Orcs and Elves living together...

[Sigurd]

Land Pressure is Really the issue

What game world that you have played is fully civilized. All the creature books rely on vast tracks of wilderness filled with unexplored ancient ruins. Most of the time the humans are the settlers and the elves, orcs and monsters are the nomadic peoples. Humans have an intense land use that denies other uses. If the Elves were smart they would help the Orc's destroy the humans then get the Orcs to spend themselves against their goblin cousins.

If Orcs had a tribe that lived with the cycles of nature I can see Elves and Druid's siding with them over the artless, sprawling, corrupt cites of man.


S

 

[Ace]

What does RAW stand for?

 

[Yig]

What does RAW stand for?

Rules as Written.

 

[mythusmage]

In my case, millennia of evolution. Aided by various deities who all thought it would be neat to have sapients of their own. Kurt, god of kobolds for example, who took a relative of the ancestor of the rhesus macaque and changed a few things through enchantment and breeding.

I also altered alignment a tad, making it more descriptive of behavior than descriptive of morality. Thus orcs tend to act in a manner some would call lawful evil, but are not lawful evil in any moral sense.

To keep this short, they're simply used to each other. While goblins do complain about dwarven rigidity, they also applaud dwarven steadfastness.

And watching it all are the dragons. Who started it by breeding modern humans from Homo erectus in the hopes of getting an animal that could tend their herds for them. And we can all see where that led to.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

What's different about D&D as compared to our world is that the races really do have different mental capabilities and thus different capacities to contribute to modern-style society. In our world, there are really only cosmetic differences between the human races - but vast differences in mental abilities among the primates. Look at it from that point of view. An ogre or troll is perhaps halfway between a human and a gorilla in intelligence. Gorillas in our world are butchered for food or kept in zoos. Grey elves really are smarter than humans, and illithids really are smarter than just about everything else. Given that... could you have some sort of division of labor where the much smarter beings rely on the physical strength of the ogres and *don't* give the ogres a raw deal? Is that consistent with even human nature, let alone illithid nature? I doubt it, but good-aligned interventionist gods without a racial agenda could force people to be less exploitative.

I think for an egalitarian society, you have to have generally comparable intelligence AND comparable technology/magic (because mere potential is not enough), or else have the smarter or more advanced races be so weak, feeble, and disorganized that they cannot dominate the others. And no alignment tendencies. Or, gods that force people to treat the dumb brutes nicely.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

In my siblings campaign, most of the races live in relative harmony; a prime example is the Orcs of Freegate, who manufacture the exotic weaponry the nearby Elven monasteries and warrior-magi enclaves use. There are exceptions, of course, such as Lud, the City of Man; the Galchutt-tainted Orcs of the Cargath regions, and some of the nastier Elven religious sects.

 

[Sejs]

What would it take for a "world society" to evolve that chould have humans, orcs, elves, goblins, dwarves, etc. living together in [relatively] peaceful co-existance? Metropolises with mixed D&D races and societies not constantly at each other's throats?

A long-standing, prosperous, expansionist empire forged by a race that whomp the bejebus out of most other folks easily, and who didn't tolerate any shenanagans amongst its conquered peoples. Dragons or giants, as an example. No favoritism shown for race, just nationality. Sure, sure, I'm a human, that guy's an elf, that woman over there's a bugbear, and the guy who runs this joint is a kobold - what's important is that we're all Telgan Imperials, and those guys out there? They arn't. But they will be eventually.


Another option, as mentioned above - faith. Like Al-Qa*frickin'*dim. Do away with gods that have a 'chosen people', and make the delineation more clear. We're gods, you're mortals. To us, all mortals are alike; doesn't matter what type of mortal you happen to be, it's all the same to us.


Alot, maybe most, of the D&D racial conflicts seem to stem from two major sources: pressure over limited resources/living space, and because we were told to by someone we can't refuse.

 

[hong]

Piratecat: This site is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Morrus: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Darkness: What he means is old school, real wrath-of-Gygax stuff.
Piratecat: Exactly.
Darkness: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling.
Henry: Forty days of downtime. No EN World for forty days.
Angramainyu: The dead rising from the grave.
Piratecat: Halfling sacrifice, orcs and elves living together -- mass hysteria.

 

[Tonguez]

A long-standing, prosperous, expansionist empire forged by a race that whomp the bejebus out of most other folks easily, and who didn't tolerate any shenanagans amongst its conquered peoples. Dragons or giants, as an example. No favoritism shown for race, just nationality. Sure, sure, I'm a human, that guy's an elf, that woman over there's a bugbear, and the guy who runs this joint is a kobold - what's important is that we're all Telgan Imperials, and those guys out there? They arn't. But they will be eventually.
.

You just described the Mongol Empire established by Genghis Khan. The great Khan declared himself ruler of 'All people who live in round Tents' and then went on to prove it. He accepted peoples with different religions, languages and levels of technology and offered them all the right to be 'Mongols' whilst retaining their own cultures. Of course those that refused were slaughtered and their settlements were crushed into dust but for the many who accepted the Khans rule was largely benevolent. He appointed leaders from amongst those he had conquered and even gave them their own command within the Mongol army. He established a fair system of laws (the Yassa of Ghenghis Khan) and an advanced communication system (the first pony express), he encouraged open trade, suppressed brigandage and made sure that everyone was well cared for.

If an Empire could do that for all the races of DnD then yep it might happen

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Piratecat: This site is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Morrus: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Darkness: What he means is old school, real wrath-of-Gygax stuff.
Piratecat: Exactly.
Darkness: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling.
Henry: Forty days of downtime. No EN World for forty days.
Angramainyu: The dead rising from the grave.
Piratecat: Halfling sacrifice, orcs and elves living together -- mass hysteria.

Damn, hong. You beat me to it.