D&D General What is the purpose of race/heritage?

[Mind of tempest]

Anyway, here's my purpose for enjoying a bunch of different races with genuinely different abilities, characteristics, and moral outlooks: I think one of the great achievements in Tolkien's fiction was to make humans secondary, where the elves occupy center stage right up until the hobbits accidentally make everything much stranger than the wise had dreamt. Why? Well, because it makes the world I as a reader enter much bigger than me. It is much bigger than my specific hominid race: humans aren't quite an afterthought, but we are, in the consensus of Middle Earth, generally less impressive than elves or even dwarves. Because of this, when I read it I read about a world that doesn't need me or indeed anyone at all like me and has wonders far beyond our narrow human priorities.

A world that doesn't need me is the only kind of world I can really believe in. A world in which I occupy the center is far too egocentric and therefore implausible.

The worlds of D&D, then, become that much more viscerally plausible to me when they contain numerous races some of whom are far more impressive than humans. It becomes a bigger world in which any of my egotistical tendencies are immediately squashed. I like that.

I do still agree with John R Davis on something, though: today there are way too many playable races and not enough straight-up monsters. People have complained about racial stereotypes on our threads before, but I flatly do not buy their arguments, and my grounds for this are simple: archetypes--especially Jungian archetypes--are not stereotypes. People who think they are don't yet understand mythology.

well the problem is all the monsters are designed as well xeno humans, not things antithetical to your life, you can marry an orc and have kids with who can keep going themselves that kinda takes the monster out of them, and then you go the fact that we have this product aimed at 11 year old so we can't make the monster to viscerally monstrous or the parents might complain.

few people want to redeem mind flayer as they will kill and eat you to survive not that I am against an aberration player race.

to be a monster you have to be monstrous either by form or deed with the latter as the thing that truly makes a monster

People like choosing different races because different races are fun. It isn't deeper than that, because fun can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Mechanics, creating culture, looking weird, exploring identity, there's literally an uncountable infinity of reasons why someone might have more fun with one race as opposed to another. It could even be, we already have a dwarf in the party, it'll be fun to have diversity and make something else, or it'll be fun to make a dwarf too and pal around with them.

Lots of people, especially older DMs, love to try and say that people only pick races for X, Y, Z reason, and I honestly wonder how much thought these people put into this otherwise very restricted and nonsensical opinion. The LGBT+ community didn't land on the Tieflings as their iconic race because of mechanics, and taking away the magic resistance from Yuan-Ti won't make them any less my favorite race.

The long and complicated essays and dissertations on why people pick certain races really are inherently flawed because of this. They are trying to treat all demographics as one demographic. I realize that you could say, Shardstone, you're doing the same thing by saying people are just picking races for whatever their definition of fun is! But...that's the whole point of playing a game. To, somehow, have fun, even if your fun only exists because you just want to pal around with your friends.

got to ask why yuan-ti? as I have heard few who like it, I would play one myself if they were not so busted they get auto vetoed but they will likely never be my favourite.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I read game forums all the time. This is the first time I have seen ribbon. Could I have overlooked it? Sure. Could I have not been reading specific threads that it was used? Sure.

But if you are actually saying the introduction of a new term is easier for people to understand than the standard usage, ie. "minor ability," then you are mistaken. Jargon is supposed to be used for something new. A minor vs major ability is not something new. It has been discussed since game design was a thing. I mean, you could even just add the appropriate descriptor onto the word ability, and everyone would understand. Here are some examples:

• This is a special circumstance ability, it can only be used if X conditions are met.
• This is a singular use ability, it can only be used once per long rest.
• This is a minor ability, it's not very strong.
• This is a major ability, it is powerful.
• This is an intermittent ability, it can only happen after a short rest.
• This is a forbidden ability, players are never allowed access, only really powerful monsters.
• This is an evolving ability, as players level, it levels up too.
• This is a disappearing ability, once it is used, it goes away forever.

There are a few off the top of my head written in one minute. See how all of them denote what they do - without making someone not "in the know" feel confused. See how the descriptors, again written in one minute, explain, or at least imply, what the ability is. Game design should be about clarity, and the clearest communication, is one people already know.

You’ve missed the point. “Ribbon” is a simple term that is extremely easy to understand. It requires, at most a single short and simple statement of explanation, that’s it.

And it means a different thing from just “minor ability”.

