Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kinematics" data-source="post: 8861067" data-attributes="member: 6932123">Not necessarily. More likely it's just an alignment between people who happen to be players and people who write books to use terms that make a reasonable amount of sense for conveying certain types of information. Language is language.Personally, I think 'species' is the worst possible option for the new term.  Aside from the scientific issues that have already been elaborated on in the thread, it holds connotations that seem extremely derogatory in the context of how they're trying to use it.'Species' is used to identify different types of biologically distinct creatures. It is not limited to what we would consider player races, whether humanoid (human, dwarf, elf), goblinoid (goblins, orcs), fey (eladrin, centaurs), certain monstrosities (minotaurs), or whatever other general category they've been placed in.  'Species' would also apply to identifying owlbears, wargs, trench worms, stirges, oozes, pine trees, etc.  It does not have the connotative restriction that 'race' has which limits it to sentient/sapient/intelligent/civilized creatures.As such, designating someone as a member of a 'species' in any context other than an analytical scientific one is quite dehumanizing.  A dwarf is linguistically equivalent to a primordial ooze. An orc is on the same level as a species of mold.  It avoids people's hangups about real-life racism by trading that in for a vastly more degrading form of racism.A 'species' of animal is something to be analyzed and checked for threat risk, perhaps elevated as high as being considered a pet, or lowered to the level of something that needs to be exterminated.  It distances you from having to think of said creatures as human or people.  Even "the human species" is used when considering humans as creatures that exist on the planet, not parents or friends or, well, humans.As for other terms, unfortunately we don't have a more generalized term in the English language that means the same thing as what 'race' is used for in D&D. 'Human' would probably be the best term if it didn't conflate with the specific species that it also refers to.  Perhaps 'mortal'? Or 'mortal race', which may help distance it from real-world use of 'race'.'Ancestry' and 'lineage' are shorthand for, "What race were your ancestors?" 'Heritage' is shorthand for "What racial traits did you inherit from your parents?"  'Kin' and 'folk' are closer to what Level Up defines as Culture. (Note: I like Level Up's separation of race and culture into Heritage and Culture, but D&D seems to be(?) keeping those components together, so this inconsistency may not be as troublesome there.)  Similarly with the other suggested options, in which they're either failing to convey some of the important meaning, or papering over a word that people object to in a different context.</blockquote>

Verification