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

[Bagpuss]

Except some irl species can interbreed with some other irl species. And some of them can produce fertile offspring too.

So you could still allow half-orcs and half-elves with proper rules for them (and maybe a none "half" name), and perhaps in other settings have goliath/dwarf hybrids. Who knows?

Maybe just leave it open for GM's to continue come up with their own ideas and homebrew, which by having some pretty terrible (pick a parent) rules you effectively encourage. Hmm can terrible rules be good game design? I guess if your goal is to encourage people to do it better, or make it their own.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

But that would add more confusion, they removed race as it has two meanings (either a major biological division [like species], or an just ethnic one within the same biological one [like heritage]). If you replace it with "schmorp", while it has no baggage it also has no meaning so people could assign their own meaning to it be it heritage or species, just leading to more confusion.

WotC have added clarity by going with species, making it clear there is a major biological division between the different humanoids, they have further made it clear by saying hybrids are because of the magical nature of the D&D universe (not something natural). And to be fair to them ditching half-orcs and half-elves is the way to go if you are making humans a different species than elves.

People might like that, but that is the way they went.

Sadly the terminology has decades of inconsistent use to go against. 'Race' seems to have been pretty flexible in how it's been used in DnD over the years, and combined with some quite simply 'yikes' content from earlier editions (literally a book about orcs where the entire thing is copied and pasted books on native human cultures, and then descriptors like 'savage, brutal, and stupid' sprinkled around), that's set the primer for the different playables meaning different human ethnicities.

And though the term has now been changed to species, that's not just magically erased every person's prior association with the terminology from the history of DnD.

 

[Bagpuss]

Sadly the terminology has decades of inconsistent use to go against. 'Race' seems to have been pretty flexible in how it's been used in DnD over the years, and combined with some quite simply 'yikes' content from earlier editions (literally a book about orcs where the entire thing is copied and pasted books on native human cultures, and then descriptors like 'savage, brutal, and stupid' sprinkled around), that's set the primer for the different playables meaning different human ethnicities.

Except a lot of source books existed for different playable fantasy human ethnicities/cultures (often based on real world ones) at the same time, so clearly the none-human races weren't just stand ins for those cultures as they were represented by humans.

Why are you for example saying savage, brutal and stupid orcs represent a particular human culture when those cultures are already represented as a human culture in D&D.

Stuff like The Horde, and The Golden Khan of Ethengar a human civilisations that were clearly based on the Mongols, or the Atruaghin Clans a human culture clearly based of the Native Americans. If you look into D&D most significant human cultures have a fantasy human equivalent somewhere, although admitted not always represented in a brilliant light, but usually more nuanced than savage brutal orcs.

That's because orcs are meant to represent the worst traits of humanity, that's what they are an allegory for. They aren't meant to be complex as they represent just an aspect of all humanity (regardless of culture).

Unfortunately throughout history people also like to assign the worst traits of humanity to their enemies, and people they are at war with, hence it also appears in bigoted propaganda. So yes you are going to see the same terms, doesn't mean that orcs are intended as a representation of a particular race.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Ok got it:

• Rename race/species/ancestry to 'schmorp'. That word has no baggage or cultural/language translation problems, as the word doesn't exist.
• Replace all the existing schmorps with brand new ones, none of which have the baggage and history associated with them.

(I joke of course, but I do legitimately wonder if this is the only way to pull off player schmorps without them being a problem for someone. At least without deleting different schmorps altogether and making them entirely aesthetic.)

Meat mecha.

Pre-corpse.

Angst Containment System (ACS).

 

[DarkCrisis]

This is why we can't have nice things.

I guess it's true. You can't please everyone.

Perhaps it would be best to just go back to a few basic "races" and classes. Simpler is better.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Sure but if you actually have 1) change the words, and 2) ignore the context, before you can start taking offence then you are stretching a bit just so you can get upset. I'm not apologising for something I didn't say.

Can you just... like assume people are actually taking offense rather than doing this unnecessary, 'government in a conspiracy theory' gymnastics it would take for literally everyone with an issue here to be doing what you're accusing them of?

 

[Kinematics]

WotC have added clarity by going with species, making it clear there is a major biological division between the different humanoids, they have further made it clear by saying hybrids are because of the magical nature of the D&D universe (not something natural). And to be fair to them ditching half-orcs and half-elves is the way to go if you are making humans a different species than elves.

This does actually put a viable spin on the use of the term "species", and the invalidation of the half- races.

If some cosmological magic is what makes it possible for, say, an elf and a human to have children, but that magic is doing only the bare minimum to make that possible (because the cost at an interplanar scale is horrendous), it is reasonable to suggest that it's merely creating another entity of the same type as one of the parents, and not one that is an actual mixing of the two parents' genetics.

With that world design, half-elves would literally not exist. Humans and elves, being separate species, are not genetically compatible, and do not create hybrid offspring.

Of course that's invalidated by the rule about choosing aspects of one's appearance from either parent, regardless of which mechanical stat block was chosen, which implies there is, in fact, some degree of genetic compatibility. But then there's magic like Alter Self which can do basically the same thing, so again we can blame magic and avoid the genetic question.

It does also bring up interesting (and possibly uncomfortable) questions about the degree to which this magic affects all of the species of the planet. Why only this particular subset of species (ie: the playable races)? If a god creates a new species (race), does it have to register the species with the Cosmological Interbreeding Registry? If it's just "the magical nature of the universe", such a restriction shouldn't exist. Or is that (lack of) limit not written down only as a matter of avoiding "Ewww!" reactions?

Is an owlbear the result of suborning this magic in order to upgrade to an actual genetic hybrid? Is that how the Khoravar came to exist?

As a worldbuilding exercise, this is actually quite interesting. Of course it doesn't solve the problems people have with the characterization side of things.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

This does actually put a viable spin on the use of the term "species", and the invalidation of the half- races.

The thing is, race being switched to species doesn't invalidate half-races/species. As there are numerous examples or hybridisation between species irl, many of which produce fertile offspring.

 

[Bagpuss]

Can you just... like assume people are actually taking offense rather than doing this unnecessary, 'government in a conspiracy theory' gymnastics it would take for literally everyone with an issue here to be doing what you're accusing them of?

What government conspiracy, they literally said if you changed the words and ignored the bit about gorillas and dolphins. It could be offensive, yes and if my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike.

 

[Kinematics]

The thing is, race being switched to species doesn't invalidate half-races/species. As there are numerous examples or hybridisation between species irl, many of which produce fertile offspring.

And such species are closely related, extremely rare exceptions, not the norm. It's not "every single type of vaguely similar-looking organisms" (eg: dwarf, dragonborn, tabaxi, aarakocra, triton, etc). That's one of the fundamental points of the term "species". If you want more readily viable interbreeding between dissimilar-looking creatures, you want the term "breed", as in "breed of dog", but I expect people would find that far more offensive than "race". And of course "breed" is not the same thing as "species", which gets us back into the terminology issue.