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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6526372" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Howso? People still want to be entertained, want to have money and security, want to see and appreciate things that are aesthetically pleasing. The specific details of what is entertaining or what is aesthetically pleasing (or what "money" and "security" are precisely defined as) vary over the centuries, but human behavior in an aggregate sense is very much analogous. If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not avenge? More of us belong to the "decently well-off" demographic than before, but among those of comparable amenities, things are really not that different--and we certainly still have our bread and circuses. I'd like to know what ways, that aren't purely attributable to education, religion, or aesthetics, that current-day humans are that much different from (say) Roman-era humans.I recognize that I was using infant life-expectancy rather than adult life-expectancy, but it's still a significant improvement--20 years or so, around a third longer. If you go further back than the Renaissance, it's even more, closer to 30 years. I don't concede that it's not the same as being naturally long-lived though--why is it a difference of kind and not merely degree? Given that every edition of D&D (with race/class separation, that is) allows anyone of any race to be a Druid ("union/communion with the natural world") among other things...yeah, I'm still not seeing it. Particularly since this whole communion with the natural world...is usually cultural and not biological (the Na'vi, of course, take it up to 11, but no elves I know of do it). Drow are elves as much as "wood" elves or the like, and they aren't particularly nature-y...a difference in culture and skin-tone and little else.As for the "they are almost always portrayed as being different"...they're almost always described as pretty to look at and have a different "bearing" or whatever, but beyond that the differences come across as an Informed Ability. That is, everyone just "knows" elves are different, but it's never really shown how they are different. Tolkien, of course, does a great job here...in large part because he actually took the time to invent whole languages and distinct cultures for his races. Elves have a few, very subtle albeit important differences (e.g. humans use magic in more or less the way Gandalf does, knowing and casting spells; elves primarily employ magic simply by doing things, because magic gets woven into everything they do).So...having less sexual dimorphism counts, but having a bloody tail doesn't? The approximate ratio of sexes counts? These are things I would expect to come up rarely if ever in most campaigns. Especially since the kinds of things you're talking about (e.g. "dwarf women have beards, most dwarves are male") has dramatically waned over time...and that's probably a good thing, considering the gender connotations thereof.And sure, someone whose basal needs are different will be different...as I've said. But other than warforged, all the "common" and most of the "uncommon" D&D races (speaking across all editions, not just 4e or 5e) don't meet that standard. So you've found another interesting axis that flat-out doesn't apply to the races in question. Unless a particular DM decides it does, at which point you're talking houserules anyway, so I couldn't possibly account for them.That's...not consistent with my understanding of the situation. Sela, for instance, is a Romulan/Human, and Simon Tarses is a quarter Romulan--it's very clear that this sort of thing is not as bizarre as you make it sound. For Sela in particular, it makes very little sense that extreme genetic engineering is required--she was a consort, a slave, there would be no reason, and it only took a single year for Sela to be born in the first place. The biggest things for Spock are that Doctor McCoy likes to make fun of him, and that being partially human means Spock's emotional responses are even more acute than is typical for Vulcans, so he must be even more disciplined than they.Basically, the series has never been particularly consistent about this sort of thing, and went out of its way to cast Spock as different for drama purposes, not because of anything actually divergent....really? I honestly don't see how. It seems to me that removing essentialism and recognizing that, at a basal level, all sentience is the same makes sense. Besides, this has been a long time in coming--in Enterprise, the <a href="http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Unnamed_Humans_%2831st_century%29" target="_blank">31st-century timepod occupant</a> had DNA from almost half a dozen different species--mostly Human, but with Vulcan and a number of others mixed in.And the various orders of sentient beings in most D&D settings are the children of various divine entities, all of whom are more similar to one another than any of them would like to admit. I don't see the difference.</blockquote>

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