Thomas Shey
Legend
I don't really disagree, but I'll note that always gets a lot of pushback here.
D&D General Demihumans of Color and the Thermian Argument
I don't really disagree, but I'll note that always gets a lot of pushback here.
Vaalingrade
Legend
It also serves a narrative point as they represent aspects of human experience.
That and it takes a lot of talent to write xenofiction. You can't just say 'these people are weird and don't make sense to humans and leave it at that. Most people who try to make 'alien' species end up making 'humans with on trait that's weird', which is actually worse than the alternative.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I'm not sure I would laud it that heavily, but it is pretty plain IMHO that you're saying the same as a number of other posters. People don't really relate well to, and it may well be impossible to really RP, some 'truly alien' mindset, let alone a race with a quite different physiology and/or anatomy than a human. I mean, 4e introduced Warforged, and similar stuff has existed in D&D before, but I think it is pretty clear that demi-humans (funny bump on forehead guys, basically) are there to let people pretend to be someone they aren't. You can emphasize some character trait and it gives you a bit a differentiation. I've known players who really had a hard time playing HUMANS because they just played themselves, basically. OTOH the same player could play a dwarf or an elf and I guess the imagined cultural and minor physical differences helped to remind them to play in character maybe?
Anyway, I am not so sure that typical fantasy races are a great, or even maybe mandatory, way for fantasy to portray non-humans, it is just easy and convenient, and since it works, nobody is super motivated to do much else. A few fantasy games HAVE tried, and succeeded to a certain extent. I more wonder about fantasy outside of games and why it is not more varied. Probably some of the same considerations, plus just inertia. Despite the notion that fantasy is imaginative I don't honestly find that much published today really reaches very far. Even Tolkien's work didn't really present anything very revolutionary in the way of imagining races or cultures that were really much different from us.
Fanaelialae
Legend
I admittedly don't love 'shallow' nonhuman traits, like many of those from the recurring species on Star Trek. Ferrengi are greedy, Klingons are warlike, Romulans are passionate, and Vulcans (in rejecting their passions) are logical. They're really nothing you couldn't explore with a human culture. (By contrast, I find the Dominion races from DS9 somewhat more interesting.)
Take the earlier example of dwarves having an innate emotional connection to certain metals. I can come up with some interesting extrapolations based on that trait. It could be inappropriate to offer a dwarf certain metals based on their circumstances. For example, given that gold and mithral evoke joy, it would likely be extremely gauche to give a grieving dwarf such a gift (equivalent to telling a grieving widow, "get over it and just be happy").
Giving a dwarf some gold might mean they instantly like you better, because you just literally made them happy.
Depending on the intensity of the experience, you might even have dwarven "addicts" living in the streets, bedecked in a wealth of gold, because they simply can't bear to part with any of it.
Despite Northern dwarves being taciturn, and Southern dwarves being extremely boisterous, they would most likely share those aforementioned qualities, or something quite similar, in common. They go beyond culture and are intrinsic to what makes these dwarves what they are. It also distinguishes them from humans, who might or might not love gold, but don't have the same innate connection to the metal as dwarves do.
That's spending a minute to come up with something. Imagine if I actually took the time to properly world build that trait and work out the implications.
PsyzhranV2
Hero
My thought is that it would be pretty difficult to effectively portray that emotional response to different metals as something biologically innate as opposed to merely a cultural tendency, given the limits of describing it using only words in real time at the game table. The gift giving part especially; that just reminds me my parents not liking being given scissors or objects in groups of four. If dwarves literally eat metal, or absorb it through their hands, then describing that would be more effective, but that seems to be more of a physiological quirk than a psychological one.
Fanaelialae
Legend
Unless this is literally what you build the world around (which I'm not really sure how you would do), it can easily be a neat background detail. There's nothing wrong with a player who doesn't paying attention to the lore just thinking that dwarves really love their gold. That's probably a common misconception among non-dwarves, because they can't really relate.
Just portray it, and don't worry about portraying it as biological. The players who care will know and appreciate it. The players who don't, won't, and that doesn't matter because that's not important to them.
As for it being like your parents not liking being given scissors, it might be, if literally all parents didn't like being gifted scissors. Remember, this is something intrinsic to their being. While an individual dwarf might be atypical, dwarves will generally have this same reaction to metals regardless of where in the world they are from and whether they've had contact with other dwarven cultures. A dwarf raised by humans (or wolves) will still have this response, although they might not understand why they do. To me, that's an important distinction.
MGibster
Legend
There are sometimes issues you can't explore directly because they're largely taboo and editors or viewers will say no. In the 1992 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Outcast," Riker falls in love with a J'naii person. The J'naii considered any gender expression to be aberrant and sexual congress between male and females to be both yucky and unnatural. Soren identifies as a female, falls in love with Riker, but when they try to escape together she is captured and forced to undergo conversion therapy to return to their genderless standards as nature intended. Even at the time, it was pretty obvious this was a ham-fisted story about gay people. So why not just use gay humans? Because at the time, the networks that carried the syndicated TNG would have balked and they would have faced backlash. Making the J'naii androgynous provided the producers with a plausible deniability if someone complained they made a pro-gay episode.
Likewise let's take a look at "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" from the original series in 1969. It's all about a species of black & white aliens who dislike one another because of their phenotype. The two men in the photo below hate one another so much that they continue their fight even after learning that their species fought itself to extinction. Any idea what message the writers were trying to send to their audience in 1969? It rhymes with glacial harmony. CBS would not have aired the episode if it was overtly about racial harmony between blacks and whites in the United States.
On the other hand, neither one of those episodes is particularly good. But writers can still use lineages, species, race, or whatever we're calling them now for plausible deniability. They can include write about strongly authoritative elves conquering territory and forcing all non-elfs out to tell a story about fascism without having to implicate any real life group. And if someone complains that the writers should keep politics out of the game they can just say, "Hey, it's fantasy and we're just talking about elves. We didn't say anything about fascism."
Fanaelialae
Legend
True. I wasn't talking about those though.
Like I said, I was referring to the recurring species I mentioned. Admittedly, there's a fair amount of that in the recurring species as well, such as examining unrestricted capitalism through the lens of the Ferrengi. And they do serve that purpose reasonably well. I just find them a bit shallow, is all. A lot of later episodes have attempted to create depth (like Quark's brother later in DS9, or the Klingon scientist who is looked down upon because he isn't a warrior), and to extent they succeeded, but it's a difficult thing to do when the base of the design is shallow. IMO, anyway.
That said, I should hope that no one needs to utilize such story techniques for their own campaign. If someone wants to, that's fine, but if they need to because the topic can't be broached directly, they probably have a real world problem.
MGibster
Legend
There are other reasons why someone might not want to tackle the issue directly. If I wanted to tell a story about racism, a fantasy framework where gnomes are forced out of their homes is less emotionally draining than a similar story set in Grant County, Arkansas during the 1950s.
Fanaelialae
Legend
Right, I wasn't saying there's no reason someone would want to. There certainly are, as you stated.
Just that I should hope that no one needs to. If one's players are racist or something, that's probably not an issue they're going to be able to fix through game. Though, I certainly claim no depth of knowledge in this regard. Admittedly, roleplaying has been used successfully in therapy, but that's when it's applied by a trained therapist. I certainly wouldn't recommend that approach for a typical DM.