Not every minor ability is a ribbon. A ribbon is a simple and small feature that adds flavor to your character without any meaningful impact on the balance of your character, and which the designers specifically did not weigh in terms of balance when designing the class, race, or other player option.

It’s the ribbon on the present. Simple. No one on earth is incapable of quickly and easily understanding that.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sometimes it seems like the upside is the ability to exclude people from conversations. In general though, I think most folks who use jargon believe that it makes the conversation smoother.

I think the vast majority of jargon usage is nothing more complex or deep than “I don’t want to repeat an explanatory phrase every time I want to communicate this idea in its right context, and there is a single word right here that I can just explain once per person at the most, rather than having to spell out “ability or other feature that isn’t part of balance considerations because it just adds a bit of flavor, rather than any juicy mechanical advantage” every single time.

Like, in specialized fields it can become a necessity, but in a normal conversation it’s usually just about the above, IMO.

 

[Yaarel]

then you go the fact that we have this product aimed at 11 year old so we can't make the monster to viscerally monstrous or the parents might complain.

I would use popular cartoons as a guide.

A lot of kids love snot, and poop jokes, and goo, and tentacles, as well as beastly horns, fangs, and claws. Plus dinosaurs!

When a cartoon does these kinds of things and remains popular, they are probably threading the needle well enough.

The less human features imply darker themes, that kid shows tend to shy away from, but which adult gamers might want to explore.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

well the problem is all the monsters are designed as well xeno humans, not things antithetical to your life, you can marry an orc and have kids with who can keep going themselves that kinda takes the monster out of them, and then you go the fact that we have this product aimed at 11 year old so we can't make the monster to viscerally monstrous or the parents might complain.

Why does being able to produce offspring take away the monster nature? There are several instances of drakones or drakainai mating with humans in Greek mythology, producing either great heroes, entire cities/cultures, or both. The Egyptian deities usually had animal heads, some of them apparently completely made-up (the Set Animal specifically), yet there was no contradiction in the idea that an Egyptian deity could sire offspring with earthly creatures. E.g. Apis, the cow-god of fertility and other things, was thought to repeatedly reincarnate by being sired by his father, originally Ptah, impregnating a cow via moonbeam or some other divine method. Further, after Imhotep was deified, people claimed one of his parents was a god (either his father was Thoth or his mother was Sekhmet, but never both.) Norse mythology is absolutely packed with distinct races--Aesir, Vanir, Jotunn, Alfr, Dwarfs, mortal humans, etc.--and those various races married amongst one another all the time, sometimes even producing offspring. E.g., Loki is the son of the jotunn Farbauti and the goddess Laufey, and almost always referred to with a near-unique matronymic instead of patronymic; Loki goes on to have multiple children himself (well, herself, since Loki frequently gender-bends when shapeshifting), some of them with monsters or animals, which is where Odinn gets his trusty steed from!

Monsters don't need to be viscerally monstrous to be monsters. There's a much, much broader space here. We don't have to be trapped in the false dichotomy of "100% human or totally, completely alien and terrifying." There's a middle here feeling very excluded.

few people want to redeem mind flayer as they will kill and eat you to survive not that I am against an aberration player race.

Sure. I know some folks who might try, but overall, I agree that mindflayers are a step beyond even vampires in this sense. Vampires could theoretically live in harmony with humans if you develop good refrigeration infrastructure (probably using magic) and get enough people willing to give blood. (We did this in one of my DW games; it turned out freely-given blood is WAY tastier to vampires, so we instigated a rebellion in their ranks, and set up a system so they would get the blood they need to live, and would in return protect the city from stuff that stalks in the night. It worked out pretty well.)

Mindflayers, though...they gotta legit kill a person in order to eat their brain. You'd think, if they could, they'd just raise cattle or whatever, since cattle are a hell of a lot easier to raise and work with than sapient beings, who take ages and ages to reach maturity. It's a lot harder to imagine that there's a way to fix their situation. 4e offered an option ("brain moss," which is essentially vegan brain tissue for mind flayers to eat--it's not as tasty as sapient brains, but provides all the nutrients they require) but that particular tidbit didn't really catch on. I think that's because people are legit okay with mindflayers being monsters, they aren't sexy like vampires or werewolves and they aren't inherently ultra-cool like dragons, so there's a lot less appetite for fixing them. Similar arguments apply to stuff like beholders and kuo-toa.

to be a monster you have to be monstrous either by form or deed with the latter as the thing that truly makes a monster

Okay. I think that means anyone and anything can be a monster. As a result, if we push things toward deeds being what makes a monster, denying most (though not quite all) options of "monstrous by form," doesn't that mean our monsters should get better pretty much axiomatically?

