Who Else likes the Cantina?

[Garthanos]

If your pcs interact with everyone instead of just themselves ... they are actually a bloody small part of the environment...wierdos do tend to cling together. Ie the pcs do not need to define the distribution of game world. One of the reasons I am unfond of premaid adventures is certainly this. I may be a control freak... but only far "outside" of the players.

 

[Rechan]

You find humanity, in it's infinite diversity, fascinating and a bit scary.

Yet in an RPG, humanity -- even with the traditional fantasy races along for the ride -- is too confining to hold any interest?

Yes.

I'll use a food metaphor.

Let us say that I must eat chips for my entire life. I normally only have access to "Original" flavor chips. That's typically all I get to eat. Occasionlly though, I'll venture into a store that has a whole AISLE of chips. Tortilla chips, barbeque chips, sea salt chips! I'm overwhelmed and fascinated and scared by all these choices.

However, for 4 hours every two weeks, I pretend that I can eat anything I want. I could have chocolate or pizza or steak.

Why then, during this time where I get to pretend I can eat anything I want, would I pretend to eat chips?

In real life, humans are all I get. ANYTHING I wanted to do with regards to humans could be explored in my day to day life. My career involves studying humans. In a fantasy world, there are so many radically different things that sticking with humans, to me, is downright silly. I do not want to be anything like me when I get to play pretend.

Knowing what I know about human psychology and physiology, then, it seems even more exciting when I consider how another species may] operate on different fundamental things than what humans do. If you have a race where scent, or sound, is the primary sense (instead of sight being the most important), how does that effect their culture, their outlook, their behavior, their language? By taking ANY fact about humans and saying "What if it wasn't that way" and it opens so many interesting thoughts. Where they have different instincts, different anything, and how that effects roleplaying with your party members, or changing that area of the world! That is way, way cooler than anything I could ever do with humans.

So to me, a world where "everyone is special, no one is" isn't true. Because part of the fun is exploring what makes them special, and how that specialness effects everything else. Nothing exists in a vacuum. The uniqueness of each group offers a foundation you build larger connections upon.

 

[Garthanos]

Yes.

I'll use a food metaphor.

Let us say that I must eat chips for my entire life. I normally only have access to "Original" flavor chips. That's typically all I get to eat. Occasionlly though, I'll venture into a store that has a whole AISLE of chips. Tortilla chips, barbeque chips, sea salt chips! I'm overwhelmed and fascinated and scared by all these choices.

However, for 4 hours every two weeks, I pretend that I can eat anything I want. I could have chocolate or pizza or steak.

Why then, during this time where I get to pretend I can eat anything I want, would I pretend to eat chips?

In real life, humans is all I get. ANYTHING I wanted to do with regards to humans could be explored in my day to day life. In a fantasy world, there are so many radically different things that sticking with humans, to me, is downright silly.

Knew a girl in college who started out and uber-innocent and ended up sampling nationalities of guys like they were hors d'oeuvres

Sorry all the talk about food and races of people...

 

[Rechan]

Either we see it differently, or we actually agree on the degree of cantina that's good after all.

I LOVE it about B5 and Stargate that MOST of the races we ever see have real cultures, homelands, traditions, and roots in the setting. I think that's possible because there are so few of them -- 4 main races including humans in B5.

I disagree.

You say "4 MAIN races". Sure. But those were only the MAIN races becuase those were the races of the main characters. You had other aliens filtering in all the time. Many plots revolved around the "Alien Race of the Week" so to speak.

Besides. You are right that it IS easier to go in depth into each race if there are fewer races. B5 made a big deal about the racial tensions and politics between the races. However, I don't think most RPG campaigns focus on that. Usually it's about dealing with tension Outside, not tension between/within the main races. It's "X is trying to destroy all of us" as opposed to "The elves and the dwarves hate each other and that influences the entire plot of the campaign".

 

[haakon1]

In real life, humans are all I get. ANYTHING I wanted to do with regards to humans could be explored in my day to day life. My career involves studying humans.
. . .
Knowing what I know about human psychology and physiology, then, it seems even more exciting when I consider how another species may] operate on different fundamental things than what humans do. If you have a race where scent, or sound, is the primary sense

Ah. I take it you're a psychiatrist or other medical professional? And your basic view is: humans are a species. They are a certain set of organs and personality traits and so on, with diseases and variation therein. But basically, one set of creatures, with whom you are thoroughly conversant and don't have more questions to explore. Fair enough.

I come at it from a different place. I studied humans as my specialty too. But I studied history and political science -- SOCIETIES, not individuals -- and saw there's incredible variation over time and space in what human societies are like.

And now my career is about humans too -- but I'm in human resources working on global issues, with people around the world -- last week, I was working with an Italian to convince a Catalonian who lives in the UK and manages a team in France about a French issue. I know academically and from direct experience that people from different cultures can see things rather differently.

From that background, I haven't gotten bored coming up with human characters. My latest, just figuring him out for my first 4e campaign, is inspired by the Point of Light idea as I interpret it -- he's some sort of Roman (-ish) soldier, whose society has collapsed, and his goal is to protect what little is left of its cultural legacy. (In this campaign, I'm a player, with a DM who rarely has an interest in the setting, so I think I'm OK to just make that up and go with it.) That's not a background I've thought much about before, so it'll be interesting to walk a few miles in his hobnailed sandals.

Past ideas included a Spartan who was sent as a messenger from Thermoplyae and somehow teleported to a D&D campaign (speaking only Greek, which wasn't spoken in the campaign, and believing magic wasn't real).

You get the idea . . . humanity can come from very different places, literally and in the mind.

I'm not sure this is directly related to pro- or con- on the cantina, but I think it is related to our view of the relative boringness (or not) of the traditional races. Heck, for me, human is easily the most interesting . . .

I'm thinking this topic almost needs a questionnaire or focus group: What does "cantina" mean to you? How much of it is fun? How much is too much? How much is not enough? Cantina in the party, or in the non-combat environment? And if the non-combat environment, almost everywhere should be weird, or only a few special places, so you can see a contrast?

To answer my own questionnaire:
-- I think of cantina as a "wahoo" atmosphere, where if there a 8 sentient beings in a room, they are likely to be from 6-7 different species.

-- How much is fun? Multiple human races + Tolkien races is good, plus a little more -- close to human and/or based in mythology and/or long-standing in D&D is good. Like the occasional lizardman, centaur, selkie, goblin, rakasha, werewolf, tiefling, or kobold in a "humanish" role in society is fine and fun. If somebody really wants something like that for a PC, OK, but one per party is enough.

I could even be sold on a really "out there" idea (the player who played a scout DOG in my RECON campaign) if someone is serious about it and willing to play it right (e.g., the player had to role-play as a dog -- no human knowledge usage, etc