D&D General Old School DND talks if DND is racist.

[MGibster]

Look, I don’t give a hoot what @Oofta ’s orcs’ creation story is, or anyone else’s for that matter. Do whatever the hell you want in your own games. I just want to understand why so many people seem to so vehemently believe that non-human humanoids need immutable ethnocultures to count as anything other than “human with a mask.”

Beats me. I view all demi-humans as just "humans with a mask" and am totally fine with that.

 

[Charlaquin]

Beats me. I view all demi-humans as just "humans with a mask" and am totally fine with that.

That’s a valid way to look at it, depending on what “humans with a mask” means to you.

 

[HJFudge]

Yeah, seriously, the biggest benefit in moving away from inherent race bonuses is that there is less desire to optimize your character via your race.

Also it would give a chance for Dragonborn to be interesting because "Dragonborn are uninteresting" was basically the whole reason I started thinking about it. Honestly amazed at how much that race has grown on me.

I'm of mixed feelings on racial stats/bonuses.

On the one hand, it can be used to differentiate how it feels, mechanically, to play as and against a certain type of enemy. This is especially true of non-sentient monstrous beasts where one of the only things that'll make a bear fight different than a tiger fight, say, is how bears are usually gonna have more stamina and hp, not hit as much but hit hard when they do, whereas I see a tiger being much more agile and manueverable with more attacks that may not hit as hard but there are plenty of them.

I also enjoy character building and having restrictions to how I build my character makes building it more interesting. Making a halfling barbarian or something can make for an interesting mechanical challenge.

Taking away this tool can lead to everything feeling samey, when the dice hit the table so to speak.

However.

First and foremost, 5E just doesn't do it for me really character building wise. It can be kinda interesting but I find other systems/editions satisfy me far more when it comes to character building crunch. So since I'm not really using this system to build interesting mechanical characters anyway, why do I care if they change it up to be even less so?

Also, there is merit in allowing stats to be entirely custom...as well as abilities, etc, it provides more of a wide open field and races that you play become ENTIRELY RP based. And as long as the dice ARENT hitting the table, it won't matter and allows more freedom of roleplay. I can roleplay a snobby, bookish elf but use the stat set up of an extremely sturdy dwarf.

Though there is a huge topic of discussion on RP best practices when it comes to using ones stats as part of someones characters roleplay but I think the racial issues are enough of a point of contention we don't need to bring up 'What is RP?' which is gonna just make it 300x as contentious

 

[Justice and Rule]

Interesting idea but on first thought I can't see a viable way to make that work without it being wide open to abuse.

Also, how do you handle things like Elves, who live for centuries and may have already had several Human-length careers before ever becoming adventurers?

Gonna toot Pathfinder 2E's horn once again, because they have thought of this.

Ancestral Longevity

There are probably ways you can translate that to 5E.

 

[Lanefan]

You mean eliminating ability score adjustments for PCs of those races. That doesn’t stop them from having different stats (ability scores aren’t the only stats in the game) and it also doesn’t stop their monster manual from having different ability scores.

It does if, like me, you want PCs and NPCs of the same race to use the same mechanics because internal consistency actually matters.

Thus, if the MM says Orcs have an average Strength of 14 that to me locks in that PC Orcs are also going to have an average Strength of 14, and I then need to find a way to mechanize that into the char-gen system. A flat bonus is one answer. Tweaking the 3-18 bell curve such that the high point on that curve is 14 rather than 10.5 is another and IMO better answer - for example maybe Orc strength runs on a bell curve from 8-20 for both PCs and NPCs - if a bit more complicated.

Either that, or I change the MM such that NPC Orcs use the same 3-18 Strength range as PCs.

 

[Oofta]

So, you’re not going to answer my questions then? Ok. I guess I’ll just go on not understanding why so many people so strongly believe races need unified ethnocultures to count as something other than “human with a mask.” Just like every other time this argument gets trotted out. And the conversation will never be able to advance.

