D&D 5E What is the appeal of the weird fantasy races?

[Gammadoodler]

That seems fair. Although if they were secondary characters assisting the protagonist(s), then I doubt I would care. All that I would need to know is they don't get along, but now they are because the looming conflict is extremely dangerous.

Sure it's a gradient. I think the point @Chaosmancer is trying to make is that Tolkien did not make a good case in the LOTR books for why the elves and dwarves had issues, which I think is fair...and fine, since it's not what those books were about.

But when DMs lean on the LoTR books for inspiration and assume those same racial relationship dynamics, there's a problem because it's not the same use case.

 

[Maxperson]

I did just think of Skyrim. I had no idea why the Imperials were fighting the Stormcloaks outside of there was a conflict. I don't think it really bothered me. It was simply a tool used to enhance the setting. But maybe for some it was irritating. (Or maybe they found out the reason why. Gotta be honest, I loved the graphics and everything, but didn't play the game a whole lot.)

Apparently the game has quite a lot on it.

Skyrim Civil War

For the questline in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, see Civil War Quests. The Skyrim Civil War, called the Stormcloak Rebellion[11] by the Empire, and frequently shortened to simply the Civil War[12] is an ongoing civil war in the province of Skyrim. Its origins can be found several years prior to...

elderscrolls.fandom.com

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That doesn't tell me much however as far as the motivations to doing so.

I was replying to a specific post. I’m not worried about whether it answers other questions.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Okay but the Weave and the Force are fundamental forces of their universes. Comparing them to the enmity of Dwarves and Elves is like saying "Well, I didn't need an explanation for Gravity, so why do I need an explanation for why the Soviet Union and the United States of America hated each other"

Or to put it in a slightly different way: I didn’t need an e planation of who the Emperor was in Return of the Jedi, but I absolutely needed an explanation of who Snoke was in the Force Awakens.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I hear you. I just really do not like the word "chained." It has such a negative connotation. But there are so many other races in D&D and so many other cultures. The two worlds look nothing alike outside. Seems to me if there was any apt word to describe its relation to Tolkien, it would be "holding hands."

I think the negative connotation is entirely appropriate, and would use exactly the same terms for similar stuff. For example, I'd certainly say that even into the early 2000s, comic books were chained to the (misunderstood and misapplied) legacy of Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, and God Loves, Man Kills, making 20 years or more of grim, depressing, edgelord comics that forgot the spirit and fantasy of superheroes. Despite drawing on a wealth of good, thoughtful work, the derivative or imitative follow-up was often just...not good, or good but held back by its need to be Extremely Mature And Dark.

Taking reference and inspiration, responding to familiar classics, recognizing there is a genre zeitgeist....that's all fine. But why is it ABSOLUTELY EVERY high-fantasy universe has to have pointy-eared long-lived forest-dwelling innately-magical often-haughty people, AND bearded martial tradition-loving underground-dwelling often-surly miners, AND the two must always dislike each other for poorly-explained reasons? I mean for goodness' sake, even Dragon Age did it, and they barely even tweaked the formula (our elves WERE classical, until one of them broke magic and made them mortal! Our dwarves are...pretty much identical to Tolkien dwarves!)

Tolkien deserves his place in the canon of fantasy. Undeniably. I just wish that that didn't mean that 95% of campaign worlds were "Tolkien with the serial numbers filed off," and half of those being "...except the cultures are hollow stereotype Planets of Hats because it's way easier to just superficially imitate Tolkien than actually do serious worldbuilding."

Is D&D incapable of escaping from Tolkien's shadow? No. Plenty of games do. And there are even games that do actually manage to thread the needle of "follow Tolkien non-superficially but also not too rigidly." But I don't see how anyone can argue that D&D gamers as a whole have a problem with being extremely stuck in only one small corner of the enormous space that fantastic imagined worlds have to offer.

As I have said before in other threads: We have the freedom to create ANY world we imagine--so of course every world we imagine is exactly the gorram same.

We have the entire field of human imagination to play with, yet we choose only to play in one sandbox off in one corner. It's a lovely sandbox and its creator left some great toys in it to play with. As with any sandbox, there's nigh-infinite variation to be had without ever leaving its confines. But that is no reason to cling to it so tightly (and especially not to keep building the same damn castle in it over and over and over...) that we forget the entire rest of the playground in the process.

Or for a different analogy: pepperoni pizza. Not my favorite, but I totally get why it's popular and omnipresent. But if pepperoni pizza were the ONLY variety on offer at EVERY restaurant in town, it'd get old quick. I wouldn't feet at all bad turning New Pizzeria B's pepperoni down without trying it, and would respond rather poorly to "well you don't know what twists THIS restaurant put on it, maybe you'll enjoy it for the unique and subtle differences!" Especially when my experience says there's at least a 50% chance that any given restaurant actually uses the exact same premade frozen pizza....

 

[Maxperson]

Tolkien deserves his place in the canon of fantasy. Undeniably. I just wish that that didn't mean that 95% of campaign worlds were "Tolkien with the serial numbers filed off," and half of those being "...except the cultures are hollow stereotype Planets of Hats because it's way easier to just superficially imitate Tolkien than actually do serious worldbuilding."

I don't think it's so much because it's easier, but rather because it's safer. A lot of people like Tolkien type worlds a whole lot. They sell. If you world build something entirely new, it's hit and miss. There have been attempts at new over the years and a good number of those attempts bombed. Convincing a company to take that kind of risk over going with tried and true can be really hard.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't think it's so much because it's easier, but rather because it's safer. A lot of people like Tolkien type worlds a whole lot. They sell. If you world build something entirely new, it's hit and miss. There have been attempts at new over the years and a good number of those attempts bombed. Convincing a company to take that kind of risk over going with tried and true can be really hard.

I'm not actually speaking of companies. I'm speaking of DMs. Home campaigns.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not actually speaking of companies. I'm speaking of DMs. Home campaigns.

Gotcha. Then yes, easier is the right answer.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I wonder if we asked the same question about something different.

Like, if we were to tell a story, and in the story the main characters ran into one Hatfield and one McCoy. And we learned they disliked each other. An old family feud. As a reader, would I need to know more about those two character's backstories to appreciate them? I don't know. I do know that modern TV writers feel the need to do this, which is why flashbacks have become the literary device de jour for all of Hollywood. Most of the time when I see a show do a flashback I feel like I am being talked down to. But that is just my own feeling.

I don’t think that is a fair description of the situation. A fairer description would be that there is a historical reason for a feud between the Hatfields and McCoys, and later works don’t even touch upon the feud, they just include a Hatfield and a McCoy and state that they hate each other, even if the Hatfield and the McCoy are from different planets IN OUTER SPACE.

Which brings us back to Tolkien. I’m prepared to accept that Tolkien had reasons for why dwarves and elves didn’t get along, and fair enough, the exact reasons why weren’t important in “the Hobbit” and “the Lord of the Rings”. Whole generations of authors have basically copied “they hate each other” verbatim, in contexts where it doesn’t make sense, without doing any of the necessary work to establish why they don’t get along.

 

[Scott Christian]

Apparently the game has quite a lot on it.

Skyrim Civil War

For the questline in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, see Civil War Quests. The Skyrim Civil War, called the Stormcloak Rebellion[11] by the Empire, and frequently shortened to simply the Civil War[12] is an ongoing civil war in the province of Skyrim. Its origins can be found several years prior to...

elderscrolls.fandom.com

Oh, no doubt. I assume it did. I just meant that while I was playing it, I never really encountered an explanation. Just, they are invading our lands and destroying our culture kind of vibe.