D&D (2024) How did I miss this about the Half races/ancestries

[Bedrockgames]

That they are fictions does not make them devoid of real-world references, meanings, or implications.

I am not denying that. I even pointed out how the half elf can resonate with someone who has mixed cultural heritage.

Fictions are full of symbolism. Fictions have meaning. Fictions are a large part of how we communicate our culture and values to each other.

True but this also can be very subjective and I think right now there are a lot of quick assumptions being made that put racial lenses onto these things, when that isn't what is really going on. I won't relitigate that here, because you and I and other posters have debated it endlessly already (and we are probably unlikely to change our views). But I think where I get frustrated is it feels like there is an orthodox interpretation emerging in the gaming community that feels very thin to me. Where it isn't about what the thing actually represents, but what it could represent. And so it often becomes more about optics IMO.

Frodo Baggins isn't "just a fiction," with no relation to anything in the real world! He and Samwise Gamgee are stand-ins for Tolkien's ideal of the English country folk. Unassuming, not terribly sophisticated, but with an unmatched strength in the cores of their being that make them the overall heroes of the story!

As we all know "Frodo Lives!"

I never said there is no relationship with the real world. I am just saying that relationship is not always the point. You are gong to draw on the real world to make fictional things. Sometimes it is just aesthetic, sometimes it has deeper meaning, and sometimes it is being used to point to a more deep mythic or spiritual concept. In the case of hobbits, I think it is challenging with Tolkien because he specifically said he didn't do allegory, but obviously there is symbolism going on in LotR (and his beliefs and experiences seem to seep into it). My take on this is he drew on English country folk but that isn't why they resonate with people. I barely knew what English country life was when I first read the hobbit. I tend to find them meaningful for reasons like the bolded. My take has generally been they are the meek from the Sermon on the Mount and I tend to read it through a religious and mythic lens. But I think the beauty of Lord of the Rings is you can find all kinds of meaning in it because it is so mythic.

That said, I don't think halflings in D&D, obviously derived from hobbits, are meant to say anything about real world English people. That connotation I think is pretty distant by the time they are in D&D. And that has been my point in a lot of these discussions. One poster just mentioned how this is the first they ever heard of half elves being a problem, or that the term 'half' was an issue. I think some of these things are 'problems' people have to be instructed about to understand. Which I think suggests they might not be the problems people think they are. I am not saying something couldn't be unintentionally offensive. That can certainly happen. But if you require a pretty advanced understanding of the history of a trope and of history in general, to even begin to see the issue, then that makes me question whether we are not simply prioritizing too much of a real world racial lens to these things

Harper Lee's, To Kill a Mockingbird is fiction, with some very direct things to say about racial inequality. Do you wish to deny its power?

Obviously I am not denying the power of fiction but with To Kill a Mockingbird that is a case where intention is very important, and intention has often been misunderstood. If D&D were using fictional races to make racist points, then of course that would be bad. But I think what we have with races like elves, half elves, etc are symbols that certainly can connect to real world race (you could for example write a novel about a half-orc and have that reflect the experience of a person with mixed cultural background, and even have the story make a broader political or social commentary). But I don't think that is what base line half elves are doing. I think they may be drawing on real world material to flesh out the fictional races. And I do think there are times when there will be elements in them that resonate (like I said, I had a foot in two different cultures, and that is one of the things that make half elves appealing. But what I don't see half elves doing is making any kind of negative commentary about having any kind of mixed background. Even the quoted post about misfits and outcasts, I think was just an attempt at injecting some romantic tragedy to them that geeks and nerds who felt out of place can relate to.

Given how we use fiction, and what we take from fiction, you cannot just assert "it is a fiction" to deflect criticism.

I am not saying fiction is above criticism. But I am saying when something is a completely made up species, that matters. Especially when, all humans in D&D are the same. Like I said before these are fictional races of beings. Can they carry other real world meanings? Sure, but I also think we are seeing more than is there a lot of the time in these conversations.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Exactly. I am also thinking of Tanis half-elven from Dragonlance, which I suppose is also Tolkien inspired.

I'm not opposed to other approaches, but I think doing this in 5E would require more work than they seem willing to put in. Mechanically I think there is quite a bit of interesting design space to work with. On some ethical/moral standard, I think that no one has explained a reason to remove it beyond "there's a vanishingly small number of people who might potentially be offended." I'm not sure that anyone who's offended has even stepped up.

I'd say do the work if you want to redesign how races work (and Pathfinder 2 already did the work). Otherwise, just leave it alone.

Tanis wasn’t like a Tolkien half-elf at all.
He never became “an elf” or “a human”. He was very much a half-elf. It’s even pointed out he could grow facial hair, which I guess DL elves can’t do.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Laughs in Over the Edge

Seriously, though, while this approach to character building may be new to D&D, it's old hat elsewhere and fairly well-liked. Maybe give it a try.

