The Implications of Biology in D&D

[Hussar]

I was a park ranger for thirteen years and a biology teacher for two.

If you think mundane animals are boring, I respectfully suggest u r doing it wrng.

Didn't say boring. Said predictable. As in familiar.

/snip

EDIT:
The hippogriff thing is an excellent example of biology applied well. Carnivores make great pets but bad livestock.

Yeah, cos y'know, those dogs sure didn't work out well did they?

 

[Hussar]

I find it odd that you would complain about Hippogriffs being used as steeds by anyone that could capture one, since the Hippogriff of myth was bred from a Griffin and Mare precisely for that purpose. Hippogriffs almost exclusively appear in myth as steeds for mighty heroes of valor. That's there role in myth regardless of what you think of their biology./snip

Celebrim, I believe you completely misread what I wrote. I was complaining that NO ONE has hippogriff fleets in their settings. At least not in published ones.

 

[Hussar]

I guess, for me, the idea that monsters have "species" makes them less interesting. That kobolds, for example, are just a scaley kind of hominid or whatnot makes them less fantastic.

All comes down to sensawunda I suppose. For some, it's the codification of spells. For me, it's the codification of creatures.

Take orcs as another example. D&D has orcs as just another hominid. Brutish and a bit nasty, but, essentially not any different from humans. Take an orc, give it a haircut and a bit of dentistry and it's a human. I love the LotR take on orcs, the Uruk-Hai anyway, where orcs are created by mutating elves. Force grown effectively. Not natural at all.

Now, that's a fantasy race with mythological leanings. And, in my mind, a MUCH better reason for orcs and elves to hate each other.

----------- Edit for a further thought

I think the whole dragonbewbs "contravery" is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Much better than anything I can come up with. People complaining about dragonbewbs typically do so based on reptile biology. They presume that because dragon born have scales and look reptilian, they should follow the same basic physiology as reptiles.

To me, this is udder bunk.

Dragonborn are magically created. They are created by a god as is everything else in a D&D world. Thus, the god in question can give a big one fingered saluete to the entire scientific community. Why? Because he's a god.

Arguing that dragonborn shouldn't have boobs based on biology makes zero sense to me in a world where you know, beyond any doubt, that gods and magic exist.

Now, arguing that you don't like it? That's perfectly groovy. But, don't drag poor science in here kicking and screaming only to whimper in the corner.

 

[Coldwyn]

As far as I´m concerned, D&D represents a world with biology but without natural evolution.

Most race entries state that some god or primordal created a race for a specific purpose, sometimes including the ability to progenate, sometimes not.

That´s a mythic origin, all right, it just disregards our cultural myths as a whole by creating the whole gods vs primordial war mythic.

Considering this, there´s an explanation for unique entites that aren´t mutations, also, there must be a huge number of creatures that simple vanished because they didn´t have functioning biology because they weren´t created with one.

 

[Barastrondo]

I guess, for me, the idea that monsters have "species" makes them less interesting. That kobolds, for example, are just a scaley kind of hominid or whatnot makes them less fantastic.

All comes down to sensawunda I suppose. For some, it's the codification of spells. For me, it's the codification of creatures.

It depends for me. I like some seriously fantastic explanations for seriously fantastic critters (especially the chimerical ones like manticores and, well chimeras). But on the other hand, to me the presence of monstrous races or beasts that effectively have ecologies of their own makes the world more magical. I find it actually injures my suspension of disbelief if a world has pretty much our own animal and plant species and everything not found on Earth is weird and strange even to the locals. It makes me feel like the ordinary humans aren't really residents of a fantasy world, in a way; they're just Earth-humans who live there. I prefer things like the world of Steven Brust's Jhereg; a bunch of freakish new wildlife that's considered just as much part of the world as beasts that are familiar to us, with hawk and tiassa right side by side on the Cycle.

All this should be taken alongside the disclaimer that I like owlbears (and that I even like owlbears as perfectly natural giant killer monotremes that are just peculiar to the D&D ecology), of course.

Dragonborn are magically created. They are created by a god as is everything else in a D&D world. Thus, the god in question can give a big one fingered saluete to the entire scientific community. Why? Because he's a god.

Oh, sure. I just find that can kind of undercut the dignity of the god in particular to me. "Shut up, I like boobs! I'll put them on anything I want! You're lucky I'm not putting boobs on beholders and trees and mailboxes. Mmm... boobs..." [/Homer Simpson voice]

I mean, I am aware that there are plenty of mythical gods who have zero sense of dignity. I just kind of hope that Bahamut's not one, you know? I frequently say "a god did it", but optimally I want to make sure a god did it for in-character reasons, making a neat new myth instead of just a handwave. After all, actual myths will always give you more of a story than "a god did it," even if it's "Bahamut lost a bet with Coyote, and Coyote really really likes boobs."

