Eladrins, Tieflings, Dragonborn Too Far Outside Standard Fantasy?

[Dausuul]

Characters with significant demonic heritage are considerably older than modern fantasy. See, for example, Arthurian legend. And it's been pointed out repeatedly in the thread that D&D itself offers many precedents for reptilian races.

I'm not talking about characters with demonic heritage, I'm talking about people with big curling horns and long tails who somehow fit comfortably into society without being burned at the stake. Merlin had demonic heritage, but he was very clearly not a tiefling.

And last I checked, D&D was invented in the 1970s, so you can hardly cite it as a source for dragonborn as a traditional (that is, mythological) fantasy archetype.

The funny thing is that in many ways, 4E is including more mythological material than previous editions. We have the war between the gods and the primordials, which reflects the Titanomachy and various similar "old order of divinity versus new" myths; the Feywild and the Shadowfell, which resemble the northern European conceit of Faerie and many pagan portrayals of the underworld respectively; the shift away from Vancian casting toward a more generic model, which is closer to mythological magic; and the origins of Asmodeus and the devils, which are straight out of the Christian account of Lucifer's rebellion and fall (except that Lucifer didn't manage to actually kill God).

This makes it all the more jarring to me to have these "new fantasy" elements.

 

[Mercule]

I can see the objection to tieflings and dragonborn. I'm not sure I'll be including them (or halflings), IMC.

But eladrin? Eladrin are the high-fantasy elves. I can see a better argument for ditching the new elf race than ditching eladrins. (Okay, maybe not better, but as good.) This is something that has really boggled my mind since the elven split was announced.

 

[Shadeydm]

I remember the complaints leading up to 3e that read, almost word for word, like this one. The fact that you could play half dragons and other beasties sent all sorts of ripples through the internet. Beyond the scope of core D&D? Core 3e allows me to play a fiendish half dragon giant should I want to.

How very odd I have searched through my 3.0 and 3.5 PHB and cannot find any sign of fiendish half dragon giants yet the 4E previews seem quite clear about the inclusion of Eladrins, Teiflings, and Dragonboobs. I admit that Gibbering Mouther PCs in the PHB3 are pure speculation at this point.

 

[AllisterH]

I'm not talking about characters with demonic heritage, I'm talking about people with big curling horns and long tails who somehow fit comfortably into society without being burned at the stake. Merlin had demonic heritage, but he was very clearly not a tiefling.

.

That's an issue about look. I've read fantasy fiction with "pronounced" demon races (although the tails are too large IMO), so I have no prolem with that.

Dragonborn, I'll give you that. Closest analogue in fantasy fiction I can think of is Lizardmen,

 

[BWS]

Sporting horns and tail, versus merely being a shape-changing prophet, seems to be splitting hairs to me. But if it's inhuman appearances you're thinking of, there are plenty of examples in mythology. There's an obvious similarity to fauns, for example.

As for the dragonborn, I wasn't claiming that D&D sources are traditional. My claim is that it's weird to get hung up on whether they're traditional in fantasy fiction when they're traditional in the game itself.

 

[DylanCB]

Standard fantasy. Which is, what, exactly. I mean, was D&D ever standard fantasy? I mean, in the first Dragonlance novels, the characters fight a giant slug. With salt, no less. The monsters are not standard fantasy, the powers wizards chuck out like they're roman candles aren't either. Its a game, of course, not a storybook. The characters fight more monsters, and thus have more power than story people.

I guess I play too many Japanese RPGs, so it isn't as jarring to me. Tieflings, Dragonborn, whatever is interesting is fine.

 

[Hussar]

Honestly, my preference would be for no nonhuman races at all, but I'm weird that way.

I think my real problem with dragonborn and tieflings is that they clash horribly with elves and dwarves. Dragonborn and tieflings are "modern fantasy" races, the sort of things that get invented out of whole cloth by fantasy writers, with no connection to traditional mythology. Elves and dwarves are "traditional fantasy" races, based on mythological archetypes that go back centuries.

/snip

Kinda sorta really though. While dwarves exist in myth, they pretty much resemble D&D dwarves in no real way. Myth based dwarves were highly magical - as opposed to the anti-magic dwarves of D&D. I'm sure there are mythological dwarves that resemble D&D dwarves, but, there are an awful lot of them that don't too. Dwarf is a lot like goblin - it's an oft repeated name that meant "them folk".

