Snarf Zagyg
Notorious Liquefactionist
This post is related to another post I just wrote, about Greyhawk, here:
www.enworld.org
After some time in the comments, a poster responded to a list of non-exclusive factors I wrote about Greyhawk, in which I included "humanocentric" with the following:
This is saying that you want to pare back the allowable PC races to being limited to Human, and some of the variations of Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings. You may or may not include Gnomes or Half-Orcs (they were in 1e). All the other PC race choices would be either off-limits or allowed by GM fiat only.
At this point, I stopped reading the post, primarily for two reasons. First, it is not enjoyable when people try to define what you are saying in order to create a caricature to argue against- it does not promote a good conversation. More importantly, I have repeatedly stated, including within that thread, that this isn't the issue. In the exact post that the person was responding to, I wrote the following:
To use the dragonborn example that always comes up. Dragonborn, in my opinion, are not native to the Flanaess. If the 5e version of Greyhawk just ignored that issue or retconned them into the existing area, I would be angry- because that would show a lack of care in dealing with a fundamental distinction, and a lack of respect for the setting.
But the issue isn't dragonborn. If someone took the time to either integrate them in a meaningful way into the setting or to provide a quick sidebar as to how "non-native Dragonborn" could be used, I would have no issue with that, even if they were just a "rumored Kingdom to the east."
There are only so many times you can say, "It's not about Dragonborn, and you don't need to exclude them" and have someone say, "So, what you're saying is .... this is really about Dragonborn, eh, and you are totally going to exclude them!" before you just kind of give up.
However, I think that there is an issue that needs to be resolved, otherwise this wouldn't come up so often. It would help to understand what it means to have a campaign setting, such as Greyhawk, be "humanocentric" or, to use a slightly different term that doesn't trigger my spellchecker constantly and exists in the real world, (I guess, all of this is all about dragons and unicorns, after all) anthropocentric.
I'm forking this from the main post because this requires a little bit of explication. Roughly, the idea is as follows:
A. Greyhawk (specifically, Flanaess) as a human-centered world.
B. D&D, as reflected in the early rules, as human-centered adventures, and why that, in turn, is reflected in Greyhawk.
C. Why an anthropocentric Greyhawk could provide for an interesting campaign setting for 5e.
A. This is a human's world, this is a human's world, but it wouldn't be nothing, nothing ... without a halfling or an elf.
(Quick note on terms- since I will be looking back at the old material, I will be using the term "demi-human" in the context that it was originally used; those playable races that were not human in the 1e PHB).
NOTE - this has been edited to reflect @Mortellan and his excellent comment and article at:
greyhawkery.blogspot.com
Starting with the basics- the actual knowledge we have of Oerth (the world on which Greyhawk exists) is scant. The full knowledge we have of the rest of the continent of Oerik is pretty limited as well. There are some ideas as to what might have been there, and people have put in ideas for the rest, but if we are starting with the 1983 Box Set (which I am, and will be the reference for this), then the rest of the continent and world is underdeveloped. Which, right there, provides plenty of opportunity for not just adventure, but "mysterious travelers" (aka, other playable races).
But when people speak of "Greyhawk" as a campaign setting, they are talking about the Flanaess. And the Flanaess is human dominated. How human dominated? If you look through the gazetteer, you will see that every country (and free city) has the demi-human population broken out! They are listed as follows in order of size (other than none):
Unlikely
Very doubtful
Doubtful
Few, if any
Very few
Few (1-5% of the human population)
Some (6-10% of the human population)
Many (11-20% of the human population)
Named, without a numerical amount
A numerical amount (this would be the fighting population)
So we know a few things. We also know that the minimum amount of demi-humans to trigger a number is 2,000 (Onnwal, Yeomanry has 2,000 high elves and other demi-humans without number). So step back for a second and look at that. We can all debate the care and effort Gygax put into the taxonomy of "unlikely" as opposed to "very doubtful" but we can also easily see that the amount to be counted was an incredibly low threshold- 2,000. That means that, arguably, all those categories amount to "less, usually way less, than 2,000 males in the entire country." And very few countries have 2,000 of any demi-humans. Most places have, at best, no or almost no demi-humans.
