has a lot of warring political factions, based around ancestry, religion, and other social structures.

All the elves and dwarves come from common ancestors. In fact, the elves call the dwarves "rock elves" and are considered an offshoot just like the wood elves or high elves (and sea elves). The tieflings and aasimar are against each other for religious reasons, but they too come from a common ancestor of the eternals.

I have played up these differences to the point where it's become not fun for some of the players. Now I'm scaling it back significantly. If I had to do over, I'd probably not have world politics play as much into the game.

 

[Arnwolf666]

I treat different races the way a person in medieval Europe in the real world would view them if they actually met them. So play a half-orc or Dragonborn with that in mind. Dwarves and halflings better make people think they are short humans. Elves better hide there ears.


I admit i don’t all games like that. I love me some planescape and other settings too.

 

[Arnwolf666]

What, does no one catch Stone Temple Pilots allusions anymore?????

Showing our age lol. Good times.

 

[Arnwolf666]

I don't tend to rely much on tropes in my games.

Dwarves and elves get along about as well as anyone else does.

Elves and drow don't particularly get along, but they have their reasons. The elves are children of the great World Trees. The home world of the World Trees was devoured by the progenitor of the drow, a powerful spore-based World Eater. The surviving World Trees fled to the Prime World, and the World Eater sent a piece of herself after them, intending to finish the job. Unfortunately for her, the Prime World's climate proved inhospitable, and she was forced to retreat to the depths below. Long story short, the World Trees eat a number of the indigenous humanoid life forms that they encounter and use this essence as inspiration for the elves. The World Eater eventually encounters some elves, eats them, and decides to create its own race from this template. So the World Trees and the World Eater fight a proxy war, but it's primarily a cold war.

While the elves and drow who live near their progenitors tend to be fairly prejudiced against each other, those who leave their communities tend to be more free minded, and soon discover that much like themselves, their counterparts tend to have little interest in the war of their progenitors.

As for halflings, they're reasonably close to the PHB version (which is to say, not particularly Hobbit like). The short version is that the god of rogues tricked the god of paladins into cutting off his pinky finger, and the first halflings sprung from that finger when it struck the ground. As such, halflings have the cleverness of the Trickster and the courage of the Champion. According to legend, at any rate.

Half orcs tend to originate from nomadic tribes who intermingled with orcs. This was seen as a benefit to both, as the resulting progeny were both strong and clever. As such, half orcs are highly respected among nomadic cultures, though they sometimes meet with prejudice in "civilized" lands, owing to the false notion that all half orcs are uncivilized barbarians.

Tieflings are very different. While some do gain their appearance through devilish bargains, they are the exception rather than the rule. There are Hellholes in my world from which demons and devils crawl up out of the ground (borrowed from 13th Age). These Hellholes became fortified locations, to protect the region from fiendish hordes. The warriors who fought the fiends were exposed to their blood, and over several generations became Tieflings. As such, Tieflings are respected by many; it's a badge of honor.

Monsters are rarely kill on sight in my games, particularly if they are with non-monsters. Of course, that only applies if they behave themselves and don't threaten the community.

In a previous campaign, which was essentially a PoL setting, I had a young adult bronze dragon who was making his fortune by flying between towns and functioning as a trader. He was most welcome in town. Of course, the only killing he did was in the mercantile business.

A big part of why I generally aim for something different with my games is that one of my groups has been gaming together for two decades. As such, while they don't mind Tolkien-esque fantasy, they prefer something new and different, when possible.

Oh god I love your halflings. I am so going to steal that.

 

[BookBarbarian]

Kender should be banned in all world's even Krynn.

I have no problem with Kender.

The problem lies in the Player who wants to play a Kender. That guy probably won't work at my table no matter what he wants to play.

 

[Alzrius]

2) Half-orcs whose parents love each other are a rare exception, or even just nonexistent.

My group had a lot of fun subverting this in our last game. My half-orc barbarian was a surly teenager who liked to talk about all of the prejudice he'd experienced at the hands of humans due to his parentage, when in fact his parents had been two half-orcs (PCs from a previous campaign) who had won general public acclaim and risen to found a fledgling kingdom, and raised him in relative luxury and with the goodwill of the local populace.