D&D General How To Reconcile the Settings

[Doug McCrae]

It depends on how exactly you classify human species, but right now it's looking like around 100,000 - 50,000 years ago or so there were at least 5 human species concurrently. Us, Neandertals, Denisovans,Homo Floresiensis (hobbit people), Luzonensis.

Opinions vary on this, depending on whether the palaeoanthropologist is a 'splitter' or a 'lumper'. A lumper would consider homo neanderthalensis and homo sapiens to be a single species, whereas a splitter would not. But both would agree that homo floresiensis is (or is part of) a separate species. A lumper might group floresiensis in the same category with homo erectus, or even homo habilis.

Apparently denisovans are not yet recognised as a formal taxon, and I think the same is true for luzonensis.

So the consensus of scientific opinion is that there were at least two different hominin species living on Earth 100k years ago, and there could be more depending on the system of categorisation one uses.

I'm getting most of this from Human Evolution: A Very Short Introduction 2e (2019) by Bernard Wood.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Yes put in a sidebar saying this is where Tieflings come from but they are rare.

Only one rate race per party (maybe 2 if it's a 6+ person party).

Tiefling make a reasonable amount of sense on Greyhawk, but they probably won't have it easy.

But if you have a party of a Drow, Tiefling, Half Orc, Gith and Goliath you're kinda missing the point IMHO.

Personally I'll probably use alignment and racial restrictions on a 5E GH Homebrew.

Eh, I don't see Tieflings making sense in Greyhawk. Sure, there is extraplanar contact, but it's not really keeping with the feel of the setting to have random half-outsiders running around. Drow exist, but are basically kill-on-sight to the surface races. Goliath seems fine if you make them be the frost barbarians and say that they're just big humans.

 

[Tonguez]

also, all hominids that had close to human intelligence are extremely competitively expansionist. Thats the best thing we got for comparison against "huminoid species" since those two are basically the same thing in many (thought not all) ways.

Okay lets take the standard races through a kinda evolutionary lens

Humans, Halflings, Dwarfs, Elfs and Orcs are all Hominids, Gnomes are Fey and imc Goblins are amphibians

Humans— Homo Sapiens are an adaptive, expansionist species found in all biomes
Halflings - I consider them an off-shoot of Human, a distinctive phenotype adapted to a specific habitat (like Pygmy and Negrito on Earth)
=> Humans being so adaptive is why they are the dominat species across most worlds
=> When Humans and halfings crossbreed the result is a short human

Dwarfs - highly adapted to living under mountains, thus not prone to expand beyond alpine areas. ie Dwarfs are happy in the mountains and become grumpy when they go to lower altitudes because they are outside their habitat, nonetheless they have a high level of endurance.
=> Populations remain confined due to limits of Habit

Elfs - are an interesting case because of the effect of magic. They appear to be highly adapted to Forest biomes. However when Elfs move outside their natural habitat their inherent magic causes Elfs to mutate into new subspecies.
=> Populations of Elf subsepecies remain small due to extreme speciuation

Orcs - a Hominid species that share a common acnestor with Humans (or Elfs?), they are expansionist but unable to gain dominance v humans (their is a theory that Neanderthals were less cooperative than Homo Sapeins and this was one reason why didnt survive contact)

other races I assume developed elsewhere

 

[Hussar]

Where are people getting this massively xenophobic (kill on sight) vibe for Greyhawk? It's certainly not present in the supplements or the writings. Greyhawk has always been pretty kitchen sink. Never minding all the experimentation by the Scarlet Brotherhood.

The other thing is, when discussing population numbers and whatnot, and the presence of large predators, etc, we shouldn't forget that we create settings to serve the game, not the other way around. Just because the PC's stumble over monsters all the time doesn't mean that everyone else does too. The reason we have PC's stumble over monsters is because it's fun. A setting where you meet on monster in your entire lifetime would be very boring.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Where are people getting this massively xenophobic (kill on sight) vibe for Greyhawk? It's certainly not present in the supplements or the writings. Greyhawk has always been pretty kitchen sink. Never minding all the experimentation by the Scarlet Brotherhood.

Honestly at this point I just think it's people projecting their neophobic and elitist sentiments onto a "classic" setting. Like, people, just come out and say you don't like tieflings and the latest generation of players that they're massively popular with. Don't do this whole Greyhawk song and dance.

 

[cbwjm]

Wouldn't it be kill them before they kill you? If orcs are constantly sweeping out of the hills and slaughtering villages or drow are coming up through the underdark and doing the same then that would colour anyone's perceptions of the race and make them a kill on sight race. For Grayhawk I'd say that tieflings just arrived too late, like an edition too late. With Iuz and Iggwilv running around the setting I feel like the setting has a high interaction with demons and tieflings could easily be found there. Might be more likely to be working for the bad guys but I'd still say they'd fit the setting.