What part of the question? I mean, I'm tired. I'm not trying to ignore or be rude. But there are a lot of monsters in the book. There are what, 20 plus humanoids, not even counting variants. Because there are so many to keep them unique I think it makes sense that they have a niche.

Water down that niche, add enough variety and I'm not sure what you're left with. On the other hand, I want some humanoid monster that's familiar but dangerous to the standard commoner. Creatures I can throw in that I don't need to think about too much, that I don't need to justify. Yes, they're bandits and raiders but they're also more than that.

Something I learned when playing in AL was that it didn't really matter if my player had an in-depth story in my head canon. If I wanted them to stand out I needed some kind of hook. The overweight dragonborn cleric who wanted to start a fried chicken franchise, the happy-go-lucky halfling sorcerer who was a little too quick to want to blow things up, the dwarven brewer. They all had simple hooks that were iconic.

Orcs, to me have a simple hook. They're the ravaging horde seeking destruction of the civilized races which they think are weak. I don't need or want much more than that. They're a genetically engineered race made (and controlled) by a vengeful god; if they were real I'd actually feel sorry for them.

Meanwhile all I get from you (no offense meant) is that why can't they be something else? You think orcs are cool ... with no explanation why. You make the assertion that changing them is good but I can't really get much detail other than that.

So I don't mean to come off as cranky but after 1400 posts this discussion has had some interesting topics. But it keeps coming back to: I can explain what niche they fit for me. They have a "hook". They fill a specific role in the fiction. They don't need to be anything else. The rest? You're asking me to justify your point of view I guess? I'm not even sure any more. Then again, it's been a long week.

P.S. as always the books aren't perfect, some of it I personally find offensive (particularly in VGtM), alignment and culture is spelled out as just being the default but it should be more explicit.

 

[Scribe]

I don’t know how any of this relates to my question.

Then I must have misunderstood the question. My apologies.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm not opposed to floating stats but they've been ham fisted into 5E. It's more if a 6E thing.

Basically the races need to be rewritten to incorporate them.

I mean, yeah, but 5E has been on it's back feet ever since it was unexpectedly massively successful. It's ducking and diving, dodging and weaving, and trying to float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, and not get KO'd by something dumb.

So yeah, that was a bit of a clumsy way to get them in, but unless 6E was going to happen, like, this year, they probably needed to at least start making some apparent progress now.

I mean, what they want to avoid is another PF-type situation. Now, this kind of thing wouldn't be likely to cause an issue as large-scale as PF, but a lot of RPGers, and influential ones, care about this kind of thing (including big streamers/podcasters/etc.). If D&D hadn't reacted, hadn't started making progress, it might have easily have been that a narrative built up that WotC didn't really care (and maybe they don't, who knows, but they're giving the impression they do which is what matters for now). That narrative would have encouraged big, influential people to at least try other RPGs, and see if they got a good audience with them, and it would have encouraged other players to do likewise. We probably wouldn't have got a schism, but we might well have seem something less like 4E/PF and more like 2E/Loads of games, where D&D suddenly started losing ground to a bunch of much smaller RPGs, and if one of them got popular, it might well gain momentum. D&D was never going to get "canceled" - its modern sins aren't big enough - but it might have got slightly disfavoured, and even a slight disfavouring might kill momentum and significantly lower profits.

So just coming at this from a purely pragmatic view, I think they're playing it pretty well, despite some unforced errors. Even the more activist-end of things stuff, where it's not entirely opposed to D&D (so already a lost cause), seems be like "Hmph well they're trying - they could try much harder, but I guess they're trying".

 

[Mallus]

So this is a way to make your flayer babies grow into quadrupeds with no opposable thumbs instead of a humanoid biological chasis.

So I might need to think this thorough more. Or at all. But I do find the idea of a race of cow flayers inadvertently created by the radical diet of a sect of vegan Illithids in Sigil to be very... ahem... D&D.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I will agree they aren't WOW orcs. Then again I don't know much about WOW orcs other than that they seem to just be barbaric humans since I've never been particularly interested in MMOs.

I want evil humanoids, the less they represent anything (e.g. indigenous peoples) the better. For me.

define evil then? can you.