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

[Scribe]

So... what are humans typically like?

They are the 'we are diverse' faction. Thats human's niche, and has been in any number of systems/settings/formats.

Sure. Now you just have to ignore 40+ years of canon lore to rewrite it in a way that you prefer.

Fine, and I'm doing that right now for my own setting, no problem.

You may want to read up on this sort of stuff. It's pretty fascinating. Humans are controlled a lot more by their biology than many people want to think.

I know, I'm not saying its a non-factor, but the only one? Thats my only issue...but again, your just making my argument that alignment should be set, by biology.

And the next question is, why do you need to know what the "typical" whatever is prone to attacking or not?

Why? Because I again, want something defined. One way or another. I dont care, just pick something.

Annoyed that alignments are used primarily as a shortcut to saying what monsters can be killed while not having any true justification for it, and bothered that sometimes, the terms used to describe the evil races has disturbing similarities to real world racism (such as the "domesticated" orcs in Volo's). But offended? No.

That's exactly what has been brought up many times, and it sure seems to be more than 'annoyance'.

Heck, you don't even have to look at humans. Look at cats and dogs. Purebred animals have so many behavioral traits that are linked to their breed, which yes, can include general disposition.

Agreed, for sure. So...we are going to just say biology drives behavior, and since behavior ~= alignment, then racial alignment AND asi need to come back?

Sure. But an adult halfling with adult musculature and an adult skeletal system--which is going to be different than that of a human because they are different species--could also, potentially, lift quite a lot as well.

Fine, if we want to say Halfings get a +2 to Str over Humans, no skin off my back (I wouldnt do it, but hey...)

 

[Mordhau]

I'm honestly puzzled these days what non-humans are for.

Is it basically just a kind of charcter aesthetics?

I understand wanting to play say a Dwarf against type. But to do that dwarves basically have to be a stereotype. But if Dwarves being a stereotype is bad, why do we want to still have Dwarves? What's left?

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'm honestly puzzled these days what non-humans are for.

Is it basically just a kind of charcter aesthetics?

Also super powers.

Back in the day, the deal was playing specific character types ripped from books. Now it's about building your own character out of bits and bobs into something new and cool.

That's why today you see a move toward more 'weird' species and a reimagining of the ones stolen during a daring raid on the Tolkien estate so dwarves are literally stone tough and halflings are preternaturally lucky instead of Jewish and rural British stereotypes.

 

[the Jester]

SO this! You need a proper setting to differentiate the standard races. They have to have histories and relationships with each other. Once a setting has been established, even different cultures from the same race (even humans) are easily differentiated, because they already have narrative weight. Actual mechanical differences, of course, make this process even easier.
This is why, as has been said in other threads, D&D needs a new default setting that using modern assumptions. Much harder to complain when its built from the ground up.

This is one reason why I hate the constant influx of new pc races that has been happening since about 3e. I simply can't justify all of their existence when I have a well-fleshed out world where I have already set up what lives where and it matters to the history and the way the world has come to be shaped.

 

[Vaalingrade]

This is one reason why I hate the constant influx of new pc races that has been happening since about 3e. I simply can't justify all of their existence when I have a well-fleshed out world where I have already set up what lives where and it matters to the history and the way the world has come to be shaped.

I resolve this by saying 'yes, these populations are politically and historically relevant, but that does not mean that there are not small and/or isolated populations from which a PC can be born or mutations that can arise as a singular individual PC.

So a Tortle might be an incredibly rare half dragon-turtle, a Goliath is an ogre-blooded human, haregon (?) have remote communities and are rarely seen, gnolls are weird lycanthropes, and gnomes are naturally God's mistakes.

 

[Minigiant]

This is one reason why I hate the constant influx of new pc races that has been happening since about 3e. I simply can't justify all of their existence when I have a well-fleshed out world where I have already set up what lives where and it matters to the history and the way the world has come to be shaped.

I don't really think this is a problem for world and setting designers who have fleshed out worlds with races with deep cultures, rich sensible histories, and solid interracial connections. Youd have more clout to restrict things.

The issue becomes when you don't. Because it's harder to dismiss races with weak narratives if you are already doing so. If your races are humans with hats, what is the harm of another human group with hats if humans have tons of nations as is.

 

[Lyxen]

Yeah, I have to agree. Say what a creature is generally like in the lore, and then make sure that readers understand that exceptions exist. That last bit apparently needs to be said really, really loudly, because some people persist in not noticing it.

In my experience, the only people not noticing it are people who make it a point not to notice it so that they can criticise the system. Repeating it would just annoy the casual reader and would not change the opinions of people who don't like the system anyway (and if their preferences are different, it's fine to, the system allows you to disregard that part as well).

 

[Scott Christian]

Because they consider the orcs to be impure. Also orc lands have valuable natural resources. But grats for figuring out that the paladins are the bad guys in this scenario. They of course claim to be righteous, and probably even believe it themselves. That's how these things go.

Except it only comes up for a reason to ladle entire species as acceptable kill targets. Even Tolkien realised that it was problematic to label orcs as outright evil. Perhaps all these decades later we should finally get a clue?

Hell, if you want to have good versus evil, then have an order of paladins in shining armour wanting to eradicate the local orcs that they consider to be spawns of evil, and let the characters join the orc freedom fighters that want to save their people from this racist genocide.

Or the orcs are always marauding, raping, enslaving and taking the natural resources from the small hamlets that dot the paladins realm that they are sworn to protect. And the orcs are doing it because their god, who directly opposes the paladin's is demanding them to.

As I said before - we get it.

And you are right, Tolkien did understand it. But he also understood to make a fantasy world and tell a virtue and heroic story, sometimes things can't be grey.

 

[Scott Christian]

I think it's less more opinions and more opinions without greater differentiation.

The more races you add, the more work you have to put in to make races feel different. Because the more races you have the more similarities races will have with humans and each other UNTIL the designer says they don't.

Hi Minigiant, could you clarify this? Maybe I'm just being dimwitted this morning, but I am not really understanding what you are saying. Thanks.

 

[Minigiant]

Hi Minigiant, could you clarify this? Maybe I'm just being dimwitted this morning, but I am not really understanding what you are saying. Thanks.

I mean that many "world designers" add many races to their world with few unique features culturally or biologically from humans with few tangible links to the setting.

Therefore critics of shallow races have more wobbly stills if they themselves use shallow races themselves.