Races as breeds, not species?

[Kahuna Burger]

In my next campaign I am planning on having one of the setting points be that all the player races (and some non player races) are actually more similar to different breeds of dogs than different species of animal. Their differences physically, culturally and geographicly are the legacy of a master race which selectively bred them as specialized slaves. I'm not sure whether this will be suspected by the scholars of some of the races but unpopular in general, or not realized at all....

has anyone used this idea in a campaign before? How much, if at all, did it change the setting?

 

[Voadam]

This gives half-X race's a biological reason to be viable. What are you going to do for humanoid subtypes? Do they stay the same or can bane and ranger favored enemy get a boost in just choosing the species?

I haven't done this in a game but it reminds me of one of the Star Trek the Next generation episodes where there was a big universe secret unveiled of genetic manipulations by an ancient race that linked all the current races. I don't think I remember it ever being mentioned again on any of the other episodes of TNG, DS9, or Voyager that I ever saw, though I didn't see anywhere near all of the latter two.

 

[Tonguez]

IMC the half-orc equivalent is considered a human throwback, the setting also has psionic humans and aquatic humans. (I also have other non-human races)

mechanically it has very little effect, the fun however is in the fluff and exploring the prejudices built in.

 

[krissbeth]

I haven't done this in a game but it reminds me of one of the Star Trek the Next generation episodes where there was a big universe secret unveiled of genetic manipulations by an ancient race that linked all the current races. I don't think I remember it ever being mentioned again on any of the other episodes of TNG, DS9, or Voyager that I ever saw, though I didn't see anywhere near all of the latter two.

OMG The Chase!

 

[phindar]

This is pretty similar to the Shadowrun set up, where dwarves, orcs, trolls and elves are all different expressions of humanity. Homo Sapiens Sapiens, Homo Sapiens Robustus, Homo Sapiens Nobilis, and so on. There's also no half-breeds to speak of, they can all interbreed but the offspring follows one parent or the other. (At least, that's how it used to be. A couple of editions have gone by since I've been paying close attention.)

There was a similar idea behind my Mythic History game, the idea being that space aliens had used earth as sort of a testing ground for new lifeforms, chopping up and breeding humans any way they could to breed better slave races. Elves, dwarves, orcs, ogres and so on all came out of that, as did catmen, dogmen, centaurs, satyrs and so on. This wasn't common knowledge, the races and monsters didn't think of themselves any differently than they would have in regular D&D.

 

[DMH]

This is how Dark Sun explained the diversity of races, at least in the second box. The nature masters converted the defeated nature benders into non-halfling forms as punishment.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

There's also no half-breeds to speak of, they can all interbreed but the offspring follows one parent or the other.

Random tangent, this model for interbreeding is weird to me.... it's like the end of ?Hooch? (cheesy cop + dog film starring Tom Hanks and a lot of drool) where the litter of puppies is 4 pups that look exactly like the mom and one that looks exactly like the dad. Mixed breeds don't work that way. Come to think of it mules don't come out looking and working like either a donkey or a horse. I guess I can see it if elf-y-ness is a gift of magic (or a curse of orc-y-ness) and the magic is either passed down or not, which could lead to some interesting mid level quests to "cure" a half orc infant or high level quests to stop a great ritual destroying the magic of all elves...

 

[Clavis]

I used the idea that Humans, Dwarves, Halflings, Orcs, and Goblinoids were all bred as slaves from apes. The race that did it was called the Neas, and looked 9-foot tall cross between a man, a crayfish, and a cuttlefish, and was engaged in an intergalactic war with the hedonistic, bloodthirsty ancestors of the Elves. The Gnomes has arrived separately, but were subsequently enslaved by the Neas. The Neas controlled their slaves with a powerful hallucinogen used as a reward for work. After thousands of years, the dreams of the slaves became so powerful they were able to actualize them, giving birth to magic (yes, I had Humans originally create magic, not Elves). The Elves created agents among the Neas' slaves, and provoked a rebellion that ultimately destroyed the Neas. The Elves quickly became addicted to the Neas' hallucinogen, and learned magic. Eventually the hallucinogen became incorporated into the genetic code of the various races. A space-faring civilization incorporating all the races emerged. It was destroyed by a virus that manifested the nightmares of the humanoid races. Horrible monsters were born, necromancy was created, and races like the Drow emerged. Warfare and social strife reached genocidal levels, and finally an Ice Age obliterated almost all evidence of the previous civilization.

When the campaign started, the PC were all humans in society very similar to Renaissance Europe, were magic was illegal and the demi-human races were considered the stuff of folklore. Gradually they came to encounter other races in out-of-the-way places, and eventually found out about the secret history of their world.

 

[Evilhalfling]

I have long tinkered with the idea that all the humanoids are more like tribes of men then species-
After reading the travels of Marco polo where he moves quickly between completely differernt cultures, and looking at language diversity and tribalism in human history.

In the default fantasy there are only a few types of humans and only a few languages.
If humans are only one "tribe" albeit a large and successful one, the completely silly number of intelligent humanoids, and an absurd number of subraces, call all be tribes as well.

In this situation complete dominance of racial traits is the only way to avoid unusable numbers of variatons. Perhaps the ability for humans to produce mixed races (with elves and orcs) is a survival trait or a agreement between gods.

A single god for each race would make the most sense, although of course some (like humans) would have several gods that all agreed not to remake the basic human form.

In terms of gentics

(heritablilty) This property was first observed by Gregor Mendel, who studied the segregation of heritable traits in pea plants. In his experiments studying the trait for flower color, Mendel observed that the flowers of each pea plant were either purple or white — and never an intermediate between the two colors.

Just cause racial type/breed does not work this way in RL doesn't mean it can't in a game, especially if it makes life easier. Human cultures are not very accepting of mix-breeds anyway, they tend to lump people into one catagory or the other. People take on one of the two identities, sometimes they can choose which, more often society makes that decision.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Midnight does something vaguely like that.

Most of the races (i.e. everything except human) has a common ancestry - the elder fey. After the sundering, the race scattered and diversified, and became gnome, and elf, and halfling, and dwarf (from which the Shadow bred orcs, or at least that's one of the leading theories)

Humans only came to the continent later.

In Midnight, the elder fey can interbreed, and there are 3 races of half-breeds: Dwarrow (dwarf/gnome) elfling (elf/halfling) and dworg (dwarf/orc).

There's no half-elf(/half-human) or anything like that because humans can't interbreed with the fey races.