D&D General Should Bearded Female Dwarves be the Default?

[MGibster]

Austria? Hungary? Where are you thinking of?

Benjamin Franklin wrote, “The Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted.” Dude didn't think Swedes were white enough. Let that sink in for a minute. We have a modern concept of whiteness that may not have been shared by all our ancestors.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

The whole taxonomic system doesn’t really work in these fantasy settings, as the origin and perhaps nature of life is different. Any real-life term we might apply to the groups of peoples or animals within such a setting is, at best, an analogy. I think species is a more apt anologue for these peoples than race, given the significant physical and metaphysical differences between them, which are much greater than the minor genetic differences between “races” of human. Race seems an especially poor term in light of the fact that humans in these settings tend to be similarly racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse to real life humans.

As much as I understand your POV, I do disagree.

I find orcs, humans and elves just as similar to each other as bulldogs, huskies and poodles. The physical differences are actually not very different (they are all humanoids with similar bone structure) and metaphysical differences shouldn't impact a discussion on "species" (culture differences don't impact whether something is of a different species or not).

Considering the definition of race is (again Oxford);

Race(noun): the descendants of a common ancestor; a family, tribe, people, or nation, believed or presumed to belong to the same stock; a lineage; a breed.

This is the better fit for the differences between orc and human. Especially considering how it applies the words "lineage" and "breed."

I'll add that just because they are the same species, doesn't mean all D&D races are the same species; dragonborn and tabaxi for example cannot mingle with humans and thus would be a different species.

 

[Alzrius]

I'll add that just because they are the same species, doesn't mean all D&D races are the same species; dragonborn and tabaxi for example cannot mingle with humans and thus would be a different species.

Even that strikes me as iffy, for no other reason than a proliferation of hybrid and crossbreed racial options tends to be among the most common materials to be released in supplements, third-party products, DM's Guild materials, etc.

 

[Oofta]

Austria? Hungary? Where are you thinking of?

It was something that came up when my wife was discussing her family's history of immigration from Slovenia. But at one time Italians, Greeks, Poles, Hungarians, Slavs and other European groups were not considered "white". Even in the first part of the 20th century you had to be from England, the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany and Scandinavian countries to be considered white*.

The idea of race is fluid and often has little or no basis in genetics.

*In all fairness, I have the ultimate farmer's tan and revealing my legs in full sunlight may result in blindness for anyone within a 20 ft radius. I understand why people who share that trait would be considered "white".

 

[Charlaquin]

It's not a bad term so long as you divorce it from the (pseudo) scientific use of the word today. Many groups of people considered themselves to be fundamentally different than those people over there. It's a social concept rather than one rooted in objective truth.

Right, but fantasy races are rooted in objective qualities of birth rather than being socially constructed as the real-life concept of race is. Which in my opinion makes race a poor word to describe groups of fantasy peoples.

 

[Charlaquin]

As much as I understand your POV, I do disagree.

I find orcs, humans and elves just as similar to each other as bulldogs, huskies and poodles. The physical differences are actually not very different (they are all humanoids with similar bone structure) and metaphysical differences shouldn't impact a discussion on "species" (culture differences don't impact whether something is of a different species or not).

Considering the definition of race is (again Oxford);

Race(noun): the descendants of a common ancestor; a family, tribe, people, or nation, believed or presumed to belong to the same stock; a lineage; a breed.

This is the better fit for the differences between orc and human. Especially considering how it applies the words "lineage" and "breed."

Orcs and humans aren’t descendants from a common ancestor though, nor are they believed or presumed to belong to the same stock. Orcs were created by Gruumsh, and... well, the origin of humans is left unclear, but they sure aren’t believed to have been created by Gruumsh.

I'll add that just because they are the same species, doesn't mean all D&D races are the same species; dragonborn and tabaxi for example cannot mingle with humans and thus would be a different species.

Again, I don’t think we can apply the same taxonomic standards to a world where creatures are directly created by gods rather than emerging through evolution by natural selection. Orcs and humans might be able to produce viable offspring, but so can dragons and humans, and I don’t think anyone would try to argue they’re the same species, so clearly breeding compatibility is not a reliable indicator of species in this setting. The fact of the matter is, there is no shared lineage between orcs and humans, so calling them the same species doesn’t make sense.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Ring species - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The whole premise that a species is a group of animals that can interbreed is false. Orcs and humans aren't the same species, no more than Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens were the same species (there is some controversy on the topic of neanderthals being a different species, but I believe they were.)

 

[Oofta]

A Long-Busted Myth: It's Not True That Animals Belonging To Different Species Can Never Interbreed

Every time we learn that humans interbred with other species such as Neanderthals, the cry goes up that different species are supposed to be incapable of breeding. But this is not true

www.forbes.com

The whole premise that a species is a group of animals that can interbreed is false. Orcs and humans aren't the same species, no more than Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens were the same species (there is some controversy on the topic of neanderthals being a different species, but I believe they were.)

We like to put things into neat little piles and ordered lists but nature doesn't always work that way. It would be even less clear in a world where you have mixed genera much less different species.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

We like to put things into neat little piles and ordered lists but nature doesn't always work that way. It would be even less clear in a world where you have mixed genera much less different species.

Yes, evolutionarily, there's no definition of species. There is no one point on the evolutionary tree in which we stopped being a fish and became a human. We know we're different, but we can't draw a line at where we changed.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Orcs and humans aren’t descendants from a common ancestor though, nor are they believed or presumed to belong to the same stock. Orcs were created by Gruumsh, and... well, the origin of humans is left unclear, but they sure aren’t believed to have been created by Gruumsh.

We are actually agreeing here; the definition of race is that you must have a common ancestor or belong to the same stock. Orcs and humans do not, so they are not the same "race." This same standard does not apply to "species" meaning all you need to do is be able to procreate.

Again, I don’t think we can apply the same taxonomic standards to a world where creatures are directly created by gods rather than emerging through evolution by natural selection. Orcs and humans might be able to produce viable offspring, but so can dragons and humans, and I don’t think anyone would try to argue they’re the same species, so clearly breeding compatibility is not a reliable indicator of species in this setting. The fact of the matter is, there is no shared lineage between orcs and humans, so calling them the same species doesn’t make sense.

A geneticist would likely disagree with this. If an alien came to earth, and had a baby that could in-turn have more babies, it would actually be evidence that the humans and the alien are the same species, regardless of their origin.

Consider grizzly bears and polar bears; for some time, they were considered separate species, because they don't live in the same area (they diverged 400,000 years ago), and therefore cannot procreate. It actually had little to do with common ancestry at all, as their both part of the same family (ursus) but their different habitats meant they weren't the same species. However, now polar bears are moving farther south and are mating successfully with grizzlies, (creating Pizzlies!) there is some debate whether grizzlies and polar bears should be reclassified as the same species.

Anyway, bottom line is ancestry is not as important to species classification as reproduction is.

I do agree with you that the modern application of "species" shouldn't really be used in fantasy, as most people in a fantasy world have no idea how genetics work. But if you were to apply them, orcs and humans would be the classified as different subspecies of the same species, which would have some silly name like "homo-humanoid."