What I think is wrong with the non human races.

[Ferret]

I'm glad to here that some are changed.

I would say you have me there Thornir thats a fairly good description of the race, but not every single human fishes or is greedy. Every elf knows how to use a sword. I'm not saying that they shouldn't have this bonus at all maybe just the ones that border with orcs etc?

What you say at the end 'as a race...' is essential, as a person they could be easily differentiate from one another (besides appearence). What we aren't given is how Elf A is not the same as elf B.

This in no way represents how I think you should do these things. Just personal opion.

 

[Ferret]

See, what I never got is why humans have a reputation for being strong breeders. We take a long time to bring kids to term, have horrible infant mortality rates, don't live that long, and often fail to form succesful families or communities.

Traditionally human populations are pretty stable.

Dwarves always struck me as having the more favorable population growth rate. They live in less spread out communities, are more resistant to environmental effects and parasites, and live long enough that at least 4 dwarven generations are going to be fully functional during any given period.

Dwarven women have beards. Thats going to put anyone off.

 

[irdeggman]

In Dark Sun elves are pretty much the opposite of the standard PHB one.

They aren't aligned with nature or magic at all. They are money oriented and would just as soon raze a forest (of which there aren't many on Athas by the way) as sell a human as a slave. Profit is profit.

 

[Aristotle]

I've been working on a CS of my own (just like everyone else). One of the things that prompted me to do so was the feeling that something wasn't quite right (to me) with the races as they exist.

I got rid of the races as separate entities. The humanoids are all descendants of the human race. True humans don't really exist anymore, although they didn't look all that different from some of the humanoids anyway. The various humanoid races are nothing more than cultures that have evolved separately from one another for some time. The physical features of an elf or dwarf could easily be the result of evolution on an isolated culture that started out as human. Not so far fetched when you take into account the real world differences that cultures have. (i.e. variance in pigmentation, differences in physical characteristics and even age expectancy, epicanthal folds, body hair density, etc..)

The end result in my campaign? The various races don't need subcultures like the humans'. They are the subcultures of humans.

 

[Umbran]

This is what I think is wrong with them.

Hm. I'm not sure this is something necessarily "wrong" with them. Here's a few different ways to think about it...

Over all of the real world, there's a lot of variations in human culture. If you are treating your non-humans simply as "humans with pointy ears and short stocky humans" then yes, you'd expect to see more variations in the non-humans as well.

Personally, I approach it differently. Instead of assuming that the non-humans are like the humans, I look at what the book says about the non-humans, and try to figure out what that means.

To me, it means that the differences between humans and non-humans are more than cultural. There's real, physical differences. So it isn't necessarily right to assume that dwarves should have as much culturtal diversity as humans, because they aren't humans. They are fundamentally different, and that difference may dictate some facts about their cultures.

Another way to think about it - when you look at our entire planet, it seems like there's lots of variations. But maybe not as many as you think. Biolgically, there's more varation among dogs and chimpanzees than there is among humans. And the very basic desires of all humans, world over, are roughly the same. There's a few variations in how they get expressed, but the basic drives are the same everywhere.

So, assume for a moment that non-humans have a subtly different set of basic drives. All dwarves are from underground because subterranean living is one of their basic drives.

Also, try this as a suggeston - it only seems that the non-humans are less diverse, but we are suffering from "you know them, they all look alike" syndrome. As humans, we recognize the differences between humans and their cultures. But when presented with non-humans, we get stuck on the pointy ears, and overlook the differences that they think are important.

 

[Gez]

In fact, each race is stereotyped into a role. But it's anthropomorphic; mostly because, for obvious reason, every players know from experience how humans are.

Humans are, too, constricted into a stereotype: that of the adaptable, dominant race. Why not have the halflings or the orcs instead in this role? Why would no race be more adaptable and diverse than humans?

For the same reason no race is more foppish than the elves, or more grumpy than the dwarves, or more brutish than the half-orcs. Because it was their assigned stereotype.

 

[lord_banus]

The HARP RPG does something thats rather cool and I imagine that other games have something simlular. They separate Race and Culture into two separate entities. So during character creation a player chooses a race and takes the genetic type bonus's and then chooses a culture which gives them a bunch os typical skills. This kind of thing could be done in d20 with cultures being a couple of additional class skills and access to a regional feat.

It works great and no need for sub-races unless they are very different. A drow would be just an elf with the deep warren culture or the druid dwarves mentioned above would just be dwarves with the Sylvan culture.

 

[Sado]

These traditions come from Tolkien.

Actually, much of it comes from our own mythology. Norse/Germanic dwarfs (and gnomes) lived in mountains and underground, moving through the earth as easily as we move above ground, and were good with metalworking. Elves/Fairies lived in the woods, or rather hung out around enchanted glades and such where it was easier to cross from our world to theirs, and their world was usually depicted as heavily forested, although sometimes they lived in caves or mountains.

In Dark Sun elves are pretty much the opposite of the standard PHB one.

Excellent example. You might also try Sovereign Stone. Elven society is like feudal Japan, but even more rigid. Dwarves are nomadic horsemen (or horsedwarves), although they do keep their affinity for metalworking. Orcs are masters of the sea, rarely building settlements inland. Halflings (called Pecwae) are pretty much the same, but even more worthless IMO.

 

[Buttercup]

Ferret, this has bothered me too. But it also seems implausible to me that there could be so many sentient races. I'd think that most of them would have been wiped out over the millenia. Not only do we have to make room in our D&D world for the PHB races, but also for kobalds and goblinoids, and who knows what else. It just doesn't work for me.

So my next campaign will have humans as the only playable race, and I'll be limiting the opposition race to only one--maybe kobalds, because not being mammals, they could more easily coexist.

 

[Wombat]

I think this falls over into a common problem -- humans are almost necessarily multi-cultural (several kingdoms and states with individual idiosyncracies, holidays, deities, and the like) while non-humans are almost necessarily mono-cultural. It is rare to find any game where there are severe differences between Elvish kingdoms, while with Human kingdoms you will probably find Not-England cheek-by-jowl with the Not-Roman-Empire.

Due to this, I have done a lot to create different factions amongst my non-humans, just as with my humans, in my current campaign. It feels better, and it feels right.