D&D 5E A Lineage and Its Variants: The New Race Format Going Forward

[ART!]

I was literally just reading this article: "The Empty Brain - Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge, or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer."over at Aeon.

 

[Yaarel]

Actually Ligers are fertile; just not with each other.

"Liliger" Born in Russia No Boon for Big Cats

A liliger—the offspring of a liger mother and lion father—born in Russia may be cute, but it has no relevance in helping save big cats, experts say.

www.nationalgeographic.com

That explains how other branches of Homo were able to introduce genetic material into modern Homo sapiens during prehistoric times.

 

[Lyxen]

@Lyxen, @Yaarel quoted the WotC Gothic Lineages Unearthed Arcana in a post on the first page of this thread.

The pertinent paragraph is

which states outright that monsters belong to a species or lineage (otherwise they couldn't belong to the "same species or lineage" as player characters).

NO. I'm sorry, but once more that sentence does not say that every single monster and NPC must belong to a species or lineage. It only says that IF they belong to a species and lineage, then the features do not have effects on them.

It... doesn't make sense to insist that people can't show you "a monster that has a lineage" when there is WotC documentation that explicitly states monsters and NPCs are members of a species or lineage.

Once more no, it does not, because said "documentation" says nothing of the kind.

That being said, all monsters and NPCs each belong to a species, for sure. And the famous sentence says that if a feature from a PC is linked to its species, it will have no bearing on monsters of the same species. Nothing more.

And it would mean the same thing for lineage, only there are, once more, no monster or NPC has been published that has one. But if someday that happens , or if you homebrew a monster or NPC with a lineage (which is perfectly fine), all the sentence says it that you are not bound to apply the same effects as for PCs on that monster or NPC.

And I hope that we have put the nail on the coffin of the idea that lineage = species, that sentence shows that they are not the same thing.

 

[Umbran]

Computers are expected to pass the Turing Test in this decade, the 2020s, likely around 2025.

That doesn't actually mean much. Even Turing posited the imitation game being played by a computer that was not generally intelligent, but purpose-built to give "human like responses". That's a very large issue with AI to date - it does not generalize.

And, folks have been positing a machine to pass the Turing Test "within 20 years" since the 1980s, at least. When your target date rolls on by without the mark being hit, nobody will remember you made this prediction, or care if they do. Making predictions is easy and basically risk-free.

 

[Dausuul]

That doesn't actually mean much. Even Turing posited the imitation game being played by a computer that was not generally intelligent, but purpose-built to give "human like responses". That's a very large issue with AI to date - it does not generalize.

And, folks have been positing a machine to pass the Turing Test "within 20 years" since the 1980s, at least. When your target date rolls on by without the mark being hit, nobody will remember you made this prediction, or care if they do. Making predictions is easy and basically risk-free.

Yes to all this.

The Turing Test advanced the discussion around AI in two important ways: First, it was a black-box test, focused on observable behavior rather than knowledge of the AI's internals. And second, it introduced a control subject known to possess the desired level of intelligence (i.e., a human being). That made it possible to put down a marker.

The test itself, however, has a number of weak points; the biggest being that it's only as good as the human judges. If the judges fail to formulate questions that expose the AI's weaknesses, the AI can slide by. You can make the test more stringent by choosing expert judges and requiring extended/repeated conversations, but whatever you do, you will still only test the things the judges think to probe for.

 

[Faolyn]

Ligers are not fertile. If lions and tigers could produce fertile offspring they would be the same species, rather than just very closely related species.

Wolfdogs are fertile. And ring species are a thing.

Species is actually a very fluid concept.

 

[Faolyn]

Because it doesn't actually tell you what's going on. Like sure, if I say "humans, elves and dragonborn" you can conclude that these are actually different species as you're familiar with them, but if this was custom world, and I said "Oggs, Hyrrans and the Boobli" you wouldn't know if these were different species, or whether this was analogous to "French, Swedish and Chinese," cultures of one species.

You could always said "the anthro-shrimp Oggs, the viscacha-like Hyrrans, and the plant-based Boobli," if you wanted to make sure that people realized that they weren't humans.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Species is actually a very fluid concept.

And really has nothing to do with D&D races. Hybrid races are not species, warforged are not species, reborn are not a species.

Really, the word "species" needs to be dropped, it's a completely meaningless concept in a fantasy setting (and somewhat nebulous in the real word).

 

[Yaarel]

Yes to all of the limitations of the Turing Test. But the point is the advancement of computer processing is happening. And the test is an important milestone.

With regard to the timing of the prediction. The year 2025 derives from the accelerating advancement of Moores Law. Even tho Moores Law derives from the thinness of copper wiring, and runs out before 2025, other technologies appear to be stepping in to continue the curve of acceleration.

This curve of acceleration of the processing power of computers has been used accurately to predict various applications for over 20 years now. Passing the Turing Test in 2025 is one of these applications.

The predictions are accurate within a year or two. So, if the Turing Test fails to happen when 2027 comes and goes, the prediction will be wrong, even if it happens 2028. But so far, everyting is still on schedule. The supercomputers are doing amazing things like having debate competitions with human experts. I expect a computer to pass the Turing Test in around 2025.

 

[d24454_modern]

And really has nothing to do with D&D races. Hybrid races are not species, warforged are not species, reborn are not a species.

Really, the word "species" needs to be dropped, it's a completely meaningless concept in a fantasy setting (and somewhat nebulous in the real word).

I honestly prefer it to race and definitely prefer it to something as vague as lineage or ancestry.