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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 5840784" data-attributes="member: 2011">Ding!In a fantasy world, evil and good can be more prevalent and known based on racial characteristics. The majority of each race had specific propensities, but there were minor exceptions.Gollum was evil because magic twisted him that way (he also had tendencies that way to begin with).Humans in Tolkian were human. Some good, some evil, some in between. Most motivated by self interest.Maiar were basically good, but some were indifferent to the other races. Even Saruman was good until Sauron twisted him with the Palantir.Balrogs were evil.Elves were good.Dwarves were good, but greedy.Hobbits were good.The Nazgûl were evil, again, twisted basically good folk.Orcs, Goblins, and Uruks were evil. The PCs had no qualms killing them and vice versa. There was no moral ambiguity.For simplicity sake, many players and DMs play Elves and Dwarves and every other PC race as if they were Human with Human foibles and Human thought processes (because we are Human, that's what many of us do). But, different races should have extremely different alien thought processes and because they do, just like in real life between people with extremely different thought processes, conflict should arise. The Dwarves hate the Orcs because they compete for resources and have been at war for thousands of years. The Dwarves tolerate the Elves (in certain campaign settings) because the Elves being one of the good races has helped the Dwarves fight Orcs in the past.Playing all other races as if they were Humans with pointy ears and no other non-Human mental and emotional features (and especially with 20th century inalienable human rights for everyone thought processes) kind of defeats the purpose of rolelplaying. It becomes totally game mechanical at that point.Playing races with a self motivated racial bend where every race has its own self interests as a race and is competing with every other intelligent race for resources results in a rich campaign world that's logical. Playing races as if many individuals of most intelligent races can be benevolent to other competing races is illogical. Sure, there might be the very rare enlightened individual, but having more than a few of those in a campaign setting doesn't make logical sense. Passive-ism should be rare for example.In the real world, people have no qualms about killing sharks because sharks are viewed as man eaters and killers. In a fantasy world, the same thing would happen (if fantasy worlds actually existed) between races. Survival of the species. Competition for resources. Greed. All of these should be the real world equivalent default in a fantasy world, just like gravity normally is. The primal motivation forces in the real world should have fantasy world equivalents. Enlightenment and tolerance is caused by cooperation, commerce, communications and the rule of law.Points of Lights fantasy settings shouldn't have most of these in abundance. Hence the term, points of light. Other fantasy settings could. Personally, fantasy settings like Eberron where there are cities like Sharn where every intelligent humanoid creature is protected by law is nonsensical. A Lich walking through Sharn should create panic in the streets, not just be passed on the street by the locals with "Hi Joe". But in Sharn, that Lich is protected.Sharn is like Star Wars. A bunch of aliens living and working side by side. It makes sense in a Star Wars setting because of a (mostly) galaxy wide government which has maintained order for thousands of years. It doesn't make sense (generally) in a fantasy world (except maybe Dark Sun) because there is no overriding world wide government that wants to maintain order and civility. In a fantasy world with fiefdoms or kingdoms like Eberron, protecting of races that come from outside of ones own territory would not be law. Outsiders would be viewed with suspicion because they could be spies for other kingdoms.</blockquote>

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