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Pursuant to this thread, I thought I'd like to have a (less contentious) thread to discuss both design goals and better solutions for making nonhuman peoples more satisfying in D&D like fantasy games. This is a [+] thread; this is for constructive ways to make nonhuman PCs more distinct from...

From most of the attempts I've seen. Take one of the standard PHB player races and divide it into "species" and "culture"; 9 times put of 10, you're going to see Remathilis' "size, speed, and senses" under species, usually something like dwarven poison resistance or elven sleep immunity... and...

I am an American, sir. For us, that is the point of the first Tuesday in every November. And your  fantasy in this scenario is to deliberately antagonize the only people in the world willing to protect you from all the others? I used to think that D&D characters having minimum INT and WIS...

Separate race and class, without the ability for one to limit/influence the other. All Wizards editions of D&D, Pathfinder and Starfinder, etc, many other newer fantasy games. The A5E system allows race to have more design space and more meaningful abilities after 1st level, making race matter...

I don't know how to respond to a factual assertion that is this blatantly and thoroughly untrue. All of those things are powerfully influenced by the biology of the brain, up to and including the biology of the brain providing the necessary requirements for a person to exhibit  any of these...

I'll grant you that much, I suppose. I'm not trying to argue in favor of racial monocultures, just against the idea that dividing race and culture-- like race and class-- and then assigning almost every possible variable to "culture" is good world or game design. Translating the reality of a...

They're not? Why do you think they're not? I'll admit that proficiency with given weapons should be a matter of training in most cases-- in most cases-- but taste and tolerance for ale or other spirits is certainly biochemical and neurological. (Do you think it might have something to do with...

'Biological essentialism' is a fallacy of attributing behavioral differences between human ethnic groups-- usually closely juxtaposed and genetically intermixed-- to biological causes. It's a last ditch effort to cling onto a vestigial form of racist pseudoscience. I hate to keep banging this...

Yep. There are reasons I never played Paladins in editions where Paladins could Fall. I don't mind having to walk a line-- but I object to having to guess where that line is while dealing with someone who wants me to cross it. There's be nothing wrong with D&D if I didn't have to play it with...

"It's what my character would do" is, in fact, entirely sufficient justification for any reasonably in-character action you assign to your PC in the game. It's what your character would do. The thing about Thermian Arguments is that they don't exist in the game's narrative-- inside the fiction...

Remember in the real world that I don't have to put up with those people or their behavior at my kitchen table, and they don't have plot armor that protects them from public ridicule, blanket parties, or law enforcement. In the real world, people  applaud when playing CN games wins you CE prizes.

Fair enough! It's fuzzy because subraces blur the line between learned and innate traits-- mechanically and narratively-- but if the game had separate cultures/backgrounds for nonhuman PCs (including the 'raised by aliens' that everyone keeps bringing up) that would be fantastic. The PHBRs in...

No, that is exactly what doesn't work. It is this exact fungibility, that everyone is striving for, that separates all of the "lego bricks" of your character from each other and the shape they're supposed to be representing. You are a reducing a "dwarven Waterdhavian blacksmith" into 1) a...

Are they, though? Hard to stand out from the crowd when there's no crowd to stand out from. One snowflake is a unique and precious individual; a billion snowflakes is just a whiteout with no depth or detail or individuality whatsoever. You can get buried in them and still never tell them apart...

Everyone seems to think it's this  brilliant idea to separate "race" from "background" and "culture"-- but then, nobody wonders why all of these supposedly nonhuman peoples all have the exact same backgrounds, expressed the exact same way, as humans. That's why it makes them less unique.

That's a great way to describe how it works in real life; it's a terrible model for a fantasy roleplaying game. Everyone says they want "cultures" and "backgrounds" and (yes, even) "races" to be more flavorful and iconic, but then they backpedal and start talking about individuals and...

Black and bleu. Horseradish and a spicy mango chutney if I can get it, or just a dish of balsamic or red wine vinegar to dip it in otherwise.

As a much wiser man once told me, the difference between a villain and a supervillain is presentation.

I only use the exact phrase as an ironic echo, because my characters are the ones that always carry alchemist's fire and sovereign glue to deal with 'Chaotic Neutral'. "Well, I'm sorry, Phil... but when we caught your thief stealing from us after refusing to help us fight the monsters, it's...

Now I'm just imagining the Sun hissing and flying all around the galaxy like a leaky balloon.