Gender and Reproduction in Fantasy races

[Khayman]

I thought most woodland creatures hatched out of cabbages or pumpkins...

 

[Turjan]

Have you read Terry Pratchett's book The Wee Free Men?

Yes, those Nac Mac Feegle have exactly that breeding pattern mentioned in the first post. There's only one female per hive, and this one chooses one consort.

There are also other published fantasy races with funny reproduction patterns: just think of Slaadi. Or those Aurads from Oathbound, where I don't want to go into details, with respect to Eric's grandma .

 

[Rawhide]

I think the main problem you run into with this sort of thing is assumption clash. People think they know gnomes already, so when you turn them into creatures with odd gender and breeding issues, people freak out.

As long as I knew in advance of makign a gnome, I wouldn't care what the GM did. But a lot of players are going to be happier if you make up a new race for your new breeding cycle.

And some people don't want to deal with breeding or gender at all. Most "blue" d20 books get around this with hmor. Only a few others, such as Bastards and Bloodlines from Green ronin, ever deal with fantasy breeding (and all it's possible variations) with any level of seriousness.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Assumption clash is an issue, but I think that different biologies are totally neat myself.

 

[Mark]

Anyway when I presented this concept to another forum there were some who raised eyebrows and were uneasy with the concept of a race of hermaphrodites (especially gnomes!)

Raised their eyebrows, did they? Boggles the mind, it does. Simply uneasy maintaining their eyebrows in a lowered position, perhaps, they were. Hmmmm...?

 

[ph34r]

I think we just found the secret ingredient in Viagra.

I'm not even going to go there...

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Personally I like to playe a character where I can choose which gender I want to play and like character that have free will. Your race of gnomes reminds me of the Borg.

 

[Turjan]

Personally I like to playe a character where I can choose which gender I want to play and like character that have free will. Your race of gnomes reminds me of the Borg.

Oh, if you look at the Nac Mac Feegle again, you will see that it's more like a big, loving family, and they certainly have a free will. Although the thing with running out of first names within the family is a real problem, and first names like 'Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock' are slightly complicated .

 

[Tonguez]

Have you read Terry Pratchett's book The Wee Free Men? Take the Smurfs. Now assume they are Fey - not cartooney fey, but real-world myth-and-legend-type Fey. Give them a Celtic culture (blue skin = woad). Now you've got the Nac Mac Feegle, "the most dangerous of the Faerie races".
I especially love the way they do cattle-raiding.

No I've not read The Wee Free Men (though I have been intending to) however I did take much inspiration from both the Nomes (of the Bromeliad trilogy) and from Wee Mad Arthur (the gnome living in Ankh-Morpork)

How many kids can a "Brood Mother" have at once and how frequently? Assuming only 1 out of 100 have the capacity to bear offspring, and each of those are only capable of say, 1-3 births per year, then I'd say the gnomes have a population crisis on their hands. Fertility drugs and Viagra would be quite valuable in that society.

The Naked Mole Rat has 5 litters a yeah consisting of 1 - 30 individuals, they are weaned at 2 months. I used this as the basis of Gnome breeding too. Once weaned it is the fathers (and other burrow members) job to care and raise them to maturity (hence my gnomes tend to refer to their Papa more than their mother (who is a remote figure)).

For wild gnomes (aka Brownie aka Pictsies) infant mortality is high but in stable lowland burrows it is possible (thanks to gnomes being more intelligent than naked mole rats) for the whole litter to survive.

And thank you all for the great replies

 

[Trickstergod]

Doing something like that can effect play, yes.

If the PC who intends to play a lecherous dwarf or hopeless romantic of an elf finds out either of those races has some drastically different biological set-up from what's expected, then it can very well matter and effect play.

In general, I don't deviate much beyond what the creature most strongly resembles. PC races, therefore, won't be too much different from humans; minor deviations, possibly, such as reduced or increased birth rates, a higher propensity for twins, longer or shorter pregnancies, but nothing too big.

As such, I'd be disinclined to accept the idea of gnome hermaphrodites or any such thing with most non-monstrous humanoid races.

Things like thri-kreen or even merfolk or the like, though, and things change. But a generally human looking creature will have a generally human reproductive system in my games and in my general mindset; if told the hypothetical kuo-toa I wanted to play would spontaneously change gender under the right circumstances, I'd be fine with it. If I were told the same about an elf, I probably wouldn't want to play an elf and wouldn't want much to do with them in the game in general.

If I'm looking to play something really different from the norm, I'd play something really different from the norm. As it is, most PC races don't qualify for that for me, thus why things like that wouldn't really float my boat.