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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Loonook" data-source="post: 4028862" data-attributes="member: 1861">Good Gaming: Stereotypes, Wonderful Stereotypes Pt. 1: Elves are from Toril, and That’s Final.  Also, in Other News: A Contest!. . .July 5th, 2006,Short jot today, but I gotta get some of this off my chest.I can’t stand the nonsense.  It’s been five months since I came from the Old Country, and I like my foster folks . . . they’re good people, but it’s petrifying.  I want to be able to go my own way, and this whole nonsense irritates me.  My friends walk in and talk crap at school when they see me wearing the hammer pendant that Mrs. Stonewall gave me for my birthday.  I think it’s my birthday; I remember them telling me my day was on the Solstice, and so we’ve went with it. I don’t remember much, but I got enough of it to keep me going.  At JHHS I have to put up with all the Mundie kids, and every once in awhile one of the kids gets his or her Eyes open and come up to me to ask questions.  Do we really like to drink?  Do I carry around a hammer when I’m out of school?  How do I deal with Gordie and the goblin crew who I sit by during Shop?  Like I’m some kind of Tolkie just because I still believe in the Allfather and dream about the Hall when I toss and turn at night.It’s been two weeks since I started working at the Iron Horse Brewhouse; I got some fake papers and I got a job working fryers and orders in the kitchen.  The smells of roast mutton and wings covers me when I leave, and the stupid horned hat they make me wear when I’m running the order window is humiliating.  Sometimes I go and hang out behind; Jom, the shorty who works the server swing, is a cute girl . . . but I’m afraid to bring her home to my ‘parents’.  Hell would come home if I told them about smoking cigarettes and catching a feel with a Halfling girl out behind the dumpsters.  Mr. Stonewall says the beer they make is weaker than his **** after a good night with ‘the men’.  Whatever; it’s a paycheck.But, the coolest thing happened tonight, so I figured I’d write about it.  Mr. Gemsall decided to let me come with him to the Moira show down at Dockside Tavern.  I picked up their music; most of my friends at JHHS can’t stand them, but hearing those heavy beats and junky guitar . . .It reminds me of home.  I pray to you, Hammerlord, that Mom and Dad aren’t worried.  I wish I could know what is going on. I just hope that Jarin is okay.  I’m sorry about what happened, and I hope you all know that I love you, even though I said some mean things before I disappeared . . .-    Diary of a Dwarven High School student. Why do we all believe that elves live in tree forts and Dwarves in their great stone halls?  What specifically about these creatures requires us to follow the party line when it comes to them?  I know, as geeks we all read Tolkien.  Or one of the followers of Tolkien.  Hell, maybe some of you just watched the movies.  And I know, as I have said time and again, that our settings must be outside of the vacuum.  However, it seems that the average d20 Fantasy game, be it Modern or D&D and its derivatives, follows a lot of the paradigms set forth by Tolkien.  Humans are the big race, Elves live in their isolationist hippie communes, Halflings sit around smoking pipes all day and throwing stones, Dwarves have to sing of honor and the worlds around them.Let’s try to break this pattern, shall we?Now, we all know the <a href="http://www.d20srd.org/srd/races.htm" target="_blank">mechanics of the groups involved</a>. Elves have certain talents, Dex bonus, Con. penalty, etc. and so on and so on for the other groups.  Dwarves are strong-backed, stable, and have a certain amount of protection against spells and poisons . . . read the listing if you cannot recall the benefits by heart.  Now, mechanically, there is no benefit for the Elf to be a hippyish fop.  Dwarves get a certain benefit dealing with stone, but that doesn’t require them to stay in deep fortifications.  Halflings probably have the most apt set of skills and abilities for their favored class; we all know Small characters make good rogues for obvious reasons.  However, large amounts of the D&D player/DM population are stuck on concepts written down almost eighty years ago and the works that came later.  While we all owe a good deal of praise to the work of Tolkien (lest, most likely, we wouldn’t be having articles or forums to argue about today) I think we can safely put to bed the old ideas of fantasy gaming and move towards new ones.  Thought Experiment  ContestLet us think, then, of how the standard D&D races define themselves and their talents.  I propose a contest; the best entry will receive a prize (which, due to my limited resources, will be handmade) of having his (or her) 3 questions become the brace of a new article series, which will hopefully create an interesting series for the rest of us.  The winner may also receive a good 3rd party PDF if I can rake together the cash required to do so (I am a poor education worker, so bare with my spendthrift nature). The contest question is:Using only the inherent talents granted by their racial benefits described in the Core Rules (no fluff, just stats), create a single character, prestige class, or organization which would be fitting for one of the following:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Dwarf</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Elf</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Drow</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Halfling</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Bugbear</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Gnome.</li> </ul>When I receive 10 entries at my email address (loonook@yahoo.com) I will judge the entries based on merit, and each of them will find a place into a separately posting ‘reader’s choice’ poll.  Out of the two entries (if two) selected, we will select a winner.  Entries close at 12:00 AM Eastern on March 1st, 2008.Next article will include some interesting possibilities for Fantasy and Modern Fantasy Shadowkind, along with some of my own ideas on the subject.Until then,Good Gaming,Slainte,-Loonook.</blockquote>

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