(Really, what it actually means is that more people who relied on the crutch of "monstrous by form" will be revealed as relying on "monstrous by form," so we'll see a lot of poorly-written "monstrous by deed" creatures, not because monsters have become worse but because we have become more choosy about what monsters we'll accept as well-made.)

 

[Shardstone]

well the problem is all the monsters are designed as well xeno humans, not things antithetical to your life, you can marry an orc and have kids with who can keep going themselves that kinda takes the monster out of them, and then you go the fact that we have this product aimed at 11 year old so we can't make the monster to viscerally monstrous or the parents might complain.

few people want to redeem mind flayer as they will kill and eat you to survive not that I am against an aberration player race.

to be a monster you have to be monstrous either by form or deed with the latter as the thing that truly makes a monster

got to ask why yuan-ti? as I have heard few who like it, I would play one myself if they were not so busted they get auto vetoed but they will likely never be my favourite.

I think snake people are rad as naughty word. I think the "psychopath by birth" angle and the "hero by nurture" example is a fun dynamic to explore. I think controlling snakes as a spell is metal. And I think the ideas of nightmare and conspiracy in them are really fun to play with from a heroic subversion or antihero point of view. Overall a race with a lot of fun texture to explore imo.

And I love the aesthetics. Mesoamerican-adjacent conspiracist with hidden scales, snake eyes, fangs, neon feathers in the air, innately casting suggestion and naughty word with nobles heads to try and use conspiracy to bring down conspiracy.

Being resistant to magic (or, now, spells) really has no impact on this for me.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Why does being able to produce offspring take away the monster nature? There are several instances of drakones or drakainai mating with humans in Greek mythology, producing either great heroes, entire cities/cultures, or both. The Egyptian deities usually had animal heads, some of them apparently completely made-up (the Set Animal specifically), yet there was no contradiction in the idea that an Egyptian deity could sire offspring with earthly creatures. E.g. Apis, the cow-god of fertility and other things, was thought to repeatedly reincarnate by being sired by his father, originally Ptah, impregnating a cow via moonbeam or some other divine method. Further, after Imhotep was deified, people claimed one of his parents was a god (either his father was Thoth or his mother was Sekhmet, but never both.) Norse mythology is absolutely packed with distinct races--Aesir, Vanir, Jotunn, Alfr, Dwarfs, mortal humans, etc.--and those various races married amongst one another all the time, sometimes even producing offspring. E.g., Loki is the son of the jotunn Farbauti and the goddess Laufey, and almost always referred to with a near-unique matronymic instead of patronymic; Loki goes on to have multiple children himself (well, herself, since Loki frequently gender-bends when shapeshifting), some of them with monsters or animals, which is where Odinn gets his trusty steed from!

Monsters don't need to be viscerally monstrous to be monsters. There's a much, much broader space here. We don't have to be trapped in the false dichotomy of "100% human or totally, completely alien and terrifying." There's a middle here feeling very excluded.


Sure. I know some folks who might try, but overall, I agree that mindflayers are a step beyond even vampires in this sense. Vampires could theoretically live in harmony with humans if you develop good refrigeration infrastructure (probably using magic) and get enough people willing to give blood. (We did this in one of my DW games; it turned out freely-given blood is WAY tastier to vampires, so we instigated a rebellion in their ranks, and set up a system so they would get the blood they need to live, and would in return protect the city from stuff that stalks in the night. It worked out pretty well.)

Mindflayers, though...they gotta legit kill a person in order to eat their brain. You'd think, if they could, they'd just raise cattle or whatever, since cattle are a hell of a lot easier to raise and work with than sapient beings, who take ages and ages to reach maturity. It's a lot harder to imagine that there's a way to fix their situation. 4e offered an option ("brain moss," which is essentially vegan brain tissue for mind flayers to eat--it's not as tasty as sapient brains, but provides all the nutrients they require) but that particular tidbit didn't really catch on. I think that's because people are legit okay with mindflayers being monsters, they aren't sexy like vampires or werewolves and they aren't inherently ultra-cool like dragons, so there's a lot less appetite for fixing them. Similar arguments apply to stuff like beholders and kuo-toa.


