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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8369675" data-attributes="member: 6779196">I’ve given you my definition twice now. Tack “oid” onto the end of “human” in that definition and it applies to D&D races just fine.Biological determinism and biological essentialism are very closely related concepts, but they are not interchangeable. Biological essentialism is treating someone’s essential qualities as biologically determined. How strong someone is is absolutely biologically determined. Whether they are “a jock” is not, and treating it as such is called “biological essentialism.”Gotcha, my mistake.I’m not sure that I can in all cases, and it’s those cases I would like to actually discuss, instead of wasting time and energy bickering about things that are obviously not. Can we please put the stupid examples like aarakocra flight and dragonborn breath to bed so we can talk about the cases with actual ambiguity like Goliath strength and gnome intelligence? Thanks.Nothing in that quote ascribes essential qualities of changeling nature to their shape shifting. “many changelings use this gift as a form of artistic and emotional expression,” not “changelings are artistically and emotionally expressive thanks to this gift.” “It is an invaluable tool for grifters, spies, and others who wish to deceive,” not “changelings are grifters and spies who use this tool to deceive.” “This leads many people to treat Changelings with fear and suspicion,” not “Changelings should be treated with fear and suspicion.”No, it’s a result of their biology. Extrapolating to their essential nature, such as calling them “natural athletes” or what have you due to that biology is what we call biological essentialism.It is essentializing for an entire race of people to be better fighters than entire other races, just as it would be for an entire race of people to be better weightlifters than entire other races.The general D&D playing public?We are working with a logically semi-coherent framework, it just isn’t completely deterministic. It requires socially constructed consensus, just as all such frameworks do. But pointing out absurd examples that are obviously outside that framework and trying to claim the framework is useless because it doesn’t deterministically rule them out does not help to build that consensus. It only distracts from the process of building that consensus, which is why it comes across as bad-faith to do.Ok, then you don’t have to bother. The rest of us will enjoy our cool game with imaginary people who look different and have different capabilities than humans but aren’t treated as monoliths because of their different appearances and capabilities.It’s not useless at all! On the contrary, it opens up room for more varied stories to be told using them, and makes them infinitely more nuanced and interesting characters.</blockquote>

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