But let's look at the most interesting category- "many" (11-20% of the human population). This applies to exactly two places:
Free City of Irongate (57,000 total human)
Wild Coast (150,000 total human)
Now, there are other places that have a decent demihuman population- Ulek, Celene, and so on. But compare that to just the population of The Great Kingdom (5 million). In terms of sheer numbers and politics, demi-humans are not the major players in the Flanaess.
This is not to say this is definitive, but it is certainly informative. If you look at the history, you see the same thing. This history of the Flanaess is a human history. The history section acknowledges this, while stating that the demi-humans will work with the humans for "mutual interests."
To put this in more modern terms for those not familiar with the setting- the story of Greyhawk would be similar to Game of Thrones, if Game of Thrones had a few extra "mercenary armies" that happened to be demi-humans. They are not the main players in the game, but they can be involved.
B. Enough about me- so, what do YOU think about my hair?
I am often curious when people think that early D&D was not anthropocentric. There are many things you can do- you can note that humans are the only race that be any class, or that they are the only race that is allowed unlimited advancement in all classes, or that it is the only race that doesn't have capped ability scores (fun fact- for all the talk of the strength of the dwarf and half-orc, only humans in the original rules could have an 18/00 strength). There's the racial preferences table (OUCH!) where humans are the only ones that don't have hatred or antipathy toward someone else. You could point to the personalities section of the Rogues Gallery- there are 14 humans, two humans reincarnated as other beings (a lizard man and a centaur!), one elf, and one halfling. But all of this is beside the point, since the DMG puts it cleanly:
A moment of reflection will bring them to the unalterable conclusion that the game is heavily weighted towards mankind. ADVANCED D&D is unquestionably "humanocentric", with demi-humans, semi-humans, and humanoids in various orbits around the sun of humanity. Men are the worst monsters, particularly high level characters such as clerics, fighters, and magic-users - whether singly, in small groups, or in large companies.
DMG, p. 21 (Gygax).
This is not an issue of whether this is good, or bad, or right or wrong, but it is. Greyhawk is a product of this vision- that humanity is front and center, that the politics and the world is "humanocentric."
Now, to turn the screw slightly- this never prohibited weird races. I just noted that (through the power of reincarnation) there was a playable centaur and a playable lizardman in a 1e accessory. Gygax famously wrote the Half Ogre for Dragon magazine, and later elevated certain races to explicitly playable races in Unearthed Arcana (gray dwarves, dark/gray/wild/wood/valley elves, deep gnomes). The section in the DMG I just quoted about how D&D is unquestionably anthropocentric? That's from "The Monster as a Player Character," and while Gygax explains why they aren't listed and shouldn't be used, he ends by saying that it's up to the DM. After all, this is a game that in its infancy had Vampires, and excursions to the Old West and Lasers and flying to the moon, so it shouldn't be that weird, right?
I think this gets back to the main issue- that the world of Greyhawk (the Flanaess) is a human world, dominated by human politics, and that while a PC can be anything (from a centaur to a tortle) you will have to take this into account if you are playing in Greyhawk. Because Greyhawk is ... humanocentric. And race (or ancestry, or heritage, or species, or folk, or peoples, or whatever we end up calling it in the future) will matter. Which brings us to ....
C. Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
I should start by saying that when I listed "humanocentric" (anthrpocentric), it was in the context of a list of features that a revived Greyhawk could have. But, as I always repeat, when it comes to the issue of "great product" or "fidelity to the original," the needs of art should always win out.
...and this is where we get into the Dragonborn and Tiefling issues. Or, as I have seen it here, the "Kill on Sight" vs. "You don't me what to do" debate, which is incredibly tiresome. As I have repeatedly said, I don't mind the inclusion of additional races into Greyhawk so long as they are done in a way that respects the ethos of the setting. Some should be pretty easy (Tieflings as fiends, related to the whole Iuz issue), some may require more work (Dragonborn), but none are necessarily forbidden. What would be terrible, in my opinion, is (for example) placing large, non-human kingdoms in Greyhawk as that would be antithetical to the nature of the setting- which is focused on humanity. The main demi-humans are rare in most places, the rare demi-humans should be very, very rare.