Just to be clear here, mostly I don't play D&D, and one of the reasons is I often want a different character building experience and a different play experience. For me though, and I think for a lot of people, when we come to D&D (which I still do because I find the core elements work so well), there are essential things we like about it. For me its race+class, levels, attributes, Vancian magic etc. Absolutely there are other approaches. But I do think one of things that has made D&D such an effective game is its simple pick a class and pick a race character creation. And the more they have convoluted that, the less interest I have had in it as a system (largely because if I want a more involved or customizable system, there are way better game engines for that than D&D).

My take on D&D, and this is probably slightly out-dated taste so take it with a grain of salt, is it usually doesn't do so well when it chases other games. In the 90s, they were chasing vampires and skill systems, and it felt off to me. I would even say how they handle skills in 3E on feels very off (though I recognize that is a very rare opinion to hold and that skills are a fact of D&D now).

Half elves and half orcs aren't as essential as Race + Class (or even race folded into class like you had in basic---which I think even works a bit better actually). But they are important to the feel. 2E to me, which I love, felt odd without the half orc. There was just something that it added to the game. I would say the same with half elves. Obviously you can still technically make those things, but I just don't find the whole heritage by way of feat thing satisfying as simply picking half elf.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Except he didn’t at that, he said that the “half” construction (ie the terminology) is inherently racist.

And it was very clear he was referring to the term, not to people. People are spinning up a controversy in order to generate engagement.

Personally I don't think he was saying anything racist with that. But I do think there was a degree of people getting hoisted on their own petard here, which is why so much of the criticism, sometimes knowingly, just played to the optics (I don't think there is really anyone out there who truly believes the statement reflected some kind of anti-interracial message). However I understand why saying "half" terminology made people uneasy. I think it would derail this too much into politics if we explore that fully, but I will say I am in an interracial marriage (and as people can see other posters who are as well often have wildly different opinions on this from one another), and there was a lot of mixing in my family history. Some of the ideas that I think are giving rise to his concern about the half term (which I honestly think was a well-intentioned concern), also buttresses a more recent hostility towards racial mixing that me and my wife have personally encountered. And some of the ways people advocate conceptualizing someone with mixed heritage, also can veer into that and again, while I don't think that is what Crawford was trying to do, some of the people who share his underlying assumptions do go there these days. So I think that is where the unease with it came from for a lot of people. It is just a very simple take IMO, that ignores a lot of different experiences with identity. The bottom line is for a lot of people, half is something they are proud of, not ashamed of. And love between two people, should never be judged or questioned due to their skin color or cultural background (and again, I don't think he was doing that, but when that statement was made, for some, this idea felt like it was right around the corner).

Personally I think a lot of that is just a matter of optics. His core concern appeared to be not being offensive. So I don't think he deserves harsh judgement. I do think the topic warrants a conversation though because it isn't as simple as "half anything" (as a term) is bad, and accepting that idea, can lead us down a darker path in my opinion.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Tanis wasn’t like a Tolkien half-elf at all.
He never became “an elf” or “a human”. He was very much a half-elf. It’s even pointed out he could grow facial hair, which I guess DL elves can’t do.

I tend to think of that party as stand-ins for Fleetwood Mac more than anything else. The beard is exhibit A

 

[Weiley31]

May be the game doesn't need 50 gajillilon race options.

faints

Me, who has a crapton of Racial Options for my players to play as due to my 5E collection being a combination of Official and 3PP sources.

 

[Weiley31]

There was some fairly bizarre logic on display though, recently, from Crawford, where he insisted that all major D&D settings feature muskets and pistols

Well at least now I have an excuse to have Gunlances appear in Dragonlance now.

 

[Yaarel]

For various reasons, it seems more useful to refer to being "part" some identity group, rather than "half" some identity group.

With regard to tone, this is an authentic "part" of who one is.

With regard to accuracy, probably most humans descend from multiple ethnicities, and might even immigrate to become a member of a new ethnicity.

All of these ethnic identities can be parts of a human individual identity.

An individual might self-identify with one ethnic part mor than an other ethnic part.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

 

[Bedrockgames]

For various reasons, it seems more useful to refer to being "part" some identity group, rather than "half" some identity group.

the problem with “part” if someone is half, is it diminished that aspect of their identity and upbringing. If half your concept and experience of your background is X, that being labeled part X just feels like it isn’t giving full weight to it.

 

[Weiley31]

I feel like mix and match traits should be how hybrid species are handled for most species. With each species having group a and group b features. A hybrid picks a group A from one parent, and a group B from another parent.

For tieflings, genasi, aasimar, warforged, half dragons, and probably some others, it should be handled through feats. For example you pick a water genasi feat at lvl 1 (as this edition gives a feat automatically at lvl 1).

So for example you pick a group A ability from human, and a group B ability from elf. And then you pick a water genasi planetouched feat as the one which comes with your background.

You're now a water genasi half elf, and the entire thing is mechanically represented.

I just got recently, a few days ago, a new Exceptional/Mint conditioned copy of the 3.0 Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. (complete with the full map too!) And in the Feats section they have two feats, Snake Blood and Bloodline of Fire, that sorta play with this idea.