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

[Minigiant]

The years of reading Keith's Blogs are a blur to me, but I do vaguely recall this.

One of the big things they wanted to with Eberron is not put most familiar things in their familiar places. That wasn't always Keith's doing (Areneal elves were not part of his original treatment and were IIRC lifted from another submission). One of the biggest things was the idea that monsters in Eberron didn't exist only to be slain. Which is why orcs had a heavy druid/planar theme, goblins were a fallen empire of mighty warriors, an entire nation of monstrous folk existed, and undead were used as foot soldiers during the Last War. Coupled with Eberron's very loose suggestions on alignment and noir aesthetics, it created the notion of Eberron being more reflective of the modern world in terms of outlook.

I don't necessarily believe what worked for Eberron would work for the Core game. I like the fact that Eberron plays with those assumptions, but I still want some of those assumptions to exist to be subverted. The Core is a good place to say "this is an elf" and then allow settings to say "but also, these are what elves from here are like". That doesn't mean keep the hurtful stereotypes, but I want there to be some default lore that a setting like Eberron or Krynn can come and say "actually..." to.

I mean all they gotta do its "this is an example of evil orcs" "this is how civilized good orcs would lock", "this is the difference between an orc and and half orc whether good neutral or evil".


Hobgoblins got rehabbed. Why not orcs?

 

[Justice and Rule]

Faolyn. I mean this in the most friendly way possible, I can't respond to you until you stop being rude to me. And I am not going to answer questions that sound like an interrogation or demand (I just resounded to another poster who asked for reasons, feel free to look at those if you want---if you want further clarification just approach this conversation in a more friendly way and I will be happy to accommodate you)

I think the point here is that she is being direct because your points are very unclear and generally more as reactive to things (like "cancel culture" and "censorship") than positive arguments for. It's not being rude, it's just asking for a clarification on something that has not really been clear from the start.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I've been eying up Kruthik for a while as an enemy.

Might homebrew more varied statblocks for them though, using Tyranids as inspiration. Could even be Kruthik with innate spellcasting.

I love Kruthik, they make a great enemy because they are basically super ants that look monstrous and weird. Giving some mutants some spellcasting is a great idea.

 

[Guest 85555]

Humans aren't special. Humans are also predators, we are actually vicious and cruel predators much of the time, our entire hunting strategy was running animals to exhaustion until they were too worn out to do anything except accept their inevitable death at our hands.

And of course I would protect most humans before I would protect most bears, but that is because I am a human, and I am not a bear. But there is nothing special about us. We could encounter an alien species with all of our strengths and none of our flaws, because we are not inherently different than any other type of life. We just walked a different path into the future.

Again we are just going to have to disagree on this question (though I think this is a question that reasonable people can answer differently). From a metaphysical standpoint I do think humans are special but I recognize that is more in the realm of personal belief. More broadly I would say we are special precisely because we have yet to meet a species that is as advanced as we are in terms of the production of culture, our intelligence, self understanding, ability to create complex things. Now there may be another alien species out there that has also done this but we haven’t encountered them yet so we don’t know and if we did, we would recognize they are also special

I do get the argument that sapience plus free will equals personhood. I just find that proposition dicey as we have yet to encounter about her sapient species (with the possible exception of dolphins—who I can see bring sapient but not bring persons—-and we don’t know what extending the concept to non-humans would truly mean (we just might find they are so different if incomprehensible that personhood isn’t an appropriate designation. I think further personhood should never be separated out from humanity for ethical reasons because 1) the concept clearly is an outgrowth of the concept of humanity and a reflection of us “, 2) doing so opens the door to denying other humans personhood if they can be described as either non-sapient or lacking free sufficient free will (and you can quickly see the dark turn that can take—-which is also why sapience + free will never seemed fully satisfactory to me )

 

[Frozen_Heart]

I love Kruthik, they make a great enemy because they are basically super ants that look monstrous and weird. Giving some mutants some spellcasting is a great idea.

I'd have to spend some time thinking about what other variants there could be.

Only having three statblocks is a real shame for them. Even real eusocial insects have more castes than that.