Which brings us to the "Kill on sight." I don't agree with that, but I also understand the impulse the statement. In Greyhawk, race matters (that phrase just doesn't look great, does it?). There are countries/areas where "humanoids" (using, again, the old GH terminology) run free, and a Bugbear PC would be fine, but an Elf would not (and a human would have some splainin' to do). There are more tolerant areas where they would require certain PCs to disarm and they would be treated with suspicion, and other areas where they might be more likely to be attacked.
To use the canonical example of the Drow- if a player was playing a Drow, and they happened upon a community that had been raided by Drow in the night, there might be a high chance of being attacked immediately. If they were in a more civilized, free city, accompanied by others, they would be likely treated with some hostility and suspicion. If they were somewhere (say, the far northeast, amongst the Barbarians) that had little or no knowledge of Dark Elves, it would be curiosity.
To me, this is common sense; the choice of a race (or whatever it might be called) is not just a grabbag of bonuses, but has an impact in the world. People in Greyhawk, riven by prior wars, beset by humanoid raiding parties, with civilization in many places hanging in the balance, should be suspicious of outsiders. That doesn't mean that every community would be "Kill on Sight" for non-standard races, but a generic, cosmopolitan, no one notices if a party of a Drow, Kobold, Tortle, and Dragonborn wanders into the village that was just attacked by a Drow raiding party is quite right either.
Of course, all of this is easily handled with a page or two, which can be optional. I don't think that recognizing this aspect of Greyhawk is necessarily the best way to go (which is why I listed it as one possible aspect), but it would certainly present a more differentiated campaign setting for some. IMO.
D&D General - For the Love of Greyhawk: Why People Still Fight to Preserve Greyhawk
On the recent thread regarding the upcoming hardcover book and a discussion regarding Iggwilv and Tasha- https://www.enworld.org/threads/iggwilv-tasha-to-join-volo-xanathar-and-mordenkainen-updated.674231/ .... a discussion broke out about Greyhawk, and canon, and what is good, and bad, so on...
www.enworld.org
After some time in the comments, a poster responded to a list of non-exclusive factors I wrote about Greyhawk, in which I included "humanocentric" with the following:
This is saying that you want to pare back the allowable PC races to being limited to Human, and some of the variations of Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings. You may or may not include Gnomes or Half-Orcs (they were in 1e). All the other PC race choices would be either off-limits or allowed by GM fiat only.
At this point, I stopped reading the post, primarily for two reasons. First, it is not enjoyable when people try to define what you are saying in order to create a caricature to argue against- it does not promote a good conversation. More importantly, I have repeatedly stated, including within that thread, that this isn't the issue. In the exact post that the person was responding to, I wrote the following:
To use the dragonborn example that always comes up. Dragonborn, in my opinion, are not native to the Flanaess. If the 5e version of Greyhawk just ignored that issue or retconned them into the existing area, I would be angry- because that would show a lack of care in dealing with a fundamental distinction, and a lack of respect for the setting.
But the issue isn't dragonborn. If someone took the time to either integrate them in a meaningful way into the setting or to provide a quick sidebar as to how "non-native Dragonborn" could be used, I would have no issue with that, even if they were just a "rumored Kingdom to the east."
There are only so many times you can say, "It's not about Dragonborn, and you don't need to exclude them" and have someone say, "So, what you're saying is .... this is really about Dragonborn, eh, and you are totally going to exclude them!" before you just kind of give up.
However, I think that there is an issue that needs to be resolved, otherwise this wouldn't come up so often. It would help to understand what it means to have a campaign setting, such as Greyhawk, be "humanocentric" or, to use a slightly different term that doesn't trigger my spellchecker constantly and exists in the real world, (I guess, all of this is all about dragons and unicorns, after all) anthropocentric.