 

[Aeolius]

As far as I´m concerned, D&D represents a world with biology but without natural evolution. Most race entries state that some god or primordal created a race for a specific purpose, sometimes including the ability to progenate, sometimes not.

And then members of that race advance, take on a divine rank, and become deities themselves...

I favor both approaches. Night hags beget greenhags beget annis ("Ecology of the Greenhag" - Dragon #125). The annis does not produce hags herself, biologically, so she has to get creative. For example the stormhag is "born" when a dying annis absorbs the death emanations of a will-o-wisp, instead of being slain by the wisp itself.

 

[Set]

There was once a gigantic debate about a wizard who wanted to teleport to the moon. [snip] I thought he ought to have found himself clinging to a bright patch on the inside of a gigantic black sphere studded with shiny objects.

One creative backstory I saw was a halfling rogue in Spelljammer who originally found his way into space in an attempt to steal one of the 'glowing jewels that like up the night sky' to give to his girlfriend.

He was disappointed that the stars weren't glowing jewels, but ended up finding a whole new world of adventure.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Take orcs as another example. D&D has orcs as just another hominid. Brutish and a bit nasty, but, essentially not any different from humans. Take an orc, give it a haircut and a bit of dentistry and it's a human. I love the LotR take on orcs, the Uruk-Hai anyway, where orcs are created by mutating elves. Force grown effectively. Not natural at all.

Now, that's a fantasy race with mythological leanings. And, in my mind, a MUCH better reason for orcs and elves to hate each other.

There's no reason why Orcs in your setting can't be like the Uruk-Hai. If they exist in any numbers, it means...

1) They can breed like any other species.

2) They cannot breed, and someone is creating more of them. (Adventure Hook!)

3) They cannot breed, but figured out the magic that creates them, so they can perpetuate themselves. (If it involves an Artifact- something like the Black Cauldron- you have an Adventure Hook).

4) Half-Orcs have some 'splainin' to do.

----------- Edit for a further thought

I think the whole dragonbewbs "contravery" is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Much better than anything I can come up with. People complaining about dragonbewbs typically do so based on reptile biology. They presume that because dragon born have scales and look reptilian, they should follow the same basic physiology as reptiles.

That would be me.

To me, this is udder bunk.

Hilarious!

Dragonborn are magically created. They are created by a god as is everything else in a D&D world. Thus, the god in question can give a big one fingered saluete to the entire scientific community. Why? Because he's a god.

Arguing that dragonborn shouldn't have boobs based on biology makes zero sense to me in a world where you know, beyond any doubt, that gods and magic exist.

Sure, a god can do that. But unless those bewbs have a function, over time they'll disappear.

 

[Coldwyn]

Sure, a god can do that. But unless those bewbs have a function, over time they'll disappear.

And what brings you to this conclusion? They were created that way, propably even on purpose, why should they change? In a world where a god can create a whole race whole cloth, wouldn´t it be reasonable that he keeps the race as it should be?

 

[The Shaman]

It's my belief that to a certain point, the unique qualities of a world, however plausible in accordance to its own rules, are at odds with emotional immersion. The more exposition you have to read to truly understand a setting that's really, truly different from what you're expecting, the less likely you are to feel like you're part of that setting, to be able to just casually picture yourself there. This is something that the creator is exempt from, of course: nobody knows the details of my campaign like I do, so naturally I have an easier time knowing what "makes sense" than my players do.

The really logical worlds where you try to extrapolate something very different instead of relying on familiar tropes are, I think, largely attractive as an intellectual exercise. They're good workouts for the brain. But you have to a heavy-duty genius at characterization and communication to make them also emotionally immersive enough that people can slide into the world over the big old hump of scientific (or pseudo-scientific, if you're treating magic in a scientific method) exposition that's required to understand the place.

Very well stated.

A topic of discussion over at Dragonsfoot from time to time is the idea of the dungeon-as-mythic-underworld, where goblins arise from shadows and dust, or from a great vat, rather than being born from mommy-goblins and daddy-goblins. It's very appealing in many ways, but I think it's like garlic: great as a spice, overwhelming as a vegetable. Wizards' experiments gone awry, critters twisted by exposure to the Far Realms, creations of a mad god: all show up in my fantasy games, but the contrast with the less fantastic or the reliably mundane is what makes them truly extraordinary in the context of the setting. Aspects of the game-world which are familiar, or predictable, are most readily grasped and serve to highlight the differences between the mundane and the fantastic.

That some monsters share biological, or more specifically ecological, characteristics can result in some interesting situations in the course of the game. Why do goblins invade the kingdom from time to time? It could be because they are the stuff of nightmares and fog coalescing in the darkness to ravage the human lands, the goblin-deity instructs the witch-doctors through their dreams to attack, or it could be because they have an r-selected breeding strategy that result in population irruptions when conditions are favorable, something which rangers on the frontier carefully monitor. Personally I don't find any one of these explanations to be inherently better than another, and I use all of them when I run a fantasy game.