I don't get the arguments for bioessentialism

[Mr. Lahey]

Not just "if you want to..."

It is, "if the differences between humans and non-humans are too small, you don't really need the non-humans."

You know how everyone complains that non-humans just seem like humans in costumes? Well, that means your non-humans are not distinctive enough.



Right, but then you have to actually make them DIFFERENT. Being a little stronger faster, or tougher doesn't really do it.

I agree, but that’s the issue, IMO. Making them act differently is left up to the player, which means that it will vary from group to group and player to player. Without guidelines written in the game itself there will be no way to ensure even a basic consistency.

Putting aside the physical capabilities, whether we’re talking arracoccra, thri-kreen, Kua-toa or other creatures, I would think that most writers or creators would imagine differences in their societies that relate to various behaviours or instincts we might assign to birds, insects or fish.

If we were to encounter either of these three as “societies” in a game, we’d likely be more understanding of these generalizations, since the nature vs nurture aspect of this is ambiguous. When someone wants to play one of these as a PC, however, any attempt to develop parameters around how a PC version of either of these ‘should’ differ in their outlook on life or how they relate to the outside world will lead us right back into the same problematic territory.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Are you kidding? We call those kinds of people bandits, Vikings, raiders, conquistadores, or some other word. If there's gold to be made by breaking into places, killing the inhabitants, and stealing their stuff you will absolutely find people who will try doing that for a living.

Against Giants and Beholders and Dragons? Yeah...I don't think so.

 

[Bill Zebub]

If we were to encounter either of these three as “societies” in a game, we’d likely be more understanding of these generalizations, since the nature vs nurture aspect of this is ambiguous. When someone wants to play one of these as a PC, however, any attempt to develop parameters around how a PC version of either of these ‘should’ differ in their outlook on life or how they relate to the outside world will lead us right back into the same problematic territory.

Agreed. Basically there are four different discussions going on here which are being treated as one topic. Really it's a 2x2 matrix of NPC/PC on one axis, and physical/behavioral differences on the other axis.

 

[The Firebird]

Against Giants and Beholders and Dragons? Yeah...I don't think so.

People are willing to take extreme levels of risk. The K2 climbers, the BASE jumpers, and so on. I bet you'd find some.

 

[Bill Zebub]

People are willing to take extreme levels of risk. The K2 climbers, the BASE jumpers, and so on. I bet you'd find some.

Maybe you're right...if the IRL rules were comparable to 5e, where you never TPK and the monsters always die.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Same here.

But I find it a little ironic, too, since I've seen you post numerous times about how much you're enjoying Shadowdark (yay!) in which literally the only differentiation between Elves, Dwarves, Humans, etc. is that each gets a single ability.

Different game, different expectations. I like four-color superhero games too. And to be fair I've only played it once, and the feel and attitude of Shadowdark is more appealing to me than the mechanics.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Okay, so let us say that is taken as truth.

Then, we have a couple of points...

1) The game mechanics haven't really supported that approach to play, probably ever.

2) The overall game design doesn't really have room for radical differences while maintaining similar effectiveness in play. Putting a bunny in play with a Rottweiler would give D&D balance-heartburn.

People get way too out of shape about "balance" in RPGs anyway.

 

[Umbran]

I agree, but that’s the issue, IMO. Making them act differently is left up to the player, which means that it will vary from group to group and player to player. Without guidelines written in the game itself there will be no way to ensure even a basic consistency.

I don't know that consistency is a goal here. I am not sure I care if someone else's take on lizardfolk matches mine, for instance.

Putting aside the physical capabilities, whether we’re talking arracoccra, thri-kreen, Kua-toa or other creatures, I would think that most writers or creators would imagine differences in their societies that relate to various behaviours or instincts we might assign to birds, insects or fish.

Right.

So, koa-toa society will have to differ from human, due to the qualities of the water they live deep within (unless we do away with some of those issues with magic).

....especially because, biologically and evolutionarily speaking, "fish" isn't really a thing - we no longer view Pisces to be a phylogenic group, because any inclusive group of "fish" ends up including... all tetrapods, including us.

To speak about them like we do humans, we have to be much more specific - what family/clade of fish are kuo-toa like?

