Addendum: Take Eberron, their gatekeeper orcs are totally untypical e.g.
Housecats are vicious invasive predators where I live. Only reason they don't go after humans is they aren't big enough. Of course, then you go the whole Australia Big Cat things...Comparing orcs to humans is like comparing a house cat to a tiger. No matter how well you treat the tiger, it will always be a tiger.
I've always been one of anything's actions are just what they are. You can have orcs who are still savage, but not necessarily hostile if they don't need to be. Likewise you can have elves who are evil villains and the orcs absolutely in the right for wanting to topple their spires.My personal preference is to have race matter, other races are more than just humans in a rubber mask.
Housecats are vicious invasive predators where I live. Only reason they don't go after humans is they aren't big enough. Of course, then you go the whole Australia Big Cat things...
I've always been one of anything's actions are just what they are. You can have orcs who are still savage, but not necessarily hostile if they don't need to be. Likewise you can have elves who are evil villains and the orcs absolutely in the right for wanting to topple their spires.
We're in a post Warcraft 3 world, even if you don't want to go full Elder Scrolls and have orcs just being weird elves because everything in Elder Scrolls is either humans or elves. (Except the lizard-men birthed from the alien trees who managed to survive the last cycle of existence and hop into this one)
oh ow oh Mr. Kotter Mr. Kotter Um Mecheon What about us gamers who never played WOW and only know about from the cool commercials.Housecats are vicious invasive predators where I live. Only reason they don't go after humans is they aren't big enough. Of course, then you go the whole Australia Big Cat things...
I've always been one of anything's actions are just what they are. You can have orcs who are still savage, but not necessarily hostile if they don't need to be. Likewise you can have elves who are evil villains and the orcs absolutely in the right for wanting to topple their spires.
We're in a post Warcraft 3 world, even if you don't want to go full Elder Scrolls and have orcs just being weird elves because everything in Elder Scrolls is either humans or elves. (Except the lizard-men birthed from the alien trees who managed to survive the last cycle of existence and hop into this one)
oh ow oh Mr. Kotter Mr. Kotter Um Mecheon What about us gamers who never played WOW and only know about from the cool commercials.
Back in 1E I ran a hard black and white campaign. So if a race was CE you could get your sword on without any ethical problems. Some gamers like being able to slay mooks and enjoying the cure disease scroll and pie they looted from the orc's body.
Yes and us dms call them players....... BFEG (Big Fat Evil Grin).... Sometimes the most terrible monsters happen to be human.
Orcs were low level mooks. They were never terrifying. They're especially never going to be 'terrifying' now that we're in the age where Warcraft exists and orcs have moved so far past "They are the evil people we can freely attack" to "They are another culture we got problems with but they're people" that its so far in the distance no one can see it.
I know a lot of dms who still add in rules for differing stats between males and females depending on the way sexual dimorphism presents in the given race.Nope I did not say that all orcs have to be like that but what I wrote is the standard orc not from a mechanical point of view but from his typical behavior at least in my standard campaigns , sorry D&D is a bit about stereotypes, that is part of the game, and nothing I feel bad about.
And other people are free to portray their orcs as pacifistic dope-loving hippies in their campaigns if they have fun with that, and they still are of course real roleplayers and it does not devalue their campaign or playstyle in any way.
See D&D has been diverse and multicultural way before this got such a high value in society.
Already in 2e (Back in 87 or 89? i cannot remember) they decided that there be no differences anymore in stats or whatever for male or female characters. I think 1e still had this that males could have higher strength.
Still there were stereotypes and there still are and that's it it is just a game not reality.
Then I'll just say you have a much more pessimistic view of human behaviour than I do and leave it at that.1 eh
2 generally um duh
3 there is reason to say its more likely than if they werent such a similar biological form.
4 yes
Nah. My view is a more realistic one. Reality on this one just happens to suck. Dont mistake realism for pessimism. Its dangerous to be an accidental optimist. Cant be overstated.Then I'll just say you have a much more pessimistic view of human behaviour than I do and leave it at that.
This, however, I can't just leave at that.I know a lot of dms who still add in rules for differing stats between males and females depending on the way sexual dimorphism presents in the given race.
