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No More "Humans in Funny Hats": Racial Mechanics Should Determine Racial Cultures
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<blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 8442472" data-attributes="member: 6915329"><p>Orcs (or at least half-orcs) and to a lesser extent, drow have been playable since 1e, and have been in either the main books or in other Big Important Books, like 1e's Unearthed Arcana. Other races have very much been relegated to extremely optional books or Dragon Magazine articles. </p><p></p><p>Also, both orcs and drow can interbreed with humans, whereas there haven't really been official half-hobs or half-kobolds. This brings them yet another step away from being just monsters.</p><p></p><p>But mostly, I think it's that people use orcs and drow as a shorthand that encompasses all potentially PC races that are normally evil. It's annoying to have to write "orcs, drow, kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, etc." each time you want to have a discussion about creature alignments.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Except... while sure, the DM can easily decide that this orc is good or neutral, or even that this entire society of orcs is good or neutral, <em>nothing in the books supports that. </em>If you want to have a society of non-evil orcs, you have to make up all of their lore yourself. A <em>lot </em>of DMs don't want to do that, don't have the time to do that, or just aren't that good at doing it themselves. It would not only involve ignoring or rewriting possibly decades worth of published lore, but getting the players to read and remember that lore as well. Unless you're lucky enough to also have a table full of players who are willing to accept that orcs aren't or shouldn't be <em>automatically </em>evil.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Faolyn, post: 8442472, member: 6915329"] Orcs (or at least half-orcs) and to a lesser extent, drow have been playable since 1e, and have been in either the main books or in other Big Important Books, like 1e's Unearthed Arcana. Other races have very much been relegated to extremely optional books or Dragon Magazine articles. Also, both orcs and drow can interbreed with humans, whereas there haven't really been official half-hobs or half-kobolds. This brings them yet another step away from being just monsters. But mostly, I think it's that people use orcs and drow as a shorthand that encompasses all potentially PC races that are normally evil. It's annoying to have to write "orcs, drow, kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, etc." each time you want to have a discussion about creature alignments. Except... while sure, the DM can easily decide that this orc is good or neutral, or even that this entire society of orcs is good or neutral, [I]nothing in the books supports that. [/I]If you want to have a society of non-evil orcs, you have to make up all of their lore yourself. A [I]lot [/I]of DMs don't want to do that, don't have the time to do that, or just aren't that good at doing it themselves. It would not only involve ignoring or rewriting possibly decades worth of published lore, but getting the players to read and remember that lore as well. Unless you're lucky enough to also have a table full of players who are willing to accept that orcs aren't or shouldn't be [I]automatically [/I]evil. [/QUOTE]
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No More "Humans in Funny Hats": Racial Mechanics Should Determine Racial Cultures
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