Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8333771" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, there was a whole thread on what name to use a few months back. Various suggestions were made, but IMHO species is the clearest, other ones seem like they don't really get you far enough from the baggage of 'race'. People, folk, kind, kin, nation, etc. are all mostly tolerably clear, though some of them have other connotations that might not always fit, like implying a level of unification of culture or politics that is not justified in every setting. Species does sound a bit 'sciency' I guess, but there's some virtue in that, you have clearly made a statement as to the biological distinctness of each group. I guess you may be opening up the possibility of the can of worms which would be some people's sense of where on the cladogram to put each one, and if some of those locations imply some superiority or something, but at least you make people take a few more dubious leaps before they get to "I'm better than him."I'm with you there.Yeah, I mean, this is a good question, do we need orcs at all? Obviously the simple answer is 'no'. I mean, we can get by without them. If orcs have to be depicted in as much of a 3-dimensional nuanced way as humans, at some point is it really necessary to have them as a different species? I do think Star Trek wrestled with that a bit, Vulcans seemed a lot like supermen at first, but Spock was always depicted as being both superhuman, and at the same time in some ways unable to do things that were pretty easy for humans. So that leaves us with the IDEA of aliens, which is a thing in Sci Fi. I mean, the very idea of a cosmopolitan galaxy filled with different species says something IN AND OF ITSELF. Likewise, in a world-building sense, humanoids/demi-humans does say something. Plus it has folkloric/mythological significance. So, I think there is a reason to have 'orcs', at least as a general concept. Now, maybe the game could do with just 'elves' and 'dwarves', so to speak, and not hostile humanoid races, but I think basically by saying every species must be depicted in a nuanced way, that is what you would get, nobody is really an 'orc', they are just a species, like us, but different. So I could see building a world where you have demi-humans, but no humanoid monsters. Or the only ones are things like giants or something, which could have their own special creation story and be really very different from 'people'.Yeah, we'd like to think we would, but my money is against it, even for myself.</blockquote>

Verification