Elves and D&D elves share very, very little really as well. The mythological archetypes are extremely far removed from the PHB. About the only thing that fits is the fact that they are "woodsy".

If we're allowed to say that D&D elves and dwarves are based on their mythological roots, then I'm not sure we can bar tieflings from the same claim.

How very odd I have searched through my 3.0 and 3.5 PHB and cannot find any sign of fiendish half dragon giants yet the 4E previews seem quite clear about the inclusion of Eladrins, Teiflings, and Dragonboobs. I admit that Gibbering Mouther PCs in the PHB3 are pure speculation at this point.

I was unaware of the definition of core that excluded the Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide.

 

[DandD]

I will consider banning halflings, half-elves and any other half-crap when I moderate a game. Tieflings too, because they look like crap. Dragonborn (with their females not having boobs which were simply added on to arouse horny youngsters which is why they won't need to have that at all) are okay. I only wished that Eladrin and Elves were combined, but will see how that turns out.

 

[Dausuul]

Sporting horns and tail, versus merely being a shape-changing prophet, seems to be splitting hairs to me. But if it's inhuman appearances you're thinking of, there are plenty of examples in mythology. There's an obvious similarity to fauns, for example.

Not really. Tieflings in 4E are defined in a fairly specific way; both appearance (horns, tail, et cetera) and origin (touched by diabolical powers). I'm not aware that Merlin was traditionally regarded as a shapeshifter, but even so, that's got nothing to do with his "real" form, the one he goes around in most of the time.

And fauns have only a distant resemblance to tieflings, nor are they supposed to be humans with devilish heritage. There are races in mythology that are kind of like tieflings, but none that match up the way elves do to the "ljosalfar" of Norse myth, or dwarves to the "dvergar."

As for the dragonborn, I wasn't claiming that D&D sources are traditional. My claim is that it's weird to get hung up on whether they're traditional in fantasy fiction when they're traditional in the game itself.

In the context of mythology and mythological origins, a "tradition" stretching back to the 1970s counts for pretty much nothing. It's not a question of whether they're traditional in fantasy fiction but about whether they have a presence in mythology, and my point is that dragonborn and tieflings (4E-style tieflings, at least) are firmly in the "invented in the modern era" category; which makes them clash with creatures like elves and dwarves that have very strong mythological roots.*

To be clear, I'm not saying that modern fantasy races are better or worse than traditional ones. I'm saying that the two of them don't go well together. There's a certain flavor to traditional fantasy, a pre-scientific, fairy-tale worldview; and there's a very different flavor to modern fantasy, which is much more post-Enlightenment and rational, closer to science fiction. Blending the two is not impossible, but tricky. D&D has tended toward the modern-fantasy flavor for most of its history, but it also has a lot of traditional elements shoehorned in so that it can try to straddle both worlds. I'd like a little more segregation so it's easy to strip out one or the other.

Actually, after some thought, I've concluded that I'd prefer to see the nonhuman races in D&D be entirely "modern fantasy," and shuffle the "traditional fantasy" races off to the Monster Manual. My reasoning is simply that in "traditional fantasy," the protagonists are almost always human anyway; they might have a bit of nonhuman heritage, but full-blooded elves and dwarves are more plot elements than actual characters. If one is going to create a traditional fantasy game world, it really ought to be one where the PCs are all humans. Probably not going to happen, though.

Myth based dwarves were highly magical - as opposed to the anti-magic dwarves of D&D.

Your grognardism is showing. D&D dwarves haven't been anti-magical since 3.0 came out. In fact, 3.X dwarves make quite good wizards.

*Of course, there is a third category, the "invented by Tolkien" category, which is mostly reserved for halflings and doesn't go particularly well with anything. I don't think they go well with elves and dwarves even in Middle-Earth; but then, Tolkien's halflings were essentially stand-ins for humans, with the symbolic significance of being small people in a big world.

 

[BWS]

But D&D races aren't all that much like mythological races, or Tolkien races, or 1960s science fiction/fantasy races, or 1980s gamefic races, or contemporary fantasy races. They're a blend of all of those with weird random stuff thrown in, and that's how they've been in every edition of the game. Calling it traditional versus modern or mythological versus fictional is drawing an arbitrary distinction that doesn't correspond very well to the actual material. That's what I was trying to say, that there is no "context of mythology and mythological origins" here, except in a superficial sense. And at that superficial level, Merlin + faun = tiefling, or close enough as to not matter.