Okay. I think that means anyone and anything can be a monster. As a result, if we push things toward deeds being what makes a monster, denying most (though not quite all) options of "monstrous by form," doesn't that mean our monsters should get better pretty much axiomatically?

(Really, what it actually means is that more people who relied on the crutch of "monstrous by form" will be revealed as relying on "monstrous by form," so we'll see a lot of poorly-written "monstrous by deed" creatures, not because monsters have become worse but because we have become more choosy about what monsters we'll accept as well-made.)

gods are not monsters by definition not monsters as they are worthy of worship by some calculation as people thought you could bribe sapient aspects of the world to help you but I digress what you describing is what I termed xeno humans they are fundamentally some kind of people and thus should be treated as such.
you seem to use the monster as a generic, I literally mean it as something that you fight, if you can live with it it is either a fantasy person like gods, elves or orcs or a magical animal like say a pegasus.

the problem for monstrous by deed is that we play a kids game thus it will never be allowed to be explained past generic stuff, how did you think we ended up with 50 types of foe who are just slavers.

the point of monsters by form is to show that this thing is different to get you to not treat it like other things, monstrous by deed is to make killing it seem rational.
you can, of course, have more mundane antagonism but things have to be set up right or the players are just murderous madmen with way too much power.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

gods are not monsters by definition not monsters as they are worthy of worship by some calculation as people thought you could bribe sapient aspects of the world to help you but I digress what you describing is what I termed xeno humans they are fundamentally some kind of people and thus should be treated as such.
you seem to use the monster as a generic, I literally mean it as something that you fight, if you can live with it it is either a fantasy person like gods, elves or orcs or a magical animal like say a pegasus.

Many gods were monsters in a more casual sense.

I'm more confused why "monster" has to be something you fight. That seems a narrow definition, particularly given just...what mythology is. That makes an awful lot of very mythically-resonant creatures "not monsters" because they're either friendly or merely aloof. The Tarrasque, or rather tarasque in the original French, for example, wouldn't be a monster by that definition because it was tamed by a Christian saint (St. Martha) and only died because the city instantly opened fire on the creature as St. Martha led it back to town.

the problem for monstrous by deed is that we play a kids game thus it will never be allowed to be explained past generic stuff, how did you think we ended up with 50 types of foe who are just slavers.

That doesn't really jive with most of the stuff I've seen from official modules, including some people decry as being "for kids."

It certainly doesn't stop us from writing such characters. Which I have. To great effect. My players very much enjoy hating some of my villainous NPCs.

the point of monsters by form is to show that this thing is different to get you to not treat it like other things, monstrous by deed is to make killing it seem rational.
you can, of course, have more mundane antagonism but things have to be set up right or the players are just murderous madmen with way too much power.

Well...that's sort of the problem, isn't it? The bolded bit, I mean. Treating people not like other people is one of the key problems humanity has been dealing with since...well, at least the dawn of recorded history and probably for as long as there have been things we could even vaguely call "people." Treating people as non-people because of their physical appearance, or location of origin, or the language they speak, or the contents of their trousers, or the contents of the trousers of those with whom they share their bed, or what things they hold sacred, or...

Having creatures that are genuinely people, and yet also "monsters by form" is becoming difficult to accept now. Particularly because the odds are quite high now that someone in your gaming group either has one of the aforementioned benign traits previously labelled as a "monster by form" trait in the past, or someone they love/care about does. We're starting to see that it's disrespectful, all too often specifically to someone actually playing at your own table.

 

[Reynard]

Many gods were monsters in a more casual sense.

I'm more confused why "monster" has to be something you fight. That seems a narrow definition, particularly given just...what mythology is. That makes an awful lot of very mythically-resonant creatures "not monsters" because they're either friendly or merely aloof. The Tarrasque, or rather tarasque in the original French, for example, wouldn't be a monster by that definition because it was tamed by a Christian saint (St. Martha) and only died because the city instantly opened fire on the creature as St. Martha led it back to town.

That's a very strange read. It was a monster that was tamed.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That's a very strange read. It was a monster that was tamed.

If it can be tamed, it doesn't have to be fought. That means it's not a monster by the given definition: it can be lived with, because tame animals are by definition things you can live with. They even gave pegasus as an example of a tame mythical creature.