D&D General Greyhawk Humanocentricism?

The Dwarven, Elven, Gnomoah, etc. populations are not, generally, in towns, yes. In Greyhawk, theybare in scattered rural tribal communities in inaccessible ecosystems. Humans are the urbanized, Dwarves have isolated clan holds in the mountains, or Elves are in the deep forests. There are exceptions, though: the city of Highfolk is overwhelmingly Elvish.
My problem with this is that it's backwards. Gygax wanted a humanocentric setting, so, he backfilled justifications to make it so. The notion of cosmopolitan settings with mixed species wasn't really part of the fantasy landscape in 1978 when all this stuff was being written. Tolkien and other writers of the time basically made these worlds where you have "elf town" and "dwarf town" and "halfling town." Same as things like Star Trek where you have "Klingon planet", "Romulan planet" and "Native American Planet". All these mono-culture worlds with single biomes.

Look, again, I don't have a problem with having mono-culture centers. I mean, good grief, I live in Japan. I know what mono-culture looks like. But, the problem I have is that EVERY SETTING is mono-culture.
 

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My problem with this is that it's backwards. Gygax wanted a humanocentric setting, so, he backfilled justifications to make it so. The notion of cosmopolitan settings with mixed species wasn't really part of the fantasy landscape in 1978 when all this stuff was being written. Tolkien and other writers of the time basically made these worlds where you have "elf town" and "dwarf town" and "halfling town." Same as things like Star Trek where you have "Klingon planet", "Romulan planet" and "Native American Planet". All these mono-culture worlds with single biomes.

Look, again, I don't have a problem with having mono-culture centers. I mean, good grief, I live in Japan. I know what mono-culture looks like. But, the problem I have is that EVERY SETTING is mono-culture.
Sure, and I do expect that to be toned down to not existing in the 2024 presentation. Bit the original made sense in the context of the tine: only Humans are really strongly interested in urbanization and nation building, by and large.
 

There should be differences, sure.


Uhhhh...no. Those would not, at all, be the only differences. If you think "living 2-3 times as long as a human at least" would literally have NO influence on anything else...I mean, I can't really respond to that. Like...just purely from the accumulation of wealth, population growth, concerns about medical care (a severe injury lasts centuries for an elf or dwarf!)...these things have major, wide-reaching effects on economics, infrastructure, language, and culture.

Think about it this way: Humans currently have the notion that someone who is 40-60 years older than the current generation is liable to hold attitudes now considered offensive, e.g. blatant racism/sexism. Now imagine if your grandparents weren't 60 years older, but 240 years older. We wouldn't be dealing with attitudes that were prevalent in 1965; we'd be dealing with attitudes that were prevalent in 1785, and that's just for dwarves, meaning, older than the current, proper United States of America (1789). That's not at all limited to literary stuff. It's vast, sweeping swathes of culture, and implies dramatically different ways of processing and relating to events. And if we look at elves, it's 700+ years--meaning people from almost 250 years before Shakespeare (1325 vs 1564).


Except that by that standard, you are reducing things that should be taken seriously down to purely superficial nothing, while inflating the meaningful but not totally determinative stuff pretty massively, acting like they would totally transform society into something unrecognizable.

Near-immortality compared to human lifetimes is a huge, huge difference. Society would be nearly unrecognizable in several important ways, but these apparently don't matter and only apply to obscure literary references?
At what point did I ever say that longevity/immortality made no difference in regards to relatability? Please show the post where I said that. all nonhuman cultures have relatability issues. Dwarves and elves have more examples in the literature and have received more consideration. That's what I meant by, "the only difference".
 

Sure, and I do expect that to be toned down to not existing in the 2024 presentation. Bit the original made sense in the context of the tine: only Humans are really strongly interested in urbanization and nation building, by and large.
Really? Dwarves live in large communities. Elves have all sorts of cities, the drow city of Erelhei-Cinlu being a prime example. Orcs live in large communities as do most goblinoids.

Again, it was all done after the fact to justify why humans were dominant. It wasn't that humans are strongly interested in urbanization and therefore we have human dominated nations. It's that the creators in the 70's, drawing inspiration from the writing at the time (Tolkien being the obvious source) simply copied what was being done in fantasy of the time.

Fantasy Earth with a thin veneer of magic on the top. Now, fifty years onwards, those settings are very much showing their age. Decades of things like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy have displayed settings that aren't actually grounded in early fantasy anymore. It's just the evolution of the genre.
 