I'm forking this from the main post because this requires a little bit of explication. Roughly, the idea is as follows:
A. Greyhawk (specifically, Flanaess) as a human-centered world.
B. D&D, as reflected in the early rules, as human-centered adventures, and why that, in turn, is reflected in Greyhawk.
C. Why an anthropocentric Greyhawk could provide for an interesting campaign setting for 5e.
A. This is a human's world, this is a human's world, but it wouldn't be nothing, nothing ... without a halfling or an elf.
(Quick note on terms- since I will be looking back at the old material, I will be using the term "demi-human" in the context that it was originally used; those playable races that were not human in the 1e PHB).
NOTE - this has been edited to reflect @Mortellan and his excellent comment and article at:
Elven Populations in Greyhawk
A gaming blog about the World of Greyhawk fantasy setting for all editions of Dungeons & Dragons formerly owned by TSR now by Wizards of the Coast.
greyhawkery.blogspot.com
Starting with the basics- the actual knowledge we have of Oerth (the world on which Greyhawk exists) is scant. The full knowledge we have of the rest of the continent of Oerik is pretty limited as well. There are some ideas as to what might have been there, and people have put in ideas for the rest, but if we are starting with the 1983 Box Set (which I am, and will be the reference for this), then the rest of the continent and world is underdeveloped. Which, right there, provides plenty of opportunity for not just adventure, but "mysterious travelers" (aka, other playable races).
But when people speak of "Greyhawk" as a campaign setting, they are talking about the Flanaess. And the Flanaess is human dominated. How human dominated? If you look through the gazetteer, you will see that every country (and free city) has the demi-human population broken out! They are listed as follows in order of size (other than none):
Unlikely
Very doubtful
Doubtful
Few, if any
Very few
Few (1-5% of the human population)
Some (6-10% of the human population)
Many (11-20% of the human population)
Named, without a numerical amount
A numerical amount (this would be the fighting population)
So we know a few things. We also know that the minimum amount of demi-humans to trigger a number is 2,000 (Onnwal, Yeomanry has 2,000 high elves and other demi-humans without number). So step back for a second and look at that. We can all debate the care and effort Gygax put into the taxonomy of "unlikely" as opposed to "very doubtful" but we can also easily see that the amount to be counted was an incredibly low threshold- 2,000. That means that, arguably, all those categories amount to "less, usually way less, than 2,000 males in the entire country." And very few countries have 2,000 of any demi-humans. Most places have, at best, no or almost no demi-humans.
But let's look at the most interesting category- "many" (11-20% of the human population). This applies to exactly two places:
Free City of Irongate (57,000 total human)
Wild Coast (150,000 total human)
Now, there are other places that have a decent demihuman population- Ulek, Celene, and so on. But compare that to just the population of The Great Kingdom (5 million). In terms of sheer numbers and politics, demi-humans are not the major players in the Flanaess.
This is not to say this is definitive, but it is certainly informative. If you look at the history, you see the same thing. This history of the Flanaess is a human history. The history section acknowledges this, while stating that the demi-humans will work with the humans for "mutual interests."
To put this in more modern terms for those not familiar with the setting- the story of Greyhawk would be similar to Game of Thrones, if Game of Thrones had a few extra "mercenary armies" that happened to be demi-humans. They are not the main players in the game, but they can be involved.
B. Enough about me- so, what do YOU think about my hair?
I am often curious when people think that early D&D was not anthropocentric. There are many things you can do- you can note that humans are the only race that be any class, or that they are the only race that is allowed unlimited advancement in all classes, or that it is the only race that doesn't have capped ability scores (fun fact- for all the talk of the strength of the dwarf and half-orc, only humans in the original rules could have an 18/00 strength). There's the racial preferences table (OUCH!) where humans are the only ones that don't have hatred or antipathy toward someone else. You could point to the personalities section of the Rogues Gallery- there are 14 humans, two humans reincarnated as other beings (a lizard man and a centaur!), one elf, and one halfling. But all of this is beside the point, since the DMG puts it cleanly:
A moment of reflection will bring them to the unalterable conclusion that the game is heavily weighted towards mankind. ADVANCED D&D is unquestionably "humanocentric", with demi-humans, semi-humans, and humanoids in various orbits around the sun of humanity. Men are the worst monsters, particularly high level characters such as clerics, fighters, and magic-users - whether singly, in small groups, or in large companies.
