D&D General How To Reconcile the Settings

[Helldritch]

It is 5ed. In my Greyhawk campaign, dwarven wizards have always existed but they are now starting to show up in the world. Before then, they were mainly there to enchant weapons and armors. The same logic applies to the other races with rare classes. One exemple is the Valley elves. I give them the exact same abilities as those of the drow. Bad mouthed Gray and high elves Say that the drow were following the same road as the Valley elves, thus the mistrust that the elves have toward those elves from the Vale of the mage. With a bit of thinking it is possible to justify juste about anything.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

See D&D has been diverse and multicultural way before this got such a high value in society.

I agree. Not just D&D, but RPGs in general have run ahead of Western society in terms of positivity about diversity and minority groups and so on (with the odd slip-up, looking at you WoD:Gypsies). I think part of that just comes down to what role-playing is about - i.e. seeing out of the eyes of someone who isn't you. (There's also always been a weird reactionary-extremist fringe too, but it's equally always been small and seems to be aging out of existence.)

Certainly early printings of 1E had gender-based STR caps (on percentile strength for humans/half-orcs, and on STR entirely for non-human females). AFAIK it's the only edition of D&D/AD&D that did. Moldvay/OD&D/RC D&D certainly didn't. 2E didn't. It's not even clear all copies of 1E did.

 

[Coroc]

It only takes effort the first time. Curves can be standardized and generalized. If you use computer resources to fast track things it can be really simple and not time consumptive at all to apply it generally too.

5e is not a good system for your approach because of BA, it has to be resolved differently if desired.
E.g. In my take on DS halfgiants i go another route, they simply add 1d4 on their damage as if a human under the spell enlarge. they still cap at 20 str.

Other take, in your campaigns halflings should cap at 12 str then is it?

 

[Nellisir]

Opinions vary on this, depending on whether the palaeoanthropologist is a 'splitter' or a 'lumper'. A lumper would consider homo neanderthalensis and homo sapiens to be a single species, whereas a splitter would not. But both would agree that homo floresiensis is (or is part of) a separate species. A lumper might group floresiensis in the same category with homo erectus, or even homo habilis.

Apparently denisovans are not yet recognised as a formal taxon, and I think the same is true for luzonensis.

So the consensus of scientific opinion is that there were at least two different hominin species living on Earth 100k years ago, and there could be more depending on the system of categorisation one uses.

I'm getting most of this from Human Evolution: A Very Short Introduction 2e (2019) by Bernard Wood.

Definitely. I'm merging the results of both physical archeology and genetic research because a) I'm a strictly amateur enthusiast, and b) this is an internet message board about fantasy races. Thus my qualifying statement of "it depends how you classify human species". I'm particularly intrigued by floresiensis, fwiw.

I'm probably more inclined towards splitter, but that's a really fine line (dogs/wolves/coyotes?)

 

[Son of the Serpent]

5e is not a good system for your approach because of BA, it has to be resolved differently if desired.
E.g. In my take on DS halfgiants i go another route, they simply add 1d4 on their damage as if a human under the spell enlarge. they still cap at 20 str.

Other take, in your campaigns halflings should cap at 12 str then is it?

I primarily play 3/3.5 and when i dm i dm that exclusively. Now having played 5e a bit recently at this point, i gotta say, kinda hate it. Not as much as 4e though. But its just not a strong edition imo. Its very limited. Over simplistic. And not enough modularity.

So 5e's lack of versatility is irrelevant. One more reason btw why i say people keep mistakenly calling 5e versatile when what they really are seeing is simplicity which isnt exactly the sake thing. That said im sure someone could modify 5e a bit more and still use it. Its nicer to just have an edition with modularity and versatility in the first place though.

Also i dont play with caps. So you can have your buff halfling. It just wont be easy. It can go past 20 though. Everyone will probably think its pretty weird though. You'll get the pippy long stockings effect.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Where are people getting this massively xenophobic (kill on sight) vibe for Greyhawk? It's certainly not present in the supplements or the writings. Greyhawk has always been pretty kitchen sink. Never minding all the experimentation by the Scarlet Brotherhood.

The other thing is, when discussing population numbers and whatnot, and the presence of large predators, etc, we shouldn't forget that we create settings to serve the game, not the other way around. Just because the PC's stumble over monsters all the time doesn't mean that everyone else does too. The reason we have PC's stumble over monsters is because it's fun. A setting where you meet on monster in your entire lifetime would be very boring.

Wrong.

Greyhawk hasnt always been very kitchen sink. That is nonsense.

It was an extremely humanocentric setting and nearly all other races (not all) were highly distrusted. Other races were uncommon at best.

 

[Mecheon]

Greyhawk is the setting that had an alien spaceship crash in it.

Its not as kitchen-sinky as FR, sure, but there's space for pretty much anything your mind can come up with and unlike FR, its not over described so you can just put stuff where it makes sense

 

[Coroc]

Wrong.

Greyhawk hasnt always been very kitchen sink. That is nonsense.

It was an extremely humanocentric setting and nearly all other races (not all) were highly distrusted. Other races were uncommon at best.

in castle greyhawk wgr1 there is a group of dwarves aligned N guarding the entrance. You know those bearded sturdy creatures deemed selfevidently on the side of good.
The creator of this module G.G. Himself took into account that you either pay them of or massacre them to get into the castle ruin.
No differences made for good or evil aligned groups

 

[Hussar]

Gotta love revisionist history.

A1-4 Slave Lords series - numerous examples of humanoids and humans working together. And, who exactly do you think they were selling slaves to? If the setting was so xenophobic that humans killed non-humans on sight, how exactly do the Slave Lords manage to create a fairly extensive empire of multiple races?

T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil - Hommlet is home to numerous non-humans, elves, dwarves, and half-elves. In a small, backwater village. The Temple is rife with humans and humanoids working together.

U1-3 Beginning with Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh - the smugglers are a mixed bag of humans and humanoids working together. U2 expects the PC's to peacefully interact with the lizard folk to build a coalition against the invading third party. Doesn't seem so humanocentric to me.

So on and so forth. Greyhawk was the original kitchen sink.

 

[Remathilis]

Where are people getting this massively xenophobic (kill on sight) vibe for Greyhawk? It's certainly not present in the supplements or the writings. Greyhawk has always been pretty kitchen sink. Never minding all the experimentation by the Scarlet Brotherhood.

As far as I can tell, it come from this table in the 1e PHB:

The table shows racial like/dislike of the seven main races* in AD&D. The letter code (P = Preference, G = Goodwill, T = Tollerance, N = Neutral, A = Antagonism, H = Hatred) shows most races only prefer their own kind, occasionally have races they don mind (gnomes and halflings mainly) and in classic LoTR style, elves and dwarves despise each other and nobody likes half-orcs. As far as I can tell, that's it. That's the whole basis for this belief that Oerth is full of races that get together like colleagues at the annual company Holiday party. And that got mythologized by Greyhawk Grognards as a reaction to Forgotten Realms far more inclusive** take on racial integration.


* Unearthed Arcana doubles down by making an even more complex variant that breaks it down by subrace. It doesn't add much more than you couldn't figure out already.
** Faerun gets painted with this thanks the myriad of supplements it got, but its also important to remember that prior to 3e, dwarves were dying race due to low birthrate and elves were all retreating to Evermeet in classic LoTR fashion. And UA had PC drow options LONG before Salvatore wrote The Crystal Shard. But don't let facts get in the way of a good FR attack.