D&D General No More "Humans in Funny Hats": Racial Mechanics Should Determine Racial Cultures
Samloyal23
Adventurer
Races like these only seem "modern" because you do not have a cultural context to put them in. In my Last Lands setting Gnolls, Serpent Folk, and Giffs are the children of Egyptian gods dwelling in a city-state based on a blend of Egyptian, Arab, and Persian folklore. Giffs are not space mercenaries anymore, they are followers of the River Mother, Taweret, the hippopotamus goddess of the city-state of Shosnar. Gnolls were created by Anubis to be his followers. The serpentine Naja-Set serve their lord Set and reflect his darkness. Try making loxodons call back to Ganesha or the Biblical monster Behemoth. Have your Lion folk reflect the cultures of African tribes that revere them. Or, if you are Christian, have them reflect the majesty of Christ, like Aslan did in the Narnia tales. Build a cultural context that amplifies their unique traits.
Oh, yeah... I'm not doing that at all.
Faceless, Human, Minotaur, Naghese, Nazzar, and Stormborn. 6 heritages that instead get oodles of cultural options to draw from and inform their identity. I've made a ton of progress on Sins of the Scorpion Age since I made that post, but a core idea was to have a fairly limited heritage palette that fulfilled story-niches, rather than going kitchen-sink with it. No elves in this world, for example.
What I was referring to in that particular post was the narrative socio-historical currency that specific creatures, like Minotaurs, carry.
I'm also doing everything I can to avoid "This race is tied to this real world culture" to avoid having heritage-traits speak ill of a real world group of people. Instead, a Minotaur can be from anywhere in the world and carry that culture with them wherever they go. No "Leonins are African tribal Stand-ins" or "Dwarves are Jewish stereotypes".
In part, though, it's because I'm going for both a limited-deity and unlimited deity setup... The D&D style "Distant Gods Granting Power" is a list of 8, while there are a much wider variety of gods in the world itself. Six of the 8 gods created peoples, though a Seventh transforms people who already exist to be her own... Still have to figure out the particulars of that, but I'm waiting for Level Up to launch before I do any further Crunchwork.
Lyxen
Great Old One
And why would that be ? Djinni are a highly magical race, with powers, a history and culture, why would all that be almost negated by his "job" ?
Moreover, honestly you don't even make a good case of saying that he is defined as a gate guard, since in the following sentence, you are actually saying that, in the end, it's mostly overridden by his personality anyway. Don't get me wrong, as I am totally in line with that point, when creating an NPC, personality is probably the most important factor anyway. But race (especially when it's a fantastic one to once more avoid the funny hats, and even a factor such as longevity/immortality/destiny/reincarnation/etc. can mean a lot), religion, culture, job, family, etc. are all important factors.
So no, I totally disagree, they should never be "just people", this leads to a much flatter game where you only exploit one possible dimension of what could be a highly fantastic world. If you want to play low fantasy where everyone is "human with variations" (there have been tons of fantasy settings like this which work great for both novels and some RPG), it's fine, but there is no reason to impose this on anyone, or to pave the way for total uniformity on the basis that there should not be any discrimination whatsoever.
Once more, stereotyping and generalisation are bad in the real world, but in a (high) fantasy world, they are a very useful tool to define a varied and rich world, and unless you are striving for total blandness, they are unavoidable. For example you yourself have used stereotypes of "guards" that people doing a security job might find extremely offensive (in particular since you started by "bored, eager to take a bribe").
I really hate this trend towards total blandness in fantasy world, which goes with putting "wrong" labels on really good and useful words and concept on the basis that they are being used in a negative way by some people out there. My ideal TTRPG Fantasy World is Glorantha, where there are races and cultures and people with personality and religion, but where it all makes sense, where it's perfectly OK to hate another religion, culture, species or race because of historical/magical/divine/economic/etc. reasons, and where all of the species are certainly not equal, some a stronger, dumber, more clever, more resistant, magically infused, divinely protected, suited to environments and this reflects on their culture, way of life, relations, prejudices, etc.
