D&D (2024) No Dwarf, Halfling, and Orc suborgins, lineages, and legacies

[Gammadoodler]

Sure, and I don't think those need to be separate subspecies either. Though there at least one could argue that having different kind of innate magic is hereditary rather than cultural.


I disagree. Humans live in different environments but do not have subspecies.

Ok. So you acknowledge that the narrative heft of the elven subraces is even with the potential narrative heft of halfling and dwarven subraces. Cool.. that was kinda my point.

And of course, you are correct that humans live in different environments and don't have different subspecies. That said, we also don't have to describe these groups in terms of species (and there doesn't seem to be a lot of value in doing it).

That said..that said, the Civilization series of games has a whole thing where humans from different geographies and cultural contexts have differing attributes. Would a similar approach for fantasy races be problematic?

 

[Minigiant]

They don't always. Varric Tethras rocks, but he is cool in part because he's not a generic standard dwarf. Part of the problem is that players who like dwarfs often embrace the anti-individualistic approach and if you have any dwarf who isn't bog-standard, they'll attract ten times as many negative or snarky comments as an elf or tiefling or whatever who is atypical, when discussed (the internet as my witness).

I mean TTRPG game devs.

VG and WG devs have very strong incentives to make their setting different from the bog standard that TTRPG game designers don't.

For example War Games and Strategy games live off providing new strategies. You can only milk slow tough dwarves in heavy armor and no magic once.

This is why you see Fire Dwarves, Metal Dwarves, Steampunk Dwarves, Aromatics Dwarves, Druidic Dwarves, Chaos Dwarves, and Dark Dwarves in strategy games.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That said..that said, the Civilization series of games has a whole thing where humans from different geographies and cultural contexts have differing attributes. Would a similar approach for fantasy races be problematic?

Yes.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Yes.

Cool. So to clarify your position, since you don't appear to want to do so.

High Elves and Wood elves aren't any more biologically distinct than my proposed divisions of Halflings and Dwarves..

And to you game-encoded cultural/geographic differences are problematic...for reasons.

therefore..?

Like, what is your point?

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Maybe because I am Spanish I imagine halflings with a touch of Sancho Panza (don Quixote's squirel) and a lot of from "picarescque" fiction like the Lazarillo de Tormes.

I love dwarves because because they are the type of loyal friends you want them to be next to you in the batlefield. They are brave but not the goodlooking knight of shinning armour who conquest all the girls.

Some PC species would be more popular if they had got the right racial feats.

The spell "blood wind" from Savage Species should be updated as a catrip, even if the range is shorter. Then the natural weapons(horns or claws) could be more useful as racial traits

Shifters from Eberron could be more popular if WotC showed the right pictures of kemonomimi waifus ("girls with animal ears")

Does anybody else miss new PC species from 3.5 Expanded Psionic Handbook?

Mountain dwarves are more used to the darkness than the hill ones.

Now background in 2024 Ed works more like "heritage".

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Cool. So to clarify your position, since you don't appear to want to do so.

High Elves and Wood elves aren't any more biologically distinct than my proposed divisions of Halflings and Dwarves..

And to you game encoded cultural/geographic differences are problematic...for reasons.

therefore..?

Like, what is your point?

Get rid of subraces. Non-humans can have cultures just like humans, but there is no reason to make it mechanical, and doing so would be problematic. An exception could be made in case of obvious and significant physical differences, but perhaps in those cases it might be easier to write those as full separate species. For example tritons are not human subspecies, so why should aquatic elves be an elven subspecies? (Not that we need both tritons and tritons but elves; one aquatic hominid species seems sufficient.)

 

[CreamCloud0]

Ok. So you acknowledge that the narrative heft of the elven subraces is even with the potential narrative heft of halfling and dwarven subraces. Cool.. that was kinda my point.

And of course, you are correct that humans live in different environments and don't have different subspecies. That said, we also don't have to describe these groups in terms of species (and there doesn't seem to be a lot of value in doing it).

That said..that said, the Civilization series of games has a whole thing where humans from different geographies and cultural contexts have differing attributes. Would a similar approach for fantasy races be problematic?

i could see rather than subspecies humans leaning into getting expertise in the skills they aquire through their background, to emphasise how the species specialised into versatility through their learnt skills rather than producing specialised biological adaptation.

 

[Yaarel]

Get rid of subraces. Non-humans can have cultures just like humans, but there is no reason to make it mechanical, and doing so would be problematic. An exception could be made in case of obvious and significant physical differences, but perhaps in those cases it might be easier to write those as full separate species. For example tritons are not human subspecies, so why should aquatic elves be an elven subspecies? (Not that we need both tritons and tritons but elves; one aquatic hominid species seems sufficient.)

For me, a "Sea Elf" is a normal Elf who chose some kind of Water Breathing spell. Done.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Get rid of subraces. Non-humans can have cultures just like humans, but there is no reason to make it mechanical, and doing so would be problematic. An exception could be made in case of obvious and significant physical differences, but perhaps in those cases it might be easier to write those as full separate species. For example tritons are not human subspecies, so why should aquatic elves be an elven subspecies? (Not that we need both tritons and tritons but elves; one aquatic hominid species seems sufficient.)

I think that's a semantic argument that relies on the specific use of the word 'subrace', which I personally do not need.

I don't need these fantasy people to be born Mountain Dwarves or High Elves, but I think it's reasonable that, by the time they start adventuring, their circumstances have shaped them sufficiently, that they have recognizable Mountain Dwarf or High Elf traits.

If you point is that we could have 'Mountain' humans and 'High' gnomes, sure I could be ok with that too.

The general thrust of my point was that the existing thematics, flawed as they may be, are equivalent. If we're going to continue using them, we can at least use them equivalently.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Tolkien's dwarves have too much plot armor holding together a single theme for those two to be meaningfully different.

They’re PCs. Neither of them have plot armor.