D&D General Greyhawk Humanocentricism?

[Remathilis]

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.

The issue a lot of people have is they look at the classic PHB races and they see

Human
Pretty human
Slightly less pretty human
Short human
Shorter human
Shorter funny human
Ugly human

And then D&D has to go and add races like
Dragon person
Devil person
Angel person
Giant person
Cat person
Bird person
Etc.

They don't look human. (Or look much less human). They have funny powers like flight and breath weapons and water breathing. They don't look human with specific body shapes and an exaggerated feature. They aren't mundane, they are fantastical.

 

[Emerikol]

The issue a lot of people have is they look at the classic PHB races and they see

<snip>

They don't look human. (Or look much less human). They have funny powers like flight and breath weapons and water breathing. They don't look human with specific body shapes and an exaggerated feature. They aren't mundane, they are fantastical.

Yeah it is a matter of taste. Who knows what drives that taste? Perhaps we could use psychology but it is entertainment so it's hard to add an "ought" to it either way. Though I admit, I am uncomfortable with devil and angel people for personal reasons. I don't mind dragonborn as much but I just don't see them being a civilization in my world. If I had PCs wanting to play one they'd be a wizard's aberration or a lone survivor.

I do find the number of major races problematic for me. The game will always want their stuff to support the whole gamut which makes their "worlds" unusable. If anything that might be the appeal of Greyhawk for some though for me I almost always do my own anyway. So even I added some of the new races, I'd probably drop some of the older ones and my world would reflect the new dynamic. I don't think I'd like that as well but I could see doing it if my group really wanted it.

To return to my comments on edition warring. I never really hated any edition until 4e. I liked 5e far more but by then I was off the WOTC path and on to other games. 5e still reflected a philosophy I rejected though and I just assume WOTC will never abandon that philosophy so I'm off to other things.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

if i might attempt to rephrase @EzekielRaiden question because i don't think you've answered what you were asked, in a scenario where dragonborn, tieflings and aarakockra are the 'standard citizens' of a setting where functionally no humans or similar equivilants exist, what is preventing them from being 'relatable' when all that fundamentally differentiates them from humans are some ultimately superficial physiological differences, in comparison to species like elves and dwarves who possess lifespans that are multiple generations longer than humans, a factor that is much more likely to place psychological distance between them and humans yet you claim are somehow 'more relatable'.

I wrote (SHOCKER) at length on this previously, where I went more into the roleplaying aspects-

D&D General - Oh, the Humanity! Exotic Races, Anthropocentrism, Stereotypes & Roleplaying in D&D

I needed some time and space to delve into a topic that I have been thinking about for some time, and touched on a while back in my 5,294 Greyhawk posts (numbers are approximate). The issue of races (cultures, lineages, peoples) in D&D and roleplaying, as opposed to humanity, is one that I have...

www.enworld.org

Here are some of the central paragraphs-

Finally, there is the central idea; in terms of understanding our own humanity, non-human races allow for advanced exploration of certain topics. This is the area where I want to tread lightly, because it can be referred to (dismissively) as "funny hats" or "crinkly forehead" (from Star Trek). However, the basic concept behind those terms is correct. It is a banal observation to say that science fiction is really about the present. In much the same way, the roleplaying of non-humans at the highest level really tells us about our humanity. The reason for this is simple- when we take a trait of a non-human (such as the elves' extraordinary life-span) and attempt to roleplay it, what we are really doing is attempting to extrapolate what it would mean for us to have such a long life-span. The "funny hat" or "crinkly forehead" is the long life-span. This is common in fiction, where (to the extent it is examined) the existence of the alien and the non-human serves to illustrate points about our humanity..
This isn't a bad thing; I can remember a time when, for some people, it was popular to play elves because of the whole Corellon and gender issues. Given that RPGs and D&D were very much male-dominated and heterosexual, it was not uncommon to see people find a safe way to explore their own gender and attraction issues through roleplaying as an elf. Even though this could be done as a human, it was easier to do as an elf- after all, no one would question you for roleplaying an elf correctly.

And it goes this way, all the way down the races. Even the most alien of the non-human races, such as Kenku and Lizardfolk, force you to consider your humanity while roleplaying them, if you are trying to roleplay them correctly. A race that explicitly states, "Doesn't think like a human," because you are a human, forces you to think about how not to act as a person would act, and therefore causes you think about ... well, how you think.

So after all that, why do so many people (including, sometimes, me) hate on non-human races? Well, in addition to the game reasons listed below, there tends to two reasons- the crutch, and the caricature. Let us ignore, for a second, the idea that most (some, all?) personality types and concepts could be played by the diversity that is humanity. The very strengths listed above for roleplaying non-humans can also be their two greatest weaknesses.

The first is the crutch. Roleplaying guidelines can be great. The give you a starting point. To mangle this analogy, they are the push to start you walking. But if you keep using them, over and over again, they are just a crutch. "I'm a tabaxi, so I'm like a cat, so my personality traits are that I am impulsive and cough up hairballs." Great! And .... It becomes easy, too easy, when provided a specific set of personality traits to simply lean into that for all occasions. You have the same character and personality at level 1 as you do at level 20, because you're playing your tabaxi. You don't grow, and you don't change, because you are always playing to your guidelines. Your race is straitjacket, and you remain bound to it in all circumstances. And a lot of the time, the choice to roleplay a race as a trait or two for twenty levels that never changes can be really really annoying to other players. That impulse to run into battle which is great & funny for a session can be really tiring after several months. Which leads to ....

