D&D (2024) Should 2014 Half Elves and Half Orcs be added to the 2025 SRD?

[Micah Sweet]

Fantasy is replete with nostalgic and even reactionary tropes - knights, hermits, swords, castles, redemptive violence, etc.

In order to make this tenable rather than horrible, these tropes are not explored in any sort of "scientific" or analytic fashion. They are carefully curated to tell stories that provide some sort of comfort or assurance. Often there is quite a bit of sentimentality.

I don't think these aesthetics of the fantasy genre fit with an attempt to imagine genuinely non-human intelligent beings.

I strongly disagree. This sounds like in argument in favor of the opinion of fantasy games working better with narrative-style mechanics. No reason it has to be that way. Analytical and scientific-style methods work just as well in fantasy as in science fiction.

 

[SlyFlourish]

So your saying @SlyFlourish is wrong and the 5e community is not united?

I'd say there probably isn't even a 5e community. There are lots of different little communities wrapped up around different things and we bounce around from community to community. A community might be as small as five people you have sitting around a table.

We each can decide what we want to call this thing of ours. There is no standard and there is no agreement and, at this point, I don't think there will be. Which means we get to choose for ourselves.

I have my definition of 5e and I think its important which is why I bang the table about it so much. I know many who disagree.

5e used to mean "the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons" but that definition has now changed. 5e is a platform, like Linux, around which several full RPGs and thousands of products revolve.

I think this definition is important because it ensures 5e is strong regardless of the business decisions of any given company who produces 5e-compatible products.

For those who feel as strongly the other way, what is their motivation?

 

[overgeeked]

I'd say there probably isn't even a 5e community. There are lots of different little communities wrapped up around different things and we bounce around from community to community. A community might be as small as five people you have sitting around a table.

We each can decide what we want to call this thing of ours. There is no standard and there is no agreement and, at this point, I don't think there will be. Which means we get to choose for ourselves.

I have my definition of 5e and I think its important which is why I bang the table about it so much. I know many who disagree.

5e used to mean "the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons" but that definition has now changed. 5e is a platform, like Linux, around which several full RPGs and thousands of products revolve.

I think this definition is important because it ensures 5e is strong regardless of the business decisions of any given company who produces 5e-compatible products.

For those who feel as strongly the other way, what is their motivation?

I definitely agree with you on this one. Especially with 5E being released in the Creative Commons. Folk D&D forever.

 

[Scribe]

A community might be as small as five people you have sitting around a table.

The only one that matters.

 

[pemerton]

This sounds like in argument in favor of the opinion of fantasy games working better with narrative-style mechanics.

It's an argument about fantasy as a genre. Not about game-play.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Because they were suddenly going to be taken away. Like how most 'beloved' things in D&D become beloved.

I do not care about things being removed if they serve no function and no one seems to know what to do with them.

It's an argument about fantasy as a genre. Not about game-play.

fantasy and sci fi were not always so removed from each other in the past, perhaps they should remix a bit?

 

[gban007]

Why? What makes fantasy more restrictive than science fiction in that regard?

I think one thing that in theory should make Sci fi lead to more differences, is that different planets/ moons etc would have different qualities which would lead to life developing quite differently, both physically and mentally (I liked the three body problems glimpse at sentient life on a planet which will have cataclysms resetting things) whereas all life on one planet could lead to a bit more uniformity, when everyone faces same gravity, day / night cycle, seasons etc.
Of course some of the biggest challenges we have is that if we go down road of trying to make things comprehensible for readers/ players of fantasy or sci fi, it necessarily gets colored by what humans can comprehend / imagine, we have views of what immortality could do to a species, but is formed from our basis of understanding our life spans, and immortals may have very different views.
Of course, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to come up with differences etc that we can imagine, and I think a difference between literature and a role playing game, is that literature only needs enough differentiation to support the sort of story it is telling, whereas a role playing game to me should strive for ways to show q lot of differences, whether through mechanics, traits, descriptors etc to allow for roleplaying of those differences.

 

[Minigiant]

The way to clarify if half-elf is playable is to ask the group or DM if it’s playable.

What I think people are really asking is if half-elves are part of the “meta-setting” of D&D still with the rules evolution. Like, if BG3 had come out a few years later would Shadowheart not have been a half-elf.

This is what I keep saying.

D&D is one of the few popular fantasy series where Mixed Species are a common and core limit in its base medicine.

Most other fantasy series that are extremely popular typically go the route where either

1) species cannot reproduce with each other
Or
2) species that can reproduce what other species only produce the species of the more dominant one
Or
3) mixed species is almost indistinguishable from a pure strain of one of their species.

D&D for 50 years has been one of the few fantasy or even Sci-Fi series where a mixed race being is both different in the law and mechanics.

This went for players and non-player characters as well as for years a half dragon and a half demon were both different from their pure strains.

If D&D wants to change this they can but this was something that for the most part D&D had unique.

 

[Minigiant]

fantasy and sci fi were not always so removed from each other in the past, perhaps they should remix a bit?

The main difference between fantasy and science fiction at least on the species and is that science fiction typically are tethered around 1 or more aspects of science even if the science was fantastical. And each species would interact with that science differently or have different histories with that sign.

In fantasy there is no obligation for every species to interact with the fantastical elements in a meaningful way. This is because fantasy solely is derived around just not being real. Magical fantasy allows for additional elements that species can't interact with or have histories with. But again like fantasy there is no requirement.

This is different from science fiction. The species that has no interaction with the science are typically not spoken of very often. The pre-warp species or the primitive planet race are even less than side characters if spoken about at all or described that all.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think one thing that in theory should make Sci fi lead to more differences, is that different planets/ moons etc would have different qualities which would lead to life developing quite differently, both physically and mentally (I liked the three body problems glimpse at sentient life on a planet which will have cataclysms resetting things) whereas all life on one planet could lead to a bit more uniformity, when everyone faces same gravity, day / night cycle, seasons etc.
Of course some of the biggest challenges we have is that if we go down road of trying to make things comprehensible for readers/ players of fantasy or sci fi, it necessarily gets colored by what humans can comprehend / imagine, we have views of what immortality could do to a species, but is formed from our basis of understanding our life spans, and immortals may have very different views.
Of course, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to come up with differences etc that we can imagine, and I think a difference between literature and a role playing game, is that literature only needs enough differentiation to support the sort of story it is telling, whereas a role playing game to me should strive for ways to show q lot of differences, whether through mechanics, traits, descriptors etc to allow for roleplaying of those differences.

Fair enough, but that also presumes that all beings on a world originated on that world. In many cases, particularly often with the fay, a species is an immigrant from another world or plane that could operate under very different laws.