I don't get the arguments for bioessentialism

[Fanaelialae]

I tend to approach species description as descriptive, rather than prescriptive. The typical wood elf might love forests, but there's nothing to say that there couldn't be wood elf industrialists out there who want to raze the forests to make room for factories.

With regard to mechanics, as with most things, I think it's a tradeoff with pros and cons for both viewpoints.

For example, let's say two players are making strength-based fighters. One wants to play a half-giant while the other is a halfling. Let's assume a fixed array of ability scores, arrange as desired.

If the half-giant gets a +2 to strength, while the halfling gets a -2 to strength, that arguably results in better verisimilitude. Assuming all other things are equal, we expect the massive half-giant to be stronger than the tiny halfling. It might feel a bit silly for the halfling to be an even match when arm wrestling the half giant.

Of course, that strength penalty might also be less fun for the halfling player, and potentially result in no one wanting to play a strength-based halfling fighter. It can constrain practical character creation, funneling players towards making the same class/species combinations, while penalizing those who make sub-optimal choices for the sake of RP. That said, I've known players who actually enjoy making those sub-optimal picks, so it isn't always a negative.

You could, alternately, represent the half-giant's strength mechanically by other means (maybe they get advantage when making strength checks against smaller targets) but this also has its own pros and cons. Using the example ability above, the half giant is no more effective at making strength checks against a larger target than the halfling is, which might strain verisimilitude for some.

The point being, I don't think there's a perfect answer. Just use the option that has the best pros and minimal cons for your group.

IMC, I have beings that are naturally Enkindled, and those that are not. Being Enkindled means you have free will. Elves, orcs, humans, etc, are all naturally Enkindled. Demons, angels, elementals, etc, are not, and instead follow their "programming". A typical demon has no more choice of being evil than the sun has of choosing not to shine.

That said, the state of being Enkindled is like having a flame within you. Under the right circumstances, an Enkindled being might accidentally Enkindle a demon (or whatever). From that point onward, that demon does have a choice as to how it behaves. It may choose to embrace evil, or reflect on its actions and choose a different path. Likely, it will feel conflicted for some time as it comes to terms with its newly Enkindled nature.

That's been my personal "workaround" for the issue of creatures with an inherent nature.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I dont grasp how

“be senstive to the way racist ideologies have portrayed outgroup humans as sub-human”

means that halflings shouldnt be +2 Dex -2 str

I mean being real, it doesn't in a hard sense, but does in a soft sense. I'll explain.

It's not like any measurable number of people reject games outright for having species-based stat mods or the like, but the issue is really down to how essentially harmless physical stuff like "halflings are small and strong for their size so very nimble" (hence +2 DEX -2 STR) can easily trend into a portraying orcs identically to how racist psychos from the 1950s portrayed Asian or Black people (mentally subnormal, inherently savage/barbarous, reproducing rapidly, incapable of building real culture, possibly physically stronger/tougher, due to their savage nature, etc. etc.). If you don't think that slide can happen, well 5E hard-proves it can, because it happened between the PHB in 2014, and Volo's in 2016, which like, that's incredibly rapid movement, and from well-meaning people who I genuinely don't think were trying to be racist, they just managed to because certain tropes clump together (especially in the minds of people raised in racist societies, which is to say pretty much all current societies).

The real problem, being very honest about this, isn't physical stat modifiers by themselves. It just isn't. They're caught up in the fact that mental stat modifiers often are basically involved in depictions that essentially (sometimes very precisely) replicate massively racist ideas. INT penalties particularly. And it's hard to get rid of just mental stat mods - I mean, it's not, but it would be too much of a leap for a lot of people I think, so it's easier to remove both at the same time.

The reason it caught on so quickly is that it also lines up with allow more diverse and interesting character design, because then you can have typical characters without them just being ones who push against the default modifiers (which isn't a mechanically or even really conceptually interesting thing to do, and itself potentially plays into racist tropes).

I don't think there's any real objection to games which have stat mods in existing, but I do think there's a reasonable case that it's probably not the right way to go for a mass-market-oriented game, and especially not if you're incredibly confident in your abilities to be sensitive, and rightly confident.

Because again, WotC absolutely screwed this up. WotC who have, relative to other RPG companies, infinite resources. A bunch of well-meaning people, some of them minorities themselves (though very few ethnically so at that point), managed to screw this up.

The other issue with stat mods is that they're not very interesting or evocative compared to more specific abilities.