Caricature. A dwarf with a Scottish accent. Annoying kender. The trouble with non-human races and caricatures is both micro- and macro. On the individual level, I have seen white players approximate a Miss Cleo accent (if you're young, think dubious Jamaican patois) to play a bullywug. I once knew a player that prefers to play his dwarf with an Irish accent ... because he drank a lot more than the average dwarf. There are a lot of players who will do things with "non-human" races that are ... well, let's just say questionable .... if they were to do it with a human character. And that leads to the macro level. For all of the complaints that led to the change in Tasha's regarding ability scores, there is at least some logical sense behind why ability scores were different, at least for a game (halflings would likely be less strong than a goliath). But what was not addressed is, well, culture. We have long taken for granted that humans throughout game worlds exist in infinite diversity (as do we), but non-humans, while they might be different from game world to game world (Eberron Orcs, Greyhawk Orcs), they are largely the same within a game setting. Which is both wild and crazy when you think about it. That is the essence of caricature and racial essentialism.
...
In the end, I am equivocal on the issue. I prefer playing humans, now, in almost all cases, but will occasionally play a non-human when there is some roleplaying concept I really want to explore. But I am interested in the conversation. For the most part, I think the fault lines tend to go down the usual sides- it's the whole "DM sets the rules and strictures for the campaign" v. "Player Agency, you don't tell ME what to do" arguments that get repeated, just with a new coat. I have been somewhat mystified that the focus on non-human races has been on the ability scores as opposed to the racial essentialism that is baked into them for roleplaying purposes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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...

Class is different. You don't grow up in a class, but you do in a species and a culture. And the setting elements that lead to a PC choosing this or that class should certainly be in their background somewhere.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm curious why you can't relate to Spock and Chewbacca the way you do Kirk and Han Solo...

Well for one thing the language barrier is an issue with Chewie (and yes, the fact that he's a giant bear-man is a factor). For Spock it's more cultural. Vulcan society is quite different from any human culture I know much about personally, although beyond that the whole "stronger and smarter than you" thing can be an obstacle.

And it's not that I can't relate, it's that it is harder. I have a hard time relating to heroic protagonists too sometimes, or the especially lucky. In some ways, Kirk is less relatable than Spock to me, because while Kirk and I share more cultural touchstones, Spock and I share more personality traits (big fan of logic here). Doesn't mean the alien thing isn't a factor.

I feel like you're trying to reach some unpleasant conclusion about me with this line of questioning. What are you getting at? I'm certainly not perfect, but I try to be better.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The issue a lot of people have is they look at the classic PHB races and they see

Human
Pretty human
Slightly less pretty human
Short human
Shorter human
Shorter funny human
Ugly human

And then D&D has to go and add races like
Dragon person
Devil person
Angel person
Giant person
Cat person
Bird person
Etc.

They don't look human. (Or look much less human). They have funny powers like flight and breath weapons and water breathing. They don't look human with specific body shapes and an exaggerated feature. They aren't mundane, they are fantastical.

You're more comfortable with what you're used to and/or what reminds you of yourself, and visual cues tend to come first. That doesn't seem hard to understand.

 

[Remathilis]

I feel like you're trying to reach some unpleasant conclusion about me with this line of questioning. What are you getting at? I'm certainly not perfect, but I try to be better.

I mean no agenda beyond the question. I tend to find Spock no different than a human raised in a particular culture 90% of the time. And Chewbacca is literally the family dog if dogs could be 7 ft bipedal mechanics. I don't find them hard to relate to any more than I find people from other cultures or even other social groups hard to relate to. This is because every Sci Fi or fantasy race ever still has to be fundamentally human because they are being written for humans by humans and we cannot escape our own limited perceptions. We can't imagine sentience beyond what human sentience looks like. In that lens a dragonborn or a dalek are both humans with exaggerated features used to identify them. There is no race in fantasy or sci-fi you could not replace with humans and not have them still make some sort of sense.

Which is why I asked, because to me, they are all humans in Halloween costumes because we cannot create anything that isn't.

 

[Remathilis]

You're more comfortable with what you're used to and/or what reminds you of yourself, and visual cues tend to come first. That doesn't seem hard to understand.

Even so, almost every D&D species is essentially human in design. A head, two and legs, basic anatomy, normal physical necessities for food, water, air and sleep. The exceptions are the truly weird things like plasmoids or warforged and even they still end up with basic human shapes. And it's not like D&D has gone out of its way when it says "what if cat, but human-like?" (Replace cat with any number of animal and fantasy creatures and repeat). Hell, I'd wager a tabaxi is easier to understand than an elf is because getting into the mindset of an immortal creature requires thought, wondering what my cat would do if it could talk is something every pet owner does.

 

[Remathilis]

I think a lot of this debate comes down to a taste preference on how mundane vs fantastical you like your fantasy. It's part of the same spectrum that determines how magical you like classes and how strange you like monsters. I feel the OS movement is partially popular on the fact that it caters to those who prefer mundane fantasy (human looking races, low or no magic classes, traditional fantasy creatures) vs modern D&D (and it's offshoots like PF) which caters to fantastical species, highly magical or supernatural classes, and truly weird monsters).

 

[CreamCloud0]

@Micah Sweet your argument mostly seems to boil down to 'elves and dwarves are more relatable because they're familiar to us' i would refute this stance with: because they are familiar we overlook the ways in which they are actually fundamentally different and less relatable-a warped perspective of timescale, especially when compared to a dragonborn or a wookie who's unrelatability mostly comes from their appearance or a language barrier, an ultimately less meaningful differentiator.

or to put it another way, IMO if every human was suddenly turned into a dragon-person it would most likely affect human society far less than if we all started living to 700.