 

[Guest 85555]

I love Kruthik, they make a great enemy because they are basically super ants that look monstrous and weird. Giving some mutants some spellcasting is a great idea.

I don’t think that is the case. The posts have been very hostile and misrepresenting my view from early in the thread. I can understand as this is an emotionally charged topic, but I am not going to engage a poster in that is doing that (which I think is fair abd is no judgment against Faolyn, as I often like seeing their opinion on things)

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yep. That's exactly how cultures work. Cultures evolve with outside influences. Orcs weren't born with the MM culture and no other way can be orc culture. The instant that those orcs blended the cultures, that became their new orc culture all their own.

Ah, so you side-step the issue by declaring there is no such thing as orc culture. Very weasely of you.

What difference does that make? They were still civilized orcs, even if the humans weren't.

Right, what civilized the orcs of Bladegarden that DIDN'T civilize the orcs of the Brokenveil Marsh. Oh, and I'll give you a hint, this is sort of a poisoned question, because you keep acting like "civilized orc" is different than "orc" when both should have a civilization.

It's like that thing, in history, where large empires came in and took over lands traditional held by indigenious tribal folk, and forced them to either flee, die, or submit to their culture and society. Tch, right on the tip of my tongue. Or the Horn of Africa.

No idea. It's not something I can answer until I see one. If you have one for me, please put it on the news so the world can experience it. Considering that one AI already tried to destroy humanity, that's a lifeform that should never be created. Humans are fools, though, so we're going to do it anyway.

So, you can't determine whether or not something would be people until you've seen it? That's incredibly reductionist of you. Plenty of things we figured out what they would be before we actually saw them.

 

[Incenjucar]

In a world with orcs and elves, they are as much people as humans are. Any proposition to the contrary gets quite vile quite quickly, not the least of which is the implications for people with only partial human ancestry.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I don’t think that is the case. The posts have been very hostile and misrepresenting my view from early in the thread. I can understand as this is an emotionally charged topic, but I am not going to engage a poster in that is doing that (which I think is fair abd is no judgment against Faolyn, as I often like seeing their opinion on things)

You quoted the wrong person, but I think @Faolyn hasn't been nearly as hostile as you make them out to be and I think acting like it's them being emotionally charged maybe misses that you could also be. Again, it might just be best to list out your reasons in a very clear, bulleted format because it is easy to get lost in huge paragraphs.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If we had claws and cheetah speed, we wouldn't have needed to do that. There's nothing more or less cruel about running prey to death because that's the tool you have and ripping prey apart with claws.

Didn't say it was, but it does seem to be a lot slower. After all, we don't generally get supernatural serial killers that pounce out of nowhere and kill you in seconds, they usually do a lot of terrifying you into running first.

We don't know that. Any other intelligent life we find is probably going to be, well, totally alien in thoughts, morals and all the rest. They may not even be carbon based.

Alien in thought like reptiles? You know... life. Morals, like maybe say... Naked Mole Rats... you know, mammalian life. Sure, they might not be carbon-based, but, well, every other type of life we've ever encountered has been carbon-based.

Top 10 Things That Make Humans Special

This is what sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.

www.livescience.com

Oh boy

1) Other animals have verbal communication, ie speech. We have an entire language that is just whistles (Silbo Gomero) This is not unique to humans, we just tend to be more complex
2) We aren't special because we are bipedal
3) We aren't special because we don't have thick fur
4) We aren't unique because we wear clothes (the article even mentions that chimps will wear clothes, but distinguishes that the chimp, with its thick fur, isn't wearing clothes that insulate it... DUH?!)
5) Our brains are not that special. Squid's have comparable brains.
6) Hands do not make us special
7) Fire does not make us special, as Incenjucar mentions, other animals use fire. A famous example is the Black Kite which can care fires to make new fires, to help in hunting.
8) Blushing does not make us special
9) Long Childhoods do not make us special. Tortoises have longer childhoods than we do. Also, this article is really obsessed with "compared to primates"
10) Living after you have children does not make us special

Good Lord, did you just throw the first article you found down? This wasn't even interesting to read.