Not directly related to what you're saying but one thing that I was thinking about whilst travelling was that Star Trek has sort of addressed this to varying degrees from the start, albeit particularly from TNG onwards. Spock isn't Vulcan. He's half-human, half-Vulcan. Vulcan logic is a cultural trait, not a biological one (c.f. Romulans), and without it, Vulcans aren't really smarter than humans (they are stronger, though). Worf is Klingon, but in Star Fleet, and in fact is rather atypical, showing his human upbringing has made him very different to a Klingon with a traditional upbringing, despite having fully Klingon biological traits.

 

[Rainbow Scissors]

So change that lore? Why is that hard?

If you like the existing lore, change it back in your campaign.

EDIT: I am taking this in the context of official books published by for profit companies that want as large of an audience as possible. I don't think any of this applies otherwise.

It's not hard.

My comment was that what's true in a fictional world can include things that do not adhere to day-to-day life on Earth. Those differences sometimes include things like sci-fi robots programmed to kill or beings directly crafted directly by a divine being who imparts specific behavior.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I have no problem with such rules existing in the text of a game (I have several that use race as class and have zero issue with the practice), but if you're being Hasbro and just care about the money, using a more popular system as the default option is probably best.

Likewise that's why 3E and 5E didn't bring back race/class limits, and even the majority of OSR/NSR games don't have them. Because they're wildly unpopular and putting them in a game just makes people less likely to play it. Bioessentialism is an issue but it needs to seen in context, it was kind of lucky because it became an issue at the same time as people were increasingly tiring of species-based modifiers (a lot of which were very weakly supported in the actual lore, and just seemed like cheap/lazy and not necessarily even mildly offensive but almost worse extremely boring stereotypes - like +WIS on Wood Elves? Ever seen a Wood Elf be portrayed as wise in a meaningful way in D&D? Not really, they're usually described as capricious, often petty and territorial, none of which smells very "wise". It's just Druid/Ranger bait!), so the combined feeling pushed to move away from that for a lot of games, and honestly one doesn't miss it.

There are games where it makes more sense, of course, but even in those I so many games think moving away from stat mods to actual abilities has caused people to think a bit more deeply about species and about making them interesting.

(5E swapping this for the idiocy of making the stat mods all based on dreadful backgrounds, which was in some ways more limiting was a mistake, I note, and a contributing factor to 5E 2024 not making the splash WotC hoped. WotC overestimated how much people cared about bioessentialism specifically and underestimated how much people cared about being able to build the characters they wanted. But that's a whole other thread.)

 

[Bill Zebub]

It's not hard.

My comment was that what's true in a fictional world can include things that do not adhere to day-to-day life on Earth. Those differences sometimes include things like sci-fi robots programmed to kill or beings directly crafted directly by a divine being who imparts specific behavior.

Fair enough. I'm totally with you on the robots.

On the latter, I also get the idea of an entire species/race/kin/whatever having personality quirks predetermined by the god who created them. (c.f. "Aule" and "Dwarves")

I think it only, or mostly, becomes problematic when:
1) That essentialism is "they are evil; go ahead and slaughter them"
2) The way that essentialism is conveyed is using tropes that have historically been used for oppression.

Doing 1 without 2 is challenging. Sure, you can have a tall, beautiful, pale-skinned race of monogamous philosophers who are inherently evil...but I am skeptical that players would slaughter them the way they do orcs.

 

[Celebrim]

I tend to approach species description as descriptive, rather than prescriptive. The typical wood elf might love forests, but there's nothing to say that there couldn't be wood elf industrialists out there who want to raze the forests to make room for factories.

Yes. In my game for example, elves are "usually" chaotic good. This doesn't mean that all elves are chaotic good only that they are by biological or spiritual inclination (which is the same thing in a fantasy) more inclined to be free spirited and altruistic by inherent nature than humans. Humans are "usually" neutral meaning that without cultural indoctrination they are typically not inclined toward anything. If for example only 8% of humans tend to be Chaotic Good, then if 48% of elves tend to be Chaotic Good then it is very noticeable a very strong social tendency that elves have to certain sorts of communities than humans have, and yet we can't say this particular elf is chaotic good or this particular human isn't. On the whole though humans have more diverse communities and philosophies than elves, for better or (probably) usually worse.

