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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8702550" data-attributes="member: 6801228">Right, but here's the thing. A dwarf can go on an adventure for dwarf reasons. An Elf can go on an adventure for elf reasons. An Orc can go on adventure for Orc reasons. A halfling has to go on adventure for non-halfling reasons. They were originally written as home-bodies who never want to leave their homes, and then had to be retconned into occassionally leaving their homes. You can say that adventurers break the mold, and you are 100% correct. But having a race that neccessitates you not being like the stereotype of your race to even play the game is something people trip over a lot. And there is no reason for it from a game design perspective. It is just lore getting in the way of the game the lore was designed to support.I make friends and lunch. The elves make friends and lunch. The dwarves make friends and lunch. How do I know? Because all races eat and all races have the concept of friendship. When I make a community in a game, if I don't explicitly make it a bad or damaged community, then the people in that community care for and contribute to their community. I don't often make communities where that isn't true, because then they aren't really communities. And your last question makes no sense. What CAN they bring to their homes if they NEVER LEAVE their homes. I recently went to a family reunion. I met people from my extended family. But none of the people I met are the people who never leave their homes. They are the people who traveled. You can't bring anything home unless you leave, and even if you do leave and bring back, say, a ceramic plate from a foreign country.... so what? It is cool, but when I'm designing a world, I don't design individual families and their stories. I don't care what is in a specific farm families basement, I care about what is the history of why that farm is there and whose in charge of that land, because that's what actually shapes the world so I know what is going on on a macro level. I get the little things matter in stories about families, in stories about little things, and in real life stories of our own lives. But no one cares what the Western Settlers had in their breastpocket. They care that the Western Settlers went west and established control of the United States over land that formally belonged to the native people, and led to massive social and geopolitical change. Who the specific farmer who set up a mile from the Mississippi was doesn't matter to telling the larger story. And that's the thing that gets so frustrating. The art of world-building is telling the larger story, but people keep insisting that it somehow matters to have people that are never talked about in the context of that story, because those people love their families. I'm glad they love their families, I'm sure they have touching stories about their lives that would be very compelling, but when compiling a history of the world, they don't actually matter.</blockquote>

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