D&D and Racial Essentialism

[S'mon]

Given that D&D humans and elves can freely hybridize (and so can humans and orcs), is it really right to call them species?

AIR biologists tend to say that creatures are different species, even if they can potentially interbreed, if they don't normally do so (and produce fertile offspring) when given the opportunity. By that test humans are one species with elves and orcs, but elves and orcs are different species.

Or more accurately, the scientificc term 'species' is not really applicable here, because it's fantasy.

 

[nightwyrm]

Given that D&D humans and elves can freely hybridize (and so can humans and orcs), is it really right to call them species?

Biologically speaking? No. The definition of two species is that the two cannot breed and produce viable (fertille) offsprings. At best, you could call elves (and orcs) subspecies of human or maybe ring species.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I once read some say somewhere that the fantasy-historical game Atlantis: The Second Age had fantasy races, but those races were all warped humans so that you could justify the "humans in funny makeup" concept.

 

[howandwhy99]

Given that D&D humans and elves can freely hybridize (and so can humans and orcs), is it really right to call them species?

As roleplaying is bounded by human performance all playable "races" needed to be at least semi-human. That limited playing monsters for a long time until late 2E and 3E. That sentience within the human range can still qualify means far more creatures are certainly possible. Though, technically speaking, performing a non-sentient like a bush or car would not be roleplaying. As would playing something with greater than human intelligence like an omniscient god. Though gods were played by performers in a role play (as far back as the 20s), for a long time they were not considered roleplaying either. That they are part of the play is how some theories semantically get around the definition. That neither category can qualify as a Protagonist is still true.

nightwyrm has the right of it in the biological sense.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

1: water is important.
2: the sun is important.

That wasn't that hard.

Geez, can't believe I missed those. Those are so fundamental that we don't actually think about them, but they govern a lot of our behaviors.

By comparison, you have Dwarves, who are at least indifferent to the sun. Assuming that is their default evolutionary state, an entire set of basic biological drives are going to be fundamentally different, and therefore their behaviors and culture will be fundamentally different in dozens of ways, many of them subtle, some of them overt.

Yes - the three races are Caucasion, African and Asian skeletons. When I took the class (2003? 2004?) my teacher (the ME) said they were working on markers to distinguish Latino skeletal markers.

Point is, there is enough actual distinction to tell the difference purely by bones.

Interesting, because I've worked with multiple anatomical collections, and I'm firmly of the opinion that in a blind test, you get about 1 in 3 correct, at best. And that if you use very old skeletons from when those groups were more likely to have been distinct for many generations.... not an assumption many people can make anymore.

 

[WayneLigon]

I usually go with the idea that humans are the ones who have the vast advantage of 'diversity'. The other demi-human/humanoid races are limited in some pretty significant ways by ... whatever; call it their genetics, their destiny, their fate, their Doom, etc. They're going to pass out of the world and become extinct, just like the classic view of dinosaurs being unable to adapt to changing environments. In most of the worlds I've run, I have no problem with it, just like I don't have a problem with 'born Evil'.

I also don't have the huge numbers of 'sub races' for elves, etc - Elves as a race are tied to the great forests of the North and eventually they always return there, even after decades of wandering or living elsewhere. Even if they've never been there, like a salmon they'll return there to die if at all possible. Take a group of elves and forcibly stick them on the arid steppes, and prevent them from leaving, and in a few decades they'll all be dead. They'll stop having kids and will gradually waste away.

 

[Merkuri]

Biologically speaking? No. The definition of two species is that the two cannot breed and produce viable (fertille) offsprings. At best, you could call elves (and orcs) subspecies of human or maybe ring species.

This branch of the discussion reminded me of an example of what I think was ring species (it's been a long time so I may have misremembered what ring species are) that I learned in high school biology. There are different "species" of chipmunks that live in the United States whose territories stripe the US similar to the time zones. Each "species" can breed and have offspring with the "species" next to it, yet the east coast and west coast chipmunks cannot breed with each other.

By the technical definition of species (two creatures are of the same species if they are able to breed and have fertile offspring) the east coast and west coast chipmunks are not the same species, yet it's still possible that genes can be shared between the two populations through the intermediate "species" of chipmunks. This scenario always fascinated me.

The same is true with elves, humans, and orcs, I guess. Elves and humans are the same species (technically) and so are orcs and humans, but elves and orcs cannot produce fertile offspring so they are not the same species.

I've toyed with the idea before that humans are actually a true-breeding cross of elves and orcs and that this is a dirty secret of the three races, but never did anything with it. In any case, I bet I'm not the first person to come up with that concept.

 

[Merkuri]

demi-humans (part human)
races (actually referring to phenotypes within homo sapiens as the playable portion)
humanoids (human-shaped creatures)

Has anyone ever come up with a good term to collectively refer to the PC races that doesn't compare them to humans like the terms above? I'm talking about something that can be used in character (so "PC races" is out).

Do you think eladrin and drow would appreciate being called "elvinoids"?

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Has anyone ever come up with a good term to collectively refer to the PC races that doesn't compare them to humans like the terms above?

I've used "panian", based on the idea that humans are not homo genus but really still of the pan genus that they share with chimpanzees. But it does sound weird, so you could use "hominid", which in some was is pretty accurate. According to wikipedia you can get even more technical and use the word "hominan", which is the scientific name for all the upright hominids both living and extinct.

 

[Celebrim]

Has anyone ever come up with a good term to collectively refer to the PC races that doesn't compare them to humans like the terms above? I'm talking about something that can be used in character (so "PC races" is out).

In my campaign (as in Tolkien), the 'PC races' refer to themselves collectively as 'The Free Peoples'. The genesis of this term is different in the two mythologies, but I still find the term very useful and happily borrow it for my purposes.

IMC, the term 'The Free Peoples' refers to the fact that the PC races have been given the capacity for choice, whereas the Servitors were made to serve a particular deity and have no choice in the matter nor capacity to shape themselves or their destiny.

I prefer terms of art like that to terms like sapients, sophonts, or hominids because it seems to me that terms like that more properly belong in science fiction, and because for the purposes of my campaign, a word like sapient or hominid or even humanoid is terribly imprecise and groups unlike things together as if they were like. I have much the same problem with them as Galadriel had with the term 'magic'; if it cannot distinguish between the things that are most unlike, its rather to broad to be much good.