DMG, p. 21 (Gygax).
This is not an issue of whether this is good, or bad, or right or wrong, but it is. Greyhawk is a product of this vision- that humanity is front and center, that the politics and the world is "humanocentric."
Now, to turn the screw slightly- this never prohibited weird races. I just noted that (through the power of reincarnation) there was a playable centaur and a playable lizardman in a 1e accessory. Gygax famously wrote the Half Ogre for Dragon magazine, and later elevated certain races to explicitly playable races in Unearthed Arcana (gray dwarves, dark/gray/wild/wood/valley elves, deep gnomes). The section in the DMG I just quoted about how D&D is unquestionably anthropocentric? That's from "The Monster as a Player Character," and while Gygax explains why they aren't listed and shouldn't be used, he ends by saying that it's up to the DM. After all, this is a game that in its infancy had Vampires, and excursions to the Old West and Lasers and flying to the moon, so it shouldn't be that weird, right?
I think this gets back to the main issue- that the world of Greyhawk (the Flanaess) is a human world, dominated by human politics, and that while a PC can be anything (from a centaur to a tortle) you will have to take this into account if you are playing in Greyhawk. Because Greyhawk is ... humanocentric. And race (or ancestry, or heritage, or species, or folk, or peoples, or whatever we end up calling it in the future) will matter. Which brings us to ....
C. Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
I should start by saying that when I listed "humanocentric" (anthrpocentric), it was in the context of a list of features that a revived Greyhawk could have. But, as I always repeat, when it comes to the issue of "great product" or "fidelity to the original," the needs of art should always win out.
...and this is where we get into the Dragonborn and Tiefling issues. Or, as I have seen it here, the "Kill on Sight" vs. "You don't me what to do" debate, which is incredibly tiresome. As I have repeatedly said, I don't mind the inclusion of additional races into Greyhawk so long as they are done in a way that respects the ethos of the setting. Some should be pretty easy (Tieflings as fiends, related to the whole Iuz issue), some may require more work (Dragonborn), but none are necessarily forbidden. What would be terrible, in my opinion, is (for example) placing large, non-human kingdoms in Greyhawk as that would be antithetical to the nature of the setting- which is focused on humanity. The main demi-humans are rare in most places, the rare demi-humans should be very, very rare.
Which brings us to the "Kill on sight." I don't agree with that, but I also understand the impulse the statement. In Greyhawk, race matters (that phrase just doesn't look great, does it?). There are countries/areas where "humanoids" (using, again, the old GH terminology) run free, and a Bugbear PC would be fine, but an Elf would not (and a human would have some splainin' to do). There are more tolerant areas where they would require certain PCs to disarm and they would be treated with suspicion, and other areas where they might be more likely to be attacked.
To use the canonical example of the Drow- if a player was playing a Drow, and they happened upon a community that had been raided by Drow in the night, there might be a high chance of being attacked immediately. If they were in a more civilized, free city, accompanied by others, they would be likely treated with some hostility and suspicion. If they were somewhere (say, the far northeast, amongst the Barbarians) that had little or no knowledge of Dark Elves, it would be curiosity.
To me, this is common sense; the choice of a race (or whatever it might be called) is not just a grabbag of bonuses, but has an impact in the world. People in Greyhawk, riven by prior wars, beset by humanoid raiding parties, with civilization in many places hanging in the balance, should be suspicious of outsiders. That doesn't mean that every community would be "Kill on Sight" for non-standard races, but a generic, cosmopolitan, no one notices if a party of a Drow, Kobold, Tortle, and Dragonborn wanders into the village that was just attacked by a Drow raiding party is quite right either.
Of course, all of this is easily handled with a page or two, which can be optional. I don't think that recognizing this aspect of Greyhawk is necessarily the best way to go (which is why I listed it as one possible aspect), but it would certainly present a more differentiated campaign setting for some. IMO.
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