TheOneGargoyle
Explorer
Wow, yes it was long but also it was awesome !Warning: long post is long.
Nah, I honestly didn't mean this turn into War & Peace. The crux of it was simply:Then I guess I don't understand what your question or complaint is here. Are you expecting the game to provide that stance, or examples of it?
a) I thought giving more biological-based differences differentiated races more and I liked the diversity of that, and
b) I thought that subraces having biological basis rather than being purely cultural made more sense.
That's all.
OMG yes !!Birds' wings are pretty different from the skin color of fictional humanoids. There's a reason why wings are shaped the way they are: albatross wings let it soar; falcon wings let it dive; owl wings let it fly silently. Likewise, there are evolutionary reasons why human skin colors wound up the way they are. But a fantasy humanoid, potentially created by gods or magic, only looks the way it does because some writer or artist decided it.
(I'd like to point out that orcs have gods of fertility and medicine, loyalty and strength, and strategy--yet for some reason, D&D decided those gods are evil; if they were elf gods, they'd be CG.)
Now, you could make a point that artists should learn something about wing anatomy before illustrating dragons.
I'll give you this.A large number are, or are else designed to embody a particular negative cultural trait. Whether it was intended to be racist isn't the point, though; it's the result that count.
I agree it's hard. I don't think that means people shouldn't try.As another TV Tropes page is entitled "Most Writers Are Human."
I love xenofiction. Two of my favorite novels count as xenofiction (Watership Down and The Gods Themselves), and another novel I enjoy (Raptor Red) is not only xenofiction, but involves only animals with animal intelligence, not full sapience like in Watership Down. But here's the thing: it's difficult, maybe even impossible, for a human writer to (a) both write from a completely alien point of view, and (b) make it interesting and relatable to readers. Just like it would difficult or impossible for you to write a sunset described by a creature able to see four or five colors instead of just three. Heck, lots of seeing people find it hard to describe things properly to blind people, and we're the same species--and even some of one group's culture doesn't translate into another.
Hehe, good anecdote, and good point.Or to players. Anecodote time: ages ago, my BFF and I worked to create a setting--still incomplete, because we gave up after a while--that was designed to be as non-Tolkienesque as possible and still be fantasy. There were nine sentient races, all of which were PC-allowed, and only three sentient monster species, and only three of those intelligent beings were even mammals (humans, ogres, elves). The other PC races include three reptilian races (couch-sized dragons, naga, lizard-folk) and three insectoid races (one based on butterflies, one based on beetles, and one based on termites), and the monster species were based on birds. I wrote up all the racial and monster info and worked very hard to make everyone as alien as possible. I used a lot of actual biology in there, and stole lots of interesting tidbits from non-European cultures in what was certainly cringe-inducing cultural appropriation, but in my defense, this was at least 16 years ago. Even the humans were very nontraditional. Their society was more based on that of Plains Indians, people had mile-long names that grew with every accomplishment, were polyamorous, and they had three genders (each with their own pronouns) and very strict gender roles--but their genders were chosen at adolescence and had nothing to do with biological sex or sexuality.
So my BFF decided to run a one-shot at a convention, DragonCon I think. And it was a flop. Nobody wanted to play any of the races except for humans because they were simply too alien. If I had made the nonhuman races more like humans, instead of trying to draw heavily from natural biology, it might have worked better.
Well, I never said all-good, I said far more likely. And I think there are interesting stories to be told by individuals who are different to the "far more likely" majority.Sure, you can create a people who are all-good, but it's as illogical as creating one that's all-bad, and just as boring. As Asimov wrote about utopias and dystopias, "you can't build a symphony on just one note."
Ha, yes indeed !There are a few aspects of the ancestry/culture divide I disagree with, and yes, a person changing size because they were raised by people who were a lot smaller or larger is a silly one, and hopefully one that didn't make the final cut. Especially since it would prevent fun like Carrot "Headbanger" Ironfoundersson.
Ok, that is a really good counter-example, I think I'm starting to really like you !On the other hand... if the red halflings of the great Marching Jungle are red-skinned and poisonous to touch, why is that? Is it part of their innate biology? Or is it because, like hawkbill turtles and many other animals, they are capable of extracting the toxins from the food they eat and it permeates their flesh and, like flamingos, their coloration comes from the fact that many of their favorite foods contain high levels of beta carotene? Thus, it's possible that non-red halflings can also develop the ability to extract the toxins and turn bright red.
Ok then, point taken, perhaps those things ARE sometimes possible from cultural elements