I do it myself. Different distribution curves, mods, and even extra featured abilities if relevant. Its too bad they dont publish things like this anymore. But there are still people keeping it alive.
To answer your question, yes, its very fun.This, however, I can't just leave at that.
When you get into the weeds of this simulationist stuff, I can't help but scratch my head and wonder "is this actually fun?" I struggle to find what's gratifying about this level of number crunching. Is it number crunching for its own sake? Or is it for immersion? Fluff-mechanics agreement? Seems like extraneous bookkeeping to me.
Also, the reason why they (or at least, the big companies targetting mass markets) don't publish things like this anymore is it's just begging for sexist jerks to come out of the woodwork and start throwing their gender essentialist bullcrap around, and when the rest of the table yells at them for killing the vibe, they just point to the rulebook, and they take a deep breath and they get real high, and they scream from the top of their lungs, "IT'S GODDAMN RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW!"
Jokes about 4 Non Blondes and He-Man aside, Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, and other big tabletop companies have realized that a significant portion of their current core market consists of women, LGBTQ+ people, and ethnic minorities, all demographics whose members can profess to have in the past experienced disproportionate amounts of hate, abuse, and general insensitivity, intentional or not, thrown at them from other members of the scene, experiences that may have turned them away from the hobby for a time. Adding the gender adjusted stat caps back in, which got dropped by the time the second edition of AD&D was released, perhaps even earlier (1e was a mess in terms of internal editions) would just give the wangrods yet another bludgeon to swing around and turn people away.
Truth be told, at the individual table level, most jackasses like that would have been given the boot assuming the DM had their head on their shoulders straight. Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen, especially when the prime offender is the DM themselves. And at some point, it becomes a systemic problem that must be curtailed by adjusting the game itself, rather than hoping that each and every table lives up to a certain ethical standard without intervention from the game designers' part.
(Also, anecdote: a good portion of the tables I've sat down at featured female barbarians. Don't know why, and I know there's no real statistical correlation between those isolated events, but it happens.)
You're proud of keeping the torch alive? Why? What purpose does the burning of this flame serve?
i agree. I do have a farily reasonable explanation for this though. Its not earth, or even our universe, and the physical laws are similar enough but a bit different. So too is biology. Similar enough, but a bit different. Ergo, things like, say, humans, can, with great struggle, push past normal anatomical upper limits. But its both rare and difficult. The nature of the planar cosmos' and magic' influence on physical laws and on the biological limits of adaptation are nidged just enough to cause the ceiling to be more fuzzy.In the real world the strongest woman is not going to be as strong as the strongest man. But D&D is a fantasy game, not reality. Strength can also be interpreted as more than just muscle mass. I don't make any restrictions.
But if we're talking about strength, I have a lot of issues with how it's implemented. Like how in D&D a person can be stronger than the average grizzly bear. I'm sorry, but no. There is just no way a person can be that strong.
It's a game. It's not always realistic.
also actually in the real world the strongest woman will over all be a vastly inferior athlete to just typical highschool male gym rat meat heads. This is as far as strength goes. The difference is really that large. World's fastest woman on the other hand will fair a little better. A little. So depending on what sport she has trained to be amazing at they can be closer or further. But always far behind. In some cases world class will even fail against average middle school boys. On a regular basis this happens in soccer. World class female soccer teams will actually end up losing to middle school boys. It could even be said that the women in this matchup have slightly greater technical knowledge but they still lose. Horribly.In the real world the strongest woman is not going to be as strong as the strongest man. But D&D is a fantasy game, not reality. Strength can also be interpreted as more than just muscle mass. I don't make any restrictions.
But if we're talking about strength, I have a lot of issues with how it's implemented. Like how in D&D a person can be stronger than the average grizzly bear. I'm sorry, but no. There is just no way a person can be that strong.
It's a game. It's not always realistic.
I do it myself. Different distribution curves, mods, and even extra featured abilities if relevant. Its too bad they dont publish things like this anymore. But there are still people keeping it alive.
Aside from the well known half fiends of the setting, I've always held the opinion that Planetouched should just spring up in areas where there's been big ol' magic related to a thing used. So anywhere Iuz's forces have torn through, people will just occasionally have Tieflings as kids rather than humans.