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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9799754" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Where is this "every possible value" coming from? That isn't at all entailed by this. I am confused as to what that even means.And why would this make species the "least significant aspect"? I specifically said I like species that include clear, distinguishing features. Like dragon breath. Or being able to teleport. Or having rapid healing. Things that have implications for what it means to have that physiology instead of some other.Why does it mean that?You can still have a defined baseline. It's just not a mandatory, enforced baseline. There are absolutely coherent cultures for your interstitial identity to be caught between. I literally mentioned that in the suggestion of someone whose dad is from Cendriane-in-Exile and whose mom is from Darrowdelf or whatever.Sincerely, honestly: Yes. I am deeply confused why you think that's impossible.Also...I am not divorcing "heritage" from culture. I am recognizing that, while there can be an influence of physiology on culture, it is 100% possible to belong to a culture while being from a totally different physiological background.A group of sapient aliens who settled in, say, Texas in the mid-19th-century? Their modern-day descendants are going to be Texan much more than they are Glorboflaxian or whatever. Being "Texan" is not meaningfully driven by having bilateral symmetry or seeing a spectrum between 380-750 nm. Where did I deny that? I'm baffled by this.I don't see how I'm not recognizing that, so I don't know how to respond.Okay. It's hard to distinguish, then, what your actual point is from that. Because it looks very much like cultural essentialism: culture is rooted in, and defined by, the physiology of the people who started it. You cannot adopt a culture that originated in a physiology different from your own. That's a position I reject.That is not obvious, to say nothing of tautological.Barring a few very rare exceptions, the species of D&D have:[SPOILER="Long list"]<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">bilateral symmetry</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a single pair of arms, and either one or (rarely) two pairs of legs</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">those arms end in some number of digits (usually 5, rarely 4 or even 3), one of which is opposable, allowing hand-like behavior</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a size between two and eight feet tall, and usually between four and six-and-a-half feet</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">weight between 30 lb and 400 lb, fairly strongly correlated with height (e.g. a tall dragonborn might be 6'9" and 350 lb, while a short halfling might be 2'1" and 35 lb)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a single head with two eyes</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">vision centered around the 380-750 nm range, often but not always augmented with superior low-light vision (e.g. if this were IRL, they have a higher density of "rod" cells relative to humans)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">auditory senses in the range between 20 Hz and 20 kHz, 0 dB to ~120 dB, with similar responses to similar sound configurations (e.g. frequency ratios close to small-numbe</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a mouth used for both breathing and eating</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the ability to speak verbally, using a common set of characteristics (voicing, stress, articulation points, etc.) such that no language spoken by any of them is impossible for a different physiology to express (e.g. no "speaking through two windpipes to create two-part harmony")</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a diet consisting of the same types of nutrients, though sometimes in varied proportions (e.g. dragonborn need more protein than humans do, but both get protein from the same sources)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">vastly preferring cooked/prepared foods for their superior nutritional value</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">an internal body temperature in the high-30C/low-40C range</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">wearing some amount of clothing in order to help sustain this body temperature</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a "childhood" phase of multiple (3+) years, a pubescent phase of several (5+) years, and then reaching maturity sometime between the middle and end of the second decade of life (15-20 years old)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">societal groups, not disconnected family units nor lone hunters etc.</li> </ul>[/SPOILER]And that's just looking at the physiological or near-physiological elements (e.g. food and clothes). It's not considering the commonalities in terms of building/clothing materials, or in terms of knowledge reached by similar means e.g. mathematics, engineering, and magical theory are easily shared between different physiologies without significant issue.Why should we presume that other sapient beings would think in fundamentally different ways, or have inherently radically different cognitive processes or outputs, when they have so damn many things extremely closely in common? And I could have gone even further if I excluded dragonborn--nearly all species specifically have precisely five fingers on each hand, for example, and are specifically mammalian, giving live birth, suckling their young, etc. (Dragonborn also suckle, or at least they did in 4e; they are sort of like monotremes with reptilian scales.)My point being, with the sole major exception of lifespan, the vast majority of playable species in D&D are overwhelmingly similar in most ways. It is not reasonable to assume that they would automatically have radically different behavior as a consequence. Indeed, one would expect that their common nutritional needs, sizes, senses, temperatures, etc., etc., would incline them to similar behavioral patterns, not wildly divergent ones. That doesn't mean their cultures can't be hugely different from one another! But the differences are not fundamentally dependent on physiology.Why would their actions be radically different when they eat the same food, drink the same drink, have similar body temperatures, form similar societal structures, hear the same kinds of music, see the same lights, etc.It isn't vapid, and it's rather frustrating that you characterize it as such without considering the extensive and extremely important ways that most playable species are, in fact, extraordinarily similar to one another. Mostly because they've been created by human minds, and thus they are not (as TVTropes would put it) "starfish aliens".True xenofiction is extremely difficult to write, and even harder to roleplay. There is no xenofiction going on with the vast majority of D&D. Calling a lack of xenofiction vapid is grossly insulting to most people who enjoy fantasy worlds.</blockquote>

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