 

[Zardnaar]

Probably the 1E phb.

Drow for me wouldn't be kill on sight because they're to mysterious. Curiosity mixed with a fair bit of caution.

Tieflings wouldn't have it easy, worse than half ircs IMHO.

 

[Oofta]

Honestly at this point I just think it's people projecting their neophobic and elitist sentiments onto a "classic" setting. Like, people, just come out and say you don't like tieflings and the latest generation of players that they're massively popular with. Don't do this whole Greyhawk song and dance.

Or ... it's just a preference.

It's a game. Sometimes I don't want to think too hard about real world ethics. So yes, sometimes there's black and white, good and evil. That's not going to work for everyone, but fortunately there's plenty of room for all sorts of options. That doesn't mean that people that don't want every race under the sun allowed as a PC in their campaign are "elitist". It just means they've made a decision for what makes sense for them.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

That each race has ridiculous population numbers that add up to a total population that is environmentally unsustainable is an assumption that only you are making. It would be easier to take @Hussar's 360 million and say that is the total population on the continent period and subdivide population numbers for each race from there.

To reference some of the published settings: Faerun as of 1372 DR had a rough population of 68 million sapients, though I would probably multiply that be at least 1.5 to account for monstrous humanoids, so 102 million sapients. Khorvaire in 998 YK had a population of 15 million; even if we assume that number should be 10 times as much due to 3e jank creating a population density equivalent to Siberia which is frankly bogus, that would still only take us to 150 million. Even accounting for a larger population prior to the Last War, it would take a lot to crack Hussar's 360 million.

Meanwhile from the way you're arguing, I'm assuming you're assuming at least a 1 billion population in an area of 1 or 2 continents that are resource deprived? If that's what you're assuming, I don't know where that's coming from.

Also, note of trivia: scholars today theorize that the population of the Americas prior to Columbian contact was 50 million.

That all humanoids=hominids is not a safe assumption to make, especially in settings where certain races were created in their current form rather than evolving naturally. Again, there could be biological, psychological, or cultural reasons unique to each race that justify why they are generally restricted to a certain area. Maybe a species is over-adapted to a certain biome and can't thrive outside that climate. Maybe a species is culturally tied to certain sacred relics and/or sites and don't have a strong cultural impetus to migrate. Maybe they have conflicts at home that are interfering with their ability to push outward. Maybe they have made contact with the outside world but relations as of now are peaceful.

Plus, there is always planar shenanigans to consider. Perhaps a certain race has more of its population in the Feywild or in the Elemental Planes than on the Material, no matter their origins.

1. I dont assume massive populations. I assume it will happen if those popilations contact at all which happens without the massive amounts.

2. Its unquantifiable how "safe" that assumption is. But it is the most direct assumption available to make and the safEST roughly. Bar none.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Okay lets take the standard races through a kinda evolutionary lens

Humans, Halflings, Dwarfs, Elfs and Orcs are all Hominids, Gnomes are Fey and imc Goblins are amphibians

Humans— Homo Sapiens are an adaptive, expansionist species found in all biomes
Halflings - I consider them an off-shoot of Human, a distinctive phenotype adapted to a specific habitat (like Pygmy and Negrito on Earth)
=> Humans being so adaptive is why they are the dominat species across most worlds
=> When Humans and halfings crossbreed the result is a short human

Dwarfs - highly adapted to living under mountains, thus not prone to expand beyond alpine areas. ie Dwarfs are happy in the mountains and become grumpy when they go to lower altitudes because they are outside their habitat, nonetheless they have a high level of endurance.
=> Populations remain confined due to limits of Habit

Elfs - are an interesting case because of the effect of magic. They appear to be highly adapted to Forest biomes. However when Elfs move outside their natural habitat their inherent magic causes Elfs to mutate into new subspecies.
=> Populations of Elf subsepecies remain small due to extreme speciuation

Orcs - a Hominid species that share a common acnestor with Humans (or Elfs?), they are expansionist but unable to gain dominance v humans (their is a theory that Neanderthals were less cooperative than Homo Sapeins and this was one reason why didnt survive contact)

other races I assume developed elsewhere

It actually comes down mostly to sex. Homo sapiens naughty word like rabbits comparitively. They naughty word neanderthals too. Absorbed them and or killed them but mostly its the sex. They just bred like crazy.

Homo sapiens are actually a remarkably unlikely but successful hybridization of many hominids. Normally it wouldnt be so easy to make an everything salad but it just happened to be genetically posssible. And so it happened.