Then we should also note that, in building cities with thousands of people, we humans are pretty clearly deviating from basic primate behavior...

That's part of the thing about sentience - it allows the creature to greatly deviate its behavior from biological roots. That is likely its major evolutionary benefit.

Thus, if humans deviate from primate behavior, kuo-toa should deviate from fish behavior. If both of us are building cities, should we mot consider the idea that sentience is paving over most of the differences?

Then we are back to using species largely as a stand-in for culture...

 

[aramis erak]

I'll note that Star Trek, despite the "Forehead Aliens", really does imply several significant differences, and the games have tried to reflect that.
FASA STRPG, the Vulcans were rather impressive, but they weren't that fun to play, because everyone knew you had to play a stuck up mind-reading snob. (This was Pre TNG, timewise) Note that ability scores don't impact skills in FASA.
LUG, the modifiers were pretty potent, because the ability score ranges were so narrow to begin with, but it's also important to note that they're mostly sub-attributes being modified, and the rare maximum attribute change (Vulcan's Fitness starts at 2 like most others; the tellarites have the unusual starting of Fitness 3... and both Tellarites and Vulcans can get to 6... but thanks to the Strength+1 edge, a Vulcan at 6 is better than a tellarite at 6 in the strength affected fields. Klingons, like Tellarites, are Fitness 3 (max 6), but with Vitality 2 instead of the vulcan Strength +1. And the Klingons also take it in the shorts on logic; Their int is actually wider (2 base, 6 max), but the Logic -2 edge is impairing research...

STA has pretty stiff modifiers, a +2 and a +1, or in a few, 3×+1 on a 4-12 scale for attributes (humans 6-10).
PD1 sets your starting attributes by species. 3 is typical. But some species start at 6 or 7, and several have 1's.

In PD1, LUG, and STA, the attributes have major capability impact. but they also include decent lore synopses, and STA and PD1 both have special abilities of note, too.

It's also worth noting that the species in PD1 are not from the broader Star Trek setting; only those from TOS and TAS, and not even all of the TAS ones, are in PD1.

Ability Scores encoding huge effects on skills, it really does shape player behavior in a point build system, and only FASA and Heritage (and the Japanese Enterprise) plus the modern fan done oness are using random ability scores.

I'll note as well: STA is thriving despite there being a trio of Prime Directive games, two very good free Trek RPGs (WNMHGB, Far Trek), two commercial Trek-Likes available (Starships & Spacemen 1e and 2e), and fan ports to a dozen other systems.

The thing that makes it work is that Trek is so very popular, and there's loads of beta cannon, that the ASIs for species are well supported; Humans are, typically, middle of the road at everything.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's the irony here, imo. "I want to play something totally different, that has an intrinsically different personality from humans, and could never be mistaken for humans....who makes a living going into dungeons, killing monsters, and taking their stuff. Which nobody, not even humans, would ever do IRL."

It occurs to me that one of the reasons elves and dwarves and humans and hobbits are so distinctive in Tolkien is that he has a very detailed multi-thousand year history for them. And their longevity means that a lot of that history is personal for a lot of them. (He even makes indirect reference to this: the most cheerful and least "Dwarvish" of the Dwarves are also the youngest.)

In my experience, a lot of other fiction that does NOT provide that kind of backstory and context the distinctiveness of the races either overly relies (perhaps unintentionally) on the tropes established by Tolkien, or tries to do something different and falls flat because the backstory isn't there. The stories really could have just been written with only humans.

Right now I'm thinking about the Witcher tv series (I never read the books): I'm not totally following the story, but "elves" have some grudge against a bunch of humans, and are treated as second class citizens, at least by some humans. Oh, and they seem woodcrafty and use bows. /eyeroll. But, really, they could just be humans who look a little different, and that would both work with the story and be pretty darned realistic.

Another example: in the PJ movies none of the context is there for anybody who doesn't already know the story, so to give the audience something to latch onto he relies on coarse, unimaginative archetypes such as Dwarves drinking a lot and having Scottish accents, and Elves being all uptight and playing sonorous music on harps.

Good thing I already had all that context anyway from reading all the books then.