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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Goblyns Hoard" data-source="post: 1981635" data-attributes="member: 19970">That was what I was getting at - they just ran with what they saw in Tolkien, without considering the implications on any further level.  It's only now that so many more players have a decent grasp of genetics (still a fairly rudimentary science back in the late 70s) that we get into the debates about it.So how do you handle these things (or have I missed a post higher up this thread  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/nervous.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":heh:" title="Nervous Laugh    :heh:" data-shortname=":heh:" /> )Not saying it is or we should - just presenting some options for people to use as explanations in a game.  However as a DM I want to understand how MY world works so that when a player asks I can answer.  Afterall I'm the only thing that counts as truly omniscient in my world (well maybe those lesser beings the characters call gods, but only on a good day).  And as a DM with a degree in genetics I think I can.  In my world all half-breeds are non-viable, and there are some half-breeds that most worlds don't go with (e.g. half-dwarves).  However magical creatures (celestials, dragons, fiends, maybe some others) have the ability to manipulate they're genetics into working like a human's (or elf's or bugbear's...) while still passing on the traits of the magical creature.Ooops... ummmm.... yeah didn't put that very well did I.  The idea was that no races are closely enough related that they can breed at all on a biological basis.  They can't even produce mules.  However the magic/divine intervention/bizarre magnetic field/whatever allows a few limited species to breed together and produce viable offspring.  As you said probably the closest to the 'basic D&D world'I'd have to say not neccessarily.  You can combine the explanations of magic and biology - I feel my point above holds up to that:Some species breed on a basic biological level, others on a magical level.  Those that breed purely biologically have to conform to the rules of genetics and need to be effectively a species.  This assumes the word species is the biological concept of an organism capable of breeding true with another organism of the same species rather than a species because someone somewhere decided it was a separate species (e.g. your wolf-dog divide which as you point out is very probably not a true species boundary.  These creatures may have close relatives they can produce mules with, or may not.  Thus elves, humans and orcs could be a single species with very large allelic variation between the populations, while dwarves are an entirely separate species.  However the relationships between all of them are constrained by biology - none are inherently magical enough to change their genes through an act of will (though who knows what a wish could do).Those that breed magically are able to overcome the constraints of simple biology - their inherent magical nature allows them to imprint a morphology on their chromosomes that allows those genes to be compatible with the chromosomes of another species.  Those chromosomes allow the organism to breed true with other members of that species, and may (or may not) retain enough of their inherent magic to allow the half-x to breed true with a third species.  Effectively the magic introduces a set of new alleles into the gene pool of that species - alleles which reflect the nature of the magical being they derived from.Personally I feel that this option is much cleaner - it retains fundamental biology but includes magic and thus includes the major aspects of a D&D world.</blockquote>

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