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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9477177" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Exactly. That which has exposure/history will see people downplay, ignore, or deny anything unrelatable. That which does not have exposure/history will see people amplify, inflate, or sometimes invent unrelatable things.For the converse, actually building up interesting aspects worthy of talking about...that really don't make THAT dramatic an impact on culture, I can reference my own writing and ideas.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dragonborn frequently (perhaps always) have breath weapons, most of which could be used to weaken metal prison bars. As a result, you'd expect most dragonborn prisons to either be made with magically-treated metal so that dragon breath can't weaken it, or (more likely) to use inert sandstone or other materials that are unlikely to be affected meaningfully by such effects.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dragonborn colonies would be comparatively slightly more productive than human ones, for several reasons. Labor can be more evenly distributed between men and women, because women don't need to spend so much time handling pregnancy. While their infants do suckle, they do so for a shorter period of time, and "infant" dragonborn are walking within hours of hatching. Between this and their accelerated development period, dragonborn colonies could definitely establish themselves more quickly and would grow (very slightly) more quickly.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Conversely, dragonborn have greater food concerns than humans, because they require a higher ratio of protein, which implies the need for more domesticated animals and better animal-feed arrangements. It's harder to forage when you have to eat more meat. This also means that dragonborn could be more susceptible to plague, because plagues (in a medieval context) arise from high concentrations of large domesticated animals living near people.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dragonborn (in 4e) explicitly heal faster than other humanoids (+Con to healing surge value, +2 Con as an option instead of +2 Strength), likely related to their need to consume more protein. This implies they just generally have better health than humans, which can have enormous impacts. Coupled with laying eggs (and thus having lower risk of death in childbirth), dragonborn are likely to have an easier time of things that were a real struggle for IRL humans for basically all of human history prior to the modern era.</li> </ul>These things do matter on sociocultural scales, They shape where and how these peoples would settle, and why. They shape how empires form and how wars are won and lost. But at the individual, day-to-day level? Most of this stuff really IS confined to "this would influence literary style and metaphors" stuff. The average life of the average dragonborn is going to be pretty similar to the average life of the average human, especially once they're both in their mid-20s or so. They mostly worry about the same things for the same reasons. They mostly eat the same foods (albeit more protein, as noted) and require the same living conditions. As far as we can tell, they mostly taste the same flavors, see the same colors, and hear the same harmonies--and they'll live about as many years, so their immediate family context is going to be very similar.Hence: There are ways in which their physiology influences their society. But these ways are a hell of a lot more subtle than "most of us live to be 700+."Except that when someone says something is unrelatable, they are describing its inherent nature, not their experience of it. It is an attempt to pass off something wholly subjective--"I found it difficult to relate to this thing"--as though it were fundamentally objective--"this thing is just hard for anyone to relate to." That's the problem. That's the substitution occurring here. It's bloody everywhere in D&D discussions.The point about the getting-away-with-it was to reinforce that this is a setting dominated by human perspectives. If tieflings were anything like a plurality or almost-plurality, do you think humans could get away with treating them like poop? I'm pretty inclined to think otherwise. Likewise, dragonborn are (explicitly!) treated as an exotic and eye-catching thing. Dragonborn guards are hired to be Big Scary Threats because of their exoticization. It's an explicitly "special" and noteworthy thing that a merchant in BG3 has a young dragonborn woman as his shopkeep/receptionist while he works the forge. Etc. And it's not just dragonborn; we very rarely see tieflings who aren't refugees from Elturel, and any type of gith, despite being a playable option, is essentially unknown. You can't even try to be an aasimar, and the one you meet in story (who is really a demigod, given her mother is literally a goddess) is Extremely Special And Unique.Or, as I argued above and as that point showed, it's still a vastly humanocentric setting. To pretend that Faerûn is somehow--to quote the fundamentally pejorative and exclusionary phrase--"the Mos Eisley cantina" is frankly blindness, likely accidental, but in some cases fully intentional.</blockquote>

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