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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9363284" data-attributes="member: 6799660">Mental differences: We know there are certain types of mental acuities where one can have a deficit*, yet be wholly capable in most other ways. Particularly surrounding language and ability to form abstract constructs. *because of the IRL minefield of discussing individuals, I'm mostly going to frame this related to intelligent animals like crows and pre-human ancestors, etc.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Perhaps Elves have human tool use and superior senses and physical ability, but their beautiful intricate language is really closer to bird songs -- able to impart incredible nuance into identifying individuals and imparting the concepts "my territory," "go away," and "come closer (and mate);" but unable to be employed to say "I want to buy your arrowheads, and will pay a copper piece per dozen." Thus every trade interaction requires each side taking turns laying out what they want on one side of a table and what they are willing to give on the other, or other extremely inefficient method.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Perhaps gnomes have an intricate language system which can name items and discuss complex actions. However, their economy is constrained to the level of writing depictions of piles of grain under depictions of individuals because abstract concepts a number (divorced from what the number of things is-'five stacks of grain' makes sense, 'five' does not) is beyond their comprehension. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Perhaps dwarves have a functional economy, and their language is nuanced and complex and can handle numbers and the like. Yet they can't discuss that Joe went over the hill to look for deer tracks and will be back tomorrow because Joe isn't present in the discussion, and tomorrow isn't here and so forth. </li> </ul>Social/Behavioral differences: Humans have a number of qualities we take for granted about what we do. We form societies, sure. We also care about individuals (particularly our selves). We also have a specific relationship to threats and risks. Things like wildebeests or the like will go to the watering hole where the lion lurks, and make sure the lion is far enough away from them and their offspring that they do not feel in danger (here, now), but do nothing further. Obviously they don't have a lot of options, but if they had hands and bows/swords, would they hunt down the lion and make sure it couldn't kill and eat them (or the rest of the herd) tomorrow? There are plenty of options.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Perhaps individual goblins want to be the dominant family of all the goblins they know, and to survive, but the overall dominance of goblins in the world is something they don't have a though about.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Perhaps thri-kreen want their species to have as much territory as possible (and their gene line to be well-represented within it). But this only happens by slow territorial creeping around the edges because they don't care about their individual success and thus kingdoms and such do not form (and whatever organizational benefits those create don't happen). </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Perhaps goliaths are mentally utilitarian measured on an across-society level. Adventuring might be a net negative utility on that scale (99 aspiring PCs die so that one can flourish, bringing back 2-99 goliath lifetime-utilities of benefit).</li> </ul>Physical differences: endurance, sweating, and throwing are obvious ones. Perhaps so obvious as to be overlooked are that we are land-based (thus allowing fire) and have a many-season lifespan -- two reasons why octopi do not fill our niche. Others include things like sensory generalism -- our eyesight is not great, but we have decent near- and far-sightedness, as well as peripheral vision while also able to focus in on things. We see in many colors, if not all of them. We aren't missing a swath of senses many other creatures have in exchange for a specialized sense (akin to snakes who can see Infrared, but are missing a bunch of hearing, or the like). Also, our diet is pretty forgiving -- sure we can be vitamin or mineral limited (like most everything else), but we can get by on 'the plant and animal content' of most areas of the planet (no 'bamboo shoots only' or the like). We also can vary fat/carb/protein pretty well and store nutrients pretty well internally (and the kinds of food we can eat generally store pretty well, particularly after we discover pottery and fire). All of these things can be toggles and dials that other non-human human analogs can vary with regards to.</blockquote>

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