D&D General No More "Humans in Funny Hats": Racial Mechanics Should Determine Racial Cultures

[dave2008]

Snarf's Superior Solution: Swerve hard into differentiation both in crunch AND lore. Get rid of 'default' races in the PHB. All races should be campaign- or setting-specific. Get rid of ASIs for races completely (as that seems to be the alpha and the omega of complaints) and differentiate all races by abilities and/or gated racial feats. Races should have a rich tapestry of culture and fluff to pull upon (or to play against, as need be, but will still help place them in the world).

I basically agree with this solution, but I do not think we will see something like this from WotC. Tying races to a setting really allows you to lean into their differences in mechanics and fluff. And ASI were never an interesting racial differentiator (though I still think they can be useful).

However, what do you, playing the role of WotC here, give to people who don't us a published setting? My group never plays in published settings, so where do we get our fantasy races from?

 

[dave2008]

It helps me create fun dilemmas for the story and characters when I can think "okay, what would this race do in this circumstance",...

I find this a bit problematic as you seem to be (here and in your OP) treating races as mono-cultural. How would you answer this for humans? Well you can't in a lot of situations as humans react to things differently, sometimes very differently. IMO, fantasy races should be the same. A world with one "dwarf," culture in not nearly as engaging as one with dozens (or hundreds) of dwarf cultures. Additionally, like RL humans, those different cultures have very little (if anything) to do with their inherent "mechanics" to each other or to humans.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Can we get past this? Please? The topic is subjective. Of course it's their opinion. We shouldn't have to preface every opinion with the words "in my opinion." Sniping at people for using declarative language accomplishes nothing.

It was stated as a fact. Sniping at them for doing that makes it less likely for them to do that in the future, and makes it so others are less likely to take it as a fact.

Sure, that's not my main criticism of their post, but it's worth saying. Whenever I have said "X should be like Y", people reply saying "but, that's just like your opinion, man" almost any time. It works both ways.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

By virtue of the fact that many people want to play non-humans that aren’t alien in mindset, we can pretty well determine that it is objectively true that not all races should be alien in mindset.

It is also true that some non-humans should have significantly alien mindsets, by virtue of a significant amount of the player base wanting that.

All player races (besides human) are partially alien. Some moreso than others (Warforged, Kalashtar, Yuan-Ti, and Lizardfolk, for example), but any non-human race should have a different psychology from humans, IMO, even if that difference is slight. Even races that are more human than others (Reborn that used to be humans, Half-Elves, Half-Orcs, Halflings, Planetouched Humans, Dragonmarked Humans, etc) should have a psychology that differentiates them from humans, because both their biological and cultural pressures would cause them to have different mindsets (like how the Dragonmarked Human Races in Eberron all have different cultures, while still being largely human).

Sure, it can be as simple as "I'm scared of tall people [Goliaths, Orcs, Ogres, Giants, etc] because I'm a 3 foot tall halfling", but that's still an alien mindset from the average human.

If your non-human races are played exactly as humans (in roleplay, not mechanics), they might as well just be humans.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I find this a bit problematic as you seem to be (here and in your OP) treating races as mono-cultural. How would you answer this for humans? Well you can't in a lot of situations as humans react to things differently, sometimes very differently. IMO, fantasy races should be the same. A world with one "dwarf," culture in not nearly as engaging as one with dozens (or hundreds) of dwarf cultures. Additionally, like RL humans, those different cultures have very little (if anything) to do with their inherent "mechanics" to each other or to humans.

I'm perfectly fine with having multiple cultures for different groups of the same race. I have no problem with that. I gave plenty of different possible cultures for Halflings (based off of their mechanics and personalities) in the various halfling threads, and would love it if multiple of them existed in the same world. That makes for some fun interactions between the various racial cultures, like how Tairnadal and Aereni Elves in Eberron are both elves, but have very different cultures, but share common elements (worshipping ancestors).

If you thought that I was treating the races as mono-cultural in the OP and the quoted post, I apologize for the misunderstanding. That was not my intention, and I absolutely love having a variety of different cultures for the same race in my worlds/campaigns. I just think that they should be influenced by their racial mechanics, even if they're influenced in different ways by subrace mechanics or by their place in the world.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Sure, that's not my main criticism of their post, but it's worth saying. Whenever I have said "X should be like Y", people reply saying "but, that's just like your opinion, man" almost any time. It works both ways.

It really wasn't worth saying. If people are doing that to you, it's bad when they do it too. Like I said, it's all opinions here. The way they worded it doesn't make it less of an opinion, and there's no reason to reword it to suit your personal tastes. Just address the actual meat of the comment instead of insisting they post like you want them to.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

It really wasn't worth saying. If people are doing that to you, it's bad when they do it too. Like I said, it's all opinions here. The way they worded it doesn't make it less of an opinion, and there's no reason to reword it to suit your personal tastes. Just address the actual meat of the comment instead of insisting they post like you want them to.

This is a moot point. @doctorbadwolf doubled down on their objective-ness stance already.

 

[Scars Unseen]

This is a moot point. @doctorbadwolf doubled down on their objective-ness stance already.

That's a separate issue, and unfortunately it's one that runs headlong into the whole prescriptive vs. descriptive language argument. People have been using "objective" in situations that can't be objective for so long it's in that same area of "literally" being used to describe the figurative. It's a debate that could be had, but it's one I've found doesn't really go anywhere, and one that we'll likely lose out on with time.

But I'm going to make a wager. I'm going to bet by the quoted post above that you know the difference. And if you know the difference, you likely can figure out that the meat of their post would not change if they worded it in a way that was more explicitly written in subjective language. And if the meat of their post wouldn't change, then what exactly are you accomplishing? You know that the content of their post is opinion, and you're certainly capable of engaging the content of the post on its own merits, as you've already demonstrated. I can pretty much guarantee that you aren't going to change how people post, so why not just reply to what they post and leave it at that?

 

[dave2008]

I'm perfectly fine with having multiple cultures for different groups of the same race. I have no problem with that. I gave plenty of different possible cultures for Halflings (based off of their mechanics and personalities) in the various halfling threads, and would love it if multiple of them existed in the same world. That makes for some fun interactions between the various racial cultures, like how Tairnadal and Aereni Elves in Eberron are both elves, but have very different cultures, but share common elements (worshipping ancestors).

If you thought that I was treating the races as mono-cultural in the OP and the quoted post, I apologize for the misunderstanding. That was not my intention, and I absolutely love having a variety of different cultures for the same race in my worlds/campaigns. I just think that they should be influenced by their racial mechanics, even if they're influenced in different ways by subrace mechanics or by their place in the world.

OK, but can you see what you did, or are you to close to the situation?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

OK, but can you see what you did, or are you to close to the situation?

I don't know what this means. I apologized if there was a misunderstanding and clarified what I meant and my position on the matter (multi-cultural races). What more do you want?