D&D General Race Has No Mechanics. What do you play?

[Reynard]

+10? You’re making up numbers in your head.

Narrative: getting an audience with the elven King because you are an elf and he refuses to give audiences with humans

Mechanic: getting an advantage. Or, even, a +10 bonus to persuasion checks when interacting with the elven king because of your race.

This is a good illustration of the fuzzy space "cosmetic only" would fall into.

If a character was playing an elf and this narrative situation came up,I don't think anyone would balk.

Bit, if someone was playing a changeling and this narrative situation came up, it would be entirely reasonable for someone to point to the changeling being able to.assume elf form for an in game benefit to be against the spirit of "cosmetic only."

 

[Micah Sweet]

But the thing is, WotC doesn't need to do this for people... because with DMs Guild any person out there could write up an entire system themselves and offer it on DMsG for those that want it.

But the fact that no one bothers to even try might be an indication that it actually isn't all that wanted or desired of a system in the first place. Which of course would then tell WotC they definitely do not need to do it either. Because if 3rd Parties don't even think it's worth their time and they can't make any money off of it... why would we possibly think it'd be in WotC's interest to do so? After all... why did WotC suddenly decide that making a Bastion system of all things in the 5E24 DMG was now worth it? (Something they never really bothered with in the 3E, 3.5E, 4E, or 5E14 DMGs?) My guess would be because they saw how well MCDM's 'Strongholds & Followers' book did in the market, and showed there might actually be a true desire for stronghold systems like that.

This is the same issue with so many other things that people say that the game needs to have-- Warlords, Psions, Arcane Half-casters, species point-builds, etc. etc. etc. No one is actually proving to WotC that any of this is true by going to a 3rd party and all using one of them happily and in large numbers. They aren't showing anyone at WotC there's a true market for this stuff. But if WotC could actually see that there was a market (because everyone kept using and/or talking about 'X' 3rd Party version of The Warlord for example)... WotC might be more inclined to make one of their own.

But of course that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

There's a whole series of ancestry books on Drivethru that say you're wrong.

 

[MoonSong]

Not quite.

What I'm saying is that narrative and mechanics are joined at the hip and that, for things to make any overall sense, one has to reflect and-or riff off of the other (preferably mechanics reflecting the narrative but there's examples of systems where the reverse tries to be true).

Put another way, a narrative benefit is a mechanical benefit.

I know this very likely doesn't apply to you, but "just roleplay it" is kind of an OSR mantra as a way to discredit newer play styles as just wanting "kewl powers".

Let me tell you, that this post is the most Neotrad thing I've seen you say.

 

[MoonSong]

This is a good illustration of the fuzzy space "cosmetic only" would fall into.

If a character was playing an elf and this narrative situation came up,I don't think anyone would balk.

Bit, if someone was playing a changeling and this narrative situation came up, it would be entirely reasonable for someone to point to the changeling being able to.assume elf form for an in game benefit to be against the spirit of "cosmetic only."

The way I see it, there would be no mechanics associated with race, but by picking a race you're claiming a stake of narrative space. A fictional stance that has consequences even if they aren't summarized and turned into rules or numbers.

I ser no problem with the changeling example, yes they have the narrative benefit of looking elven when covenient, but would lack the cultural baggage needed to not make faux passes at critical times.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Change this thread to,

"Would you play in a campaign where AGE has no mechanics?"

and people wouldn't care.

Age used to have mechanics but they got rid of that. People still play old people or kids or whatever because of the flavour it adds.

Narrative is super important.

In a campaign where every race is common and nobody cares what race you are, then race is irrelevant. Everyone might as well be human. In a campaign of only humans, where elves and dwarves were hunted and killed to (almost) extinction, being an elf or a dwarf is going to have serious narrative implications.

Being able to change your race at will matter less in the 'every-race-is-common' campaign but will have serious benefits in the 'kill-all-dwarves-and-elves' campaign.

I still want age to have mechanics.

Generally speaking, Imo if two things are different from one another there should be a way to express that mechanically. Other the logic of the setting makes no sense. I'm not really interested in a purely narrative anything.

 

[Reynard]

I still want age to have mechanics.

Generally speaking, Imo if two things are different from one another there should be a way to express that mechanically. Other the logic of the setting makes no sense. I'm not really interested in a purely narrative anything.

How different? Norse people are generally different than southeast Asian people. Should they have mechanical differences?

 

[Desdichado]

Is there an RPG that doesn't use racial mechanics and has lasted as long as D&D has? Would D&D have lasted as long as it has if it didn't have racial mechanics? There must be something going for racial mechanics for it to keep going around.

Pedantic point: of course not because d&d is the first rpg as we understand the term. Realistically: yeah, Call of Cthulhu.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

This is a good illustration of the fuzzy space "cosmetic only" would fall into.

If a character was playing an elf and this narrative situation came up,I don't think anyone would balk.

Bit, if someone was playing a changeling and this narrative situation came up, it would be entirely reasonable for someone to point to the changeling being able to.assume elf form for an in game benefit to be against the spirit of "cosmetic only."

Yeah, that’s my point. Being able to control the narrative is oftentimes more powerful than a +2 Int bonus.

 

[Desdichado]

this game's first question for years of play has been 'pick your fantasy race and class', why are we so willing to throw species under the bus for backgrounds now?

Flippantly, because species isn't race. I'm happy to throw the concept of "species" under the bus exactly because the first question for years has been pick your fantasy race and class. That said, and I know this seems like a mutually exclusive concept, race and class effectively IS background.

And the mutual exclusion works because the question is, given this scenario, would you play this, not would you advocate for it to be a change to the rules overall. The question is, would you accept it as a houserule for a specific game, and what would you play.

Or at least that's how I understand it.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I still want age to have mechanics.

Generally speaking, Imo if two things are different from one another there should be a way to express that mechanically. Other the logic of the setting makes no sense. I'm not really interested in a purely narrative anything.

I used to play old wizards to get the bonus to Int and wisdom and play young fighters to get the bonus to physical stats.

I don’t do that anymore in 5e. I just put my 8 into Str and my 15 into Int. Seems pretty old Wizard enough for me. Exact same stats as the young wizard, probably. The RP is what differentiates them. I play way more young wizards now because it doesn’t matter how old your character is.

I’m not saying it’s good or bad, just way it is for me.