That’s not right. Saltmarsh is a big trading town. It’s several thousand people. It’s the largest community for miles around.

Why do you call it a “sleepy village”?
Just FYI, it's because it's described in Ghosts of Saltmarsh as such:

Nestled on the coast of the Azure Sea is Saltmarsh, a sleepy fishing village that sits on the precipice of destruction.

I was wondering where the sleepy thing came from as well; that's where!
 

Near-immortality compared to human lifetimes is a huge, huge difference. Society would be nearly unrecognizable in several important ways

I am working on a post-apocalyptic Shadowrun setting, 100yrs later. Each city has like 3 humans who were alive to remember "the event", then a plethora of dwarves and elves who dominate the discussions.

It highlighted some dangerous aspects. They were there, no one else was. Some of the long-lived may have spent decades writing revisionist history and/or suppressing other histories by buying copyrights and then either releasing literal revisions or forcing them to stay out of print. Others may have created pop culture alternatives that pollute the narrative.

I mean, how many people believe Loki is Thor's brother or the god of illusions due to comic books?

Politically, imagine Richard Nixon laying low for 50+ years then spending 30 years slowly getting back into the public view when only other long-lived species can remember his first go-round.

Financially, any member of a long lived race who has some self control, reasonable brains and no social penalties should be quite well off after a century of adult life. I mean, there is no reason they shouldn't reach "master artisan" in more than one field, ensuring they are always at least upper middle class income, and then be able to save their odd silver pieces to buy land, property or occasionally a higher risk/reward venture like a ship or caravan.

Culturally, the other two have major impacts. Imagine judges and politicians holding office for centuries (even if they alternate decades) influencing law. Thr majority of the patrons of the arts will be those well-heeled, long-lives, who will pick artists that are aligned with long-lived values (or will do as told), resulting in a steady stream of long-lived-centric art, plays, and stories.

In worlds with personal magical Power, the elder races will fill out the upper ranks of achievement. I mean, just the errant war or invasion every 60 years or so should ensure they level up above the rank and file. They may be less willing to risk centuries of life with adventure, but adventure will arrive uninvited from time to time.

Think about what it means when a city that is 4% dwarf and 5% elf has elves/dwarves filling 45% of office-holders, 30% of property owners, 65% of bankers, 75% of the guild masters and only 2% "commoners".
 

See I guess my problem is that it’s not just Greyhawk. It’s every single location is predominantly human unless specified otherwise. So you have elf town and orc town and dwarf town but town baselines to human town and the idea of multicultural town seems to never really be a thing.
I don't feel like that's really the case anymore. Everything I see from newer products are the happy mix of all ancestries living together in cosmopolitan cities.

But with no consequences for them being of often very different species.

Look at both the Vox Machina cartoon and Baldur's Gate 3 to see what I mean.

As I have said before in this thread, that is not my preferred campaign world style. I like more of the classical fantasy feel of Lord of the Rings or Dragon Age Origins. But I wouldn't mind the total mix of different ancestries that much if they did something interesting with it. Trying to imagine how societies with dozens of different species living together would actually develop. But the way I feel it is now is that it doesn't matter at all. They are just humans that looks different. And I find that boring.

But that's just my two cents and I can understand that other people like fun and cool-looking fantasy races popping up everywhere in their preferred fantasy setting. We all like different things. That's why they shouldn't try to make all the campaign settings reach the broadest possible marked. But develop many campaign settings to cater to different tastes.
 

Naw. They’re relatable because they were added to the game from the early days and Tieflings and Dragonborn are symptoms of how DnD has “lost its way” and isn’t really DnD anymore.

IOW it’s typical edition warring with a funny nose and a fake moustache.
Maybe it's not edition warring so much as traditional fantasy vs new fantasy. I mean imaginary worlds can have any creatures you want to make up in them. But there are flavors and feels with any combo and some like it one way and others like it another. So I don't discount that there might be someone edition warring, I'd argue the vast majority just like a traditional Tolkienesque and it's not really edition warring at all.
 

Being part of the community they live within, having long-term ties to NPCs, basically having the PCs be part of the setting rather than "special" protagonists who stand apart. You can do that with any race of course, but it's easier (and more likely to happen in most games I've been a part of) when the community has members of the PCs species as part of it.
Does the community have cloisters of monks, whole churches full of spellcasters, multiple characters able to channel innate magic or enter into pacts with extraplanar entities or warriors who channel nature's fury? I would wager a human draconic sorcerer is more alien than a dragonborn farmer would be...
 


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