If anyone reads this as my elves are making a comment on particular human ethnicities then that's their reading and is completely disrespectful to my actual intent, which is to discuss humanity by contrasting it with invented things that are very much not human as a sort of mirror into who we are. That most humans are "usually neutral" is a topic you could discuss in a framework of that being a commentary on humanity and you could argue, "That's not realistic because humans are usually evil" or "humans are usually good and evil is learned as a social construct" and that would be an interesting discussion because humans are real and in my fictional game I've said something about them, but it would be wholly wrong to say that the elves are meant to be seen as humans much less a particular sort of humans.

A wood elf industrialist that wants to raze forests is a lot more unlikely than a human with those traits but isn't impossible. A wood elf fascist that decides everyone that doesn't like forests the way he does needs to go on the other hand is not only plausible but the sort of thing that does happen, and also the sort of thing that other wood elves might not notice at first in their "everyone's entitled to their opinion" and "I can sympathetic with where you are coming from" normal way of looking at the world. That line crossing is an interesting point as people's underlying motives aren't always clear and even bad guys can sound like they have a real point, especially when they can point to real injustices that they are supposedly responding to.

Goblins have been "people" in my game world since the early 1990s. They are "usually lawful evil" but not exclusively so. Why they are like they are is part of the games deep lore that I don't need to get into, but I'm no more commenting on humanity or a specific part of it directly with goblins than I am with elves. Rather, the whole point is to have a non-human contrast to act as a mirror to help see ourselves in comparison to imagined alternatives. To the extent that we can see ourselves in goblins, it's a universal human failing that all human tribes are subject to (seeing ourselves as tribe first and all other tribes as enemies to subjugate). For that matter to the extent, we can see ourselves in elves, the typical failing of elves is a universal human failing as well (seeing ourselves as individuals first with no connection or obligations to anyone who isn't close kindred or friend).

Whereas Gnolls are "Varelse" in my setting. They aren't people or else the "peopleness" of the Gnoll is irrelevant since one cannot ever form an equal relationship with them on the basis of sympathetic communication. The Gnoll is a hardwired lesser demon lacking the characteristic diversity and volition to overcome their own natures seen in humans, elves, or goblins. They are like the Xenomorphs of Alien(s), so alien and so predatory in their creation that no meaningful dialogue can be had with them. Nuking them from orbit just to be sure is a perfectly moral and reasonable thing to do. I make no apologies for having one dimensional bad guys in my setting that are there just to oppose and slaughter without any intention to have a complex dialogue about that. If you want to bring up how people have in the real world denied the peopleness of people in order to justify treating real people as non-people, then that's fine and all and that also happens in the setting, but that still doesn't mean you get out of denying the complexity of there also being stuff that is equivalent to sentient small pox and having to also deal with that at the same time. Instead, you have to deal with that while avoiding the temptation to put everything that is slightly different in the same category of as a Gnoll or a Succubus, or conversely staying clear about what a Gnoll is even as you celebrate the peopleness of a Goblin or Elf.

If someone doesn't like it. Fine. I'm not asking for anyone's validation.

If someone thinks I'm being immoral and they are displaying greater virtue? Also fine. Interesting discussion. I feel the same way myself looking out in the other direction and unsurprisingly feel rather vindicated by how I see things playing out.

That's been my personal "workaround" for the issue of creatures with an inherent nature.

The fact you have a deeply realized cosmology is cool. The fact that you feel the need to call it a "workaround" makes me sad.

 

[Bill Zebub]

This doesn't mean that all elves are chaotic good only that they are by biological or spiritual inclination (which is the same thing in a fantasy) more inclined to be free spirited and altruistic by inherent nature than humans.

...or could it be because when you grow up in tree-houses with parents who follow a pastoral religion are more concerned with poetry than with wealth you tend to free spirited and altruistic? And maybe longevity contributes to that kind of lifestyle. It can all make sense without it needing to be hard-wired into the elves.

In fact, this brings me back to the OP, who started with phenotypes. Sure...phenotype differences are likely to lead to lifestyle differences, which in turn may culturally drive behavioral differences. But that's different from the behaviors being wired.

I did a study of 935 elves who were adopted as babies and raised in primarily (>90%) human cities of at least 10,000 inhabitants. Those elves were no more likely than the humans in their community to end up Chaotic Good, with a p-value of 0.0237.

 

[Celebrim]

Sure, you can have a tall, beautiful, pale-skinned race of monogamous philosophers who are inherently evil...but I am skeptical that players would slaughter them the way they do orcs.

I'm not. There is even literary precedence.

