D&D General Do you like LOTS of races/ancestries/whatever? If so, why?

[Micah Sweet]

So...you do know that, like I said in the part you cut out, there were multiple species of humans that clearly had intelligence and the ability to create and use tools, right?

And that those species were actually present in the same places, at the same times, for centuries or millennia?

And that modern-day human beings have some of the DNA from these two species (Denisovans and Neanderthals), which conclusively proves that not only did we live alongside them, we successfully produced offspring with them, offspring who subsequently must have integrated into our ancestors' societies?

You and others keep harping on this "intelligence ABSOLUTELY COULD NOT POSSIBLY permit multiple intelligent species at the same time." But the fact his, in actual Earth history, that happened. Indeed, it might have been a thing for longer than all of recorded human history. (Recorded human history began ca. 4th millennium BC; Neanderthal and Anatomically Modern Humans apparently lived together for at least twice as long, possibly pushing ten times as long, with no known paleontological evidence that the two populations specially targeted one another for conflict.)


Answering this question is one of the interesting parts of crafting a setting! There is not, and should not be, one singular answer.


I agree that they aren't the same.

That doesn't mean they don't happen together--nor that the ways one expresses one's opinion cannot be derogatory, whether or not one intends for them to be.

Regarding the orc and human question I asked, settings (homebrew or otherwise) should provide their own answers, but something has to be in the PH too.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Regarding the orc and human question I asked, settings (homebrew or otherwise) should provide their own answers, but something has to be in the PH too.

Why? I thought the purpose of the PHB was to be a toolbox from which one builds one's own things.

 

[Vaalingrade]

"Humans in funny hats."

"Humans in funny hats."

"Humans in funny hats."

Okay. Guys?

This is what humans do. We make everything a human in a funny hat. How many of you have talked to your pet like it was a person or talked about them like they were your child? How man of you have been screwed over by the flaws of a machine and yelled at it, or decided it hates you? You many of you scold your dice? How many of you see a face in this: ?

That's because humans anthropomorphize EVERYTHING. Is is what we do, it is part of how we've been able to conquer the planet despite being just being an ape that gets tired less easily.

The fact that we tend to play other sapient being as humans is not some kind of failing as people keep intimating. It is the human condition and it takes a talent on a level I don't think people here can comprehend to fight through that and actually conceive of the characterization of a non-human animal, much less a whole other sapient species.

It is absurd to chide people about 'just' playing elves and crap as 'humans in funny hats'.

I cannot stress how incredibly difficult a skill writing xenofiction is. It takes years of practice and study and MOST OF IT STILL SUCKS.

You are asking a person off the street who likes to doodle on their cocktail napkin to draw you a photo realistic human eye instead and then mocking them for not doing so. You are asking a home cook to give Gordon Ramsey a mouthgasm with a can of spam and a fistful of ketchup packets. You are asking someone playing COD to liberate a small country with a derringer.

 

[CleverNickName]

Yeah, but with a caveat: I like the new rules in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything for custom origins.

 

[Hussar]

I've largely given up on the idea that it's somehow better to have limited palettes. There was a black samurai in the court of Japan in the 15th century. Does anyone honestly believe that this was the very first person of African descent to ever arrive in Japan? There was trade between Korea and the Middle East from the 5th century AD onwards. Routine, regular trade. With ports of call all the way along and back. Does anyone honestly believe that not a single person from what is now modern day Korea made the trip back? In over a thousand years? The Scandinavians were in North America for a couple of centuries before Columbus. Does anyone really think that they never brought a single person back with them? In two or three hundred years? Seriously?

The world is a very big place and our histories are very, very limited. Add to that the fact that in most D&D worlds, there is no such thing as evolution. There isn't any competition in the evolutionary sense because evolution in D&D worlds doesn't exist. People aren't made up of DNA. DNA doesn't exist. Or, rather, there's no need for it to exist when you were created out of a ball of clay and then had life breathed into you from a god.

On and on.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

"Humans in funny hats."

"Humans in funny hats."

"Humans in funny hats."

I have nothing to add to the actual content of your post, so I'll just quote this part and note:

This is another example of the derogatory comparisons.

Nobody can just say, "They just seem like unusual humans." Nobody seems physically capable of saying, "They're all indistinguishable to me." Instead, it is consistently, every single bloody time, "they're just humans in funny hats."

I get that it's a ready-to-hand example. But you know what else it is? A cliche. Y'know, the things people in this thread keep railing against and claiming are the absolute exclusive domain of settings with at least 69 (nice) distinct races present in them? It absolutely rankles to hear the same tired, trite, overused cliche over, and over, and over, and over again, and the fact that not one person sees the bitter irony in that repetition would be funny if it didn't pain me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why? I thought the purpose of the PHB was to be a toolbox from which one builds one's own things.

The corebooks are never entirely lore-free. Something has to go in the book under the heading, "orc".

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

The corebooks are never entirely lore-free. Something has to go in the book under the heading, "orc".

As I said in another thread, I very much doubt that. I think if the book had "Orc" as a header and then had their mechanical information, that would be sufficient for 90% of DMs and players.

 

[Micah Sweet]

As I said in another thread, I very much doubt that. I think if the book had "Orc" as a header and then had their mechanical information, that would be sufficient for 90% of DMs and players.

Maybe so, but you know they're not going to do that.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Maybe so, but you know they're not going to do that.

Of course. And I wouldn't encourage them to do that. But I don't think that D&D needs lore in the core rulebooks, at least not to the extent you do.