D&D General Oh, the Humanity! Exotic Races, Anthropocentrism, Stereotypes & Roleplaying in D&D

[Mercurius]

You stated this in such a way that it makes it sound like you are shutting down any other viewpoint. "I have observed" should have been "From what I have observed/experienced", instead of wording it in such a way that comes off as a blanket statement.

You're arguing semantics, when they essentially mean the same thing. You just don't like my wording and are now correcting me for...wording. Really?

 

[Mercurius]

Do you not see how this. . .

would be interpreted as "younger/newer players don't think outside of the box [in terms of roleplaying games]"?

I take it that you don't want to discuss, just say "You're Wrong!" Huh?

I can see how it would be interpreted it that way, but it doesn't have to be. You made the leap.

 

[Mercurius]

This is a meaningless statement in that it applies to every pen and paper tabletop RPG ever made. D&D is not unique in this regard. In order to perform an analysis of D&D, we need to consider D&D as it is presented to us in RAW form, as opposed to Call of Cthulhu or Warhammer Fantasy or Vampire, etc.

Also, your statement can be interpreted as a preemptive shutting down of discussions and analysis of the way mechanics shape play expectations. It basically amounts to saying "design is meaningless" and closes the door on discussing the way mechanics can be changed and refined.

Weird. I didn't say it doesn't apply to other RPGs. The topic and forum is D&D, so we're talking about D&D.

I'm not "shutting down" anything.

 

[Minigiant]

The point being, there's more of a hive mind, or perhaps multiple hiveminds that overlap and interact, vs. in the pre-internet days, the D&D community was mostly only united through Dragon Magazine and conventions. So perhaps this "shared world" or hivemind creates a strong gravitational pull towards a D&D canon.

The D&D fanbase has grown a lot in the last 20 years. A lot of different fanbases of other types of fantasy. With D&D not being a just wargamers and LOTR fans anymore,the rules and its constant updating over the years have been the force that pull everyone together. Whoever has D&D's IP needs to make money and expanding the base is the easiest way to do it.

When it comes to exotic races:

DM are forced to spend more effort selling their worlds and expressing their world due to the expansion of the fanbase.
Players, due to the expansion of the fanbase, have a higher probability of being attracted to an exotic race.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

You made the leap.

A pretty easy leap, apparently, as at least two others have done so already.

I take it that you don't want to discuss, just say "You're Wrong!" Huh?

I don't want to discuss what, exactly? And, yes, as I thought you were asserting that younger/newer players can't/don't think outside of the box, I did want to correct your generalization.

You're arguing semantics, when they essentially mean the same thing. You just don't like my wording and are now correcting me for...wording. Really?

If 3 people have already found the same wording issue, then the semantics here may be worth taking a second look at.

I've said my part on this front. No real point in pressing it, as you're clearly not willing.

 

[Mercurius]

A pretty easy leap, apparently, as at least two others have done so already.

I don't want to discuss what, exactly? And, yes, as I thought you were asserting that younger/newer players can't/don't think outside of the box, I did want to correct your generalization.

If 3 people have already found the same wording issue, then the semantics here may be worth taking a second look at.

I've said my part on this front. No real point in pressing it, as you're clearly not willing.

Did I not say above that I probably should have worded one part differently (younger vs newer)? You ignored that and switched over to nitpicking my usage of "observed," which seemed excessively nitpicky to me. So yes, I'm not willing to change my wording to your preferred verbage, especially when they essentially mean the same thing.

There are a lot more interesting things to discuss in this thread than the proper way to use words, don't you think? Why don't we not disrupt Snarf's thread with this, and stick to the topic?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yeah, that is taking things further than what I said or meant (the idea that young people can't/don't think outside of the box).

Perhaps I should have written "newer" rather than "younger," as I'm mainly talking about the hobby itself and how it is played now vs. "back in the day," as well as how we interact as individuals and as a culture now vs in the past. "Hivemindism" and tribalism seems more...aggressive than it was a few decades ago, if only because it is more out there (through the internet and social media). There is a strong impetus to be part of one team/tribe or the other, and in the process what I think is often lost is the idea that one doesn't have to glom onto any ideology or group, but be radically self-creative and individualized. This is a wider cultural trend that infuses the D&D community, afaict.

I do think the toolbox approach is less explicit in the WotC era than it was in TSR, especially 1E AD&D and before, for reasons I stated in my first post. I could be misremembering.

That could very easily be because that is human nature. We are a tribal species.

And, in "the old days", the groups of people who gamed were smaller. Comics were more niche, video games were more niche, Fantasy was more niche.

As the hobbies expanded and more people joined, our natural instincts to join with a tribe took over, and we started doing the same thing we have done since time immemorial.

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One thing that occurred to me is that Gygax's quote makes a fundamental assumption that is no longer true.

He declares that a DM can't make a truly diverse world with truly diverse races, and couched in that idea is something that he doesn't say. A DM can't do that.... alone.

But DMs are not alone anymore. Maybe we haven't fully embraced the idea, but what is stopping us from pooling a dozen DMs to make a world? Three Dozen? With the internet a community could grow around a single campaign world in a way it simply could not before.

You no longer need a single genius Renaissance Man (if you ever needed him in the first place) because we have massive collectives to discuss and talk about worlds in a way we simply could never do before.

 

[not-so-newguy]

Maybe we haven't fully embraced the idea, but what is stopping us from pooling a dozen DMs to make a world? Three Dozen?

This is how Mystara was created. I'd love to see history repeat itself.

 

[Ancalagon]

When it comes to exotic races:

DM are forced to spend more effort selling their worlds and expressing their world due to the expansion of the fanbase.
Players, due to the expansion of the fanbase, have a higher probability of being attracted to an exotic race.

I thought about this, but there is an easy way out! One of your races is "the rest" - a group made of very different races who are all here due to a ... reason. It could be refugees from a planar catastrophe. A curse from the gods. These people could be of low, or maybe even high status.

Any race that doesn't fit in the races you have built your world around? They are a member of "the rest". So it doesn't matter if your party has zero or 100% of exotic races. You have a room or them.

 

[Minigiant]

I thought about this, but there is an easy way out! One of your races is "the rest" - a group made of very different races who are all here due to a ... reason. It could be refugees from a planar catastrophe. A curse from the gods. These people could be of low, or maybe even high status.

Any race that doesn't fit in the races you have built your world around? They are a member of "the rest". So it doesn't matter if your party has zero or 100% of exotic races. You have a room or them.

The issue isn't explaining exotic races in your setting.

It's getting your players to like the explanation.

"All the uncommon and rare races are refuges" might work for some people. Other people might see this as lame or and excuse to roleplay an exotic race like a walking caricature.

Because if the DM doesn't really care how the they make the exotic races fit into their world, they can't really complain about how the player roleplays them.