Edgar Rice Burroughs in the Barsoom series wants to have a race that is obviously evil and can be slaughtered at will so he encodes them as a blond Aryan racial supremacists who are hypocritical religious fanatics. In the stories they are utterly unredeemable and unlike any other race on Mars, including the more alien and inhuman ones, resists all attempts by the protagonist to reach out across racial lines and build friendships and unlike any other Martian race produces no examples of a paragon virtuous member with inherent honor and goodness.

Absolutely if you did that in a setting you'd have people gleefully slaughtering the Aryan encoded baddies without question, and indeed arguably we've got some 80 years or so of media supporting the notion that baddies look like that.

For that matter, if you really wanted to hit humanity where it really lives, you could encode a whole race of "Brainy Smurfs" as your ultimate bad guys - big headed, overly smart, intellectual, arrogant, autistics who want to dangerously subvert the large healthy warriors right to breed and lead. And while we nerds might feel like that hit a bit close to home once decoded, I think that encoding as nerd as evil would totally work with most people. In fact I could probably draw real world parallels if I wanted to, but honestly I get so sick and tired of having to deal with real world politics in the context of my games.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

I mean being real, it doesn't in a hard sense, but does in a soft sense. I'll explain.

It's not like any measurable number of people reject games outright for having species-based stat mods or the like, but the issue is really down to how essentially harmless physical stuff like "halflings are small and strong for their size so very nimble" (hence +2 DEX -2 STR) can easily trend into a portraying orcs identically to how racist psychos from the 1950s portrayed Asian or Black people (mentally subnormal, inherently savage/barbarous, reproducing rapidly, incapable of building real culture, possibly physically stronger/tougher, due to their savage nature, etc. etc.). If you don't think that slide can happen, well 5E hard-proves it can, because it happened between the PHB in 2014, and Volo's in 2016, which like, that's incredibly rapid movement, and from well-meaning people who I genuinely don't think were trying to be racist, they just managed to because certain tropes clump together (especially in the minds of people raised in racist societies, which is to say pretty much all current societies).

The real problem, being very honest about this, isn't physical stat modifiers by themselves. It just isn't. They're caught up in the fact that mental stat modifiers often are basically involved in depictions that essentially (sometimes very precisely) replicate massively racist ideas. INT penalties particularly. And it's hard to get rid of just mental stat mods - I mean, it's not, but it would be too much of a leap for a lot of people I think, so it's easier to remove both at the same time.

The reason it caught on so quickly is that it also lines up with allow more diverse and interesting character design, because then you can have typical characters without them just being ones who push against the default modifiers (which isn't a mechanically or even really conceptually interesting thing to do, and itself potentially plays into racist tropes).

I don't think there's any real objection to games which have stat mods in existing, but I do think there's a reasonable case that it's probably not the right way to go for a mass-market-oriented game, and especially not if you're incredibly confident in your abilities to be sensitive, and rightly confident.

Because again, WotC absolutely screwed this up. WotC who have, relative to other RPG companies, infinite resources. A bunch of well-meaning people, some of them minorities themselves (though very few ethnically so at that point), managed to screw this up.

The other issue with stat mods is that they're not very interesting or evocative compared to more specific abilities.

Not directly related to what you're saying but one thing that I was thinking about whilst travelling was that Star Trek has sort of addressed this to varying degrees from the start, albeit particularly from TNG onwards. Spock isn't Vulcan. He's half-human, half-Vulcan. Vulcan logic is a cultural trait, not a biological one (c.f. Romulans), and without it, Vulcans aren't really smarter than humans (they are stronger, though). Worf is Klingon, but in Star Fleet, and in fact is rather atypical, showing his human upbringing has made him very different to a Klingon with a traditional upbringing, despite having fully Klingon biological traits.

Worf was also a big nerd. Data and Geordi usually sought him out when they needed a third nerd for things. In fact until ds9, he was probably known more for his tinkering then his fighting ability.

Plus Nog went from a delinquent to an outstanding officer.

 

[Celebrim]

...or could it be because when you grow up in tree-houses with parents who follow a pastoral religion are more concerned with poetry than with wealth you tend to free spirited and altruistic? And maybe longevity contributes to that kind of lifestyle. It can all make sense without it needing to be hard-wired into the elves.

Maybe, but it is hard wired into elves.

I did a study of 935 elves who were adopted as babies and raised in primarily (>90%) human cities of at least 10,000 inhabitants. Those elves were no more likely than the humans in their community to end up Chaotic Good, with a p-value of 0.0237.

You definitely didn't do that.