It's rich, vibrant, and even more importantly, it's extremely conducive to really great fantasy roleplaying, because the stereotypes help define relations of friendship and conflict and therefore drama, which is at the core of every good story ever told. Which does not mean that you have to play according to stereotype, but because they are strong in the game, it also helps you really understand what playing against a stereotype really means in terms of roleplaying, and how to make it great in the game instead of (as is the current tread in D&D), only doing it for the technical bonuses that it gives you.
Where Stafford was more clever was in creating stereotypes that are so extreme and so different from those of our real world and standard fantasy (elves are really plants for example and reproduce as such) that there can be no confusion and it's way harder to criticise them on the basis of real world difficulties.
But for me, that's the way to go in D&D, not the "bland" way of uniformisation. Fantasy races/species can be whatever you want, it's perfectly OK for some to be stronger, more clever, weaker, dumber, whatever, this together with strong religious influences (which are usually linked, a god of fire would not create water dwelling creatures) clearly has an impact on their culture, which in turn has an impact on the way they live and the "jobs" they do, etc. And on top of that, when looking at individual NPCs, of course, it's natural for them to have a personality which might or might not be in accordance with all that precedes, but there is no such thing as a culture made only of rebels, if most of the members of a society do not conform to their stereotypes, it does not exist.
And honestly, looked at in that light, I see absolutely zero problem with sentences which I suspect will disappear from the game in the next iteration due to mostly external pressure, such as:
- The evil deities who created other races, though, made those races to serve them. Those races have strong inborn tendencies that match the nature of their gods. Most orcs share the violent, savage nature of the orc gods, and are thus inclined toward evil. Even if an orc chooses a good alignment, it struggles against its innate tendencies for its entire life. (Even half-orcs feel the lingering pull of the orc god’s influence.)
- Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks. [and all the rest of the Gruumsh story which is great to show how his anger came from being last and rejected]
By the way, I'm French, but I can be rational and not take offense about all the stereotypes thrown even in joking over a lot of the posts above, but I can totally guarantee to you that if some racial stereotypes had been used instead, this thread would have been locked a long time ago, even if they had been used in only really good jokes. So I'm not saying this at all for you @doctorbadwolf (this is important, it's not an answer to your post at all), but in the end people who reject stereotypes and generalisations on principle should really look at themselves in a mirror and check for their own use of them.
Vaalingrade
Legend
You mean the edition where every race had a unique power and dedicated paragon paths and each class/power source had their own unique power set with its own playstyle and feel united only in the structure by which they are acquired and frequency of use?
Then no. No it was not.
One need not even have a story to tell to want a curated setting rather than a kitchen sink settin. I don't begin a campaign with a story to tell. However, I do have many stories that I don't want to occur in a setting that I am running...samurai gunslingers riding dinosaurs would be one of those stories as they are not cool, but lame (imo).
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Yes, and rightly so. There is a difference. No demographic I belong to has ever oppressed or marginalized the French. In fact, in the modern world at least, the French have never been oppressed or marginalized by another group, that I’m aware of.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
The Simpsons.
Lyxen
Great Old One
Oh, because now being able to prove (and I wonder how you would do this, by the way) that no demographic someone belongs to has ever oppressed or marginalised another group is sufficient to apply stereotypes and to mock that other group ? Are you certain that this is what you want to say here ?
Because by god if it's true, I'm pretty sure that I could start mocking people using stereotypes of a large percentage of populations in other countries without too much risk, based on race or any other criterion.
I'm sorry, but first, why would you restrict it to the modern world ? And what is the "modern world" anyway ? I'm pretty sure that BLM (amongst many others) does (rightly) not make such distinctions.
And second, I know for a fact that you are wrong about the french not being marginalised even in the modern world, I have a very clear picture of that from working recently in Singapore in a specific company, and with intentions clearly not as nice as with the people on these forums speaking about cheese (although the "tourist welcoming" thing when France is the no1 destination in the world is clearly jealousy
).
Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
You do know France was invaded by Nazis in WW2 who begun a repression of French resistance?
The french decision to adopt a defensive strategy and its subsequent failure when the French Republic surrended - giving up their entire army as effective prisoners of war - has become a stereotype of the effete nature of the French.
It may not be quite as prominent as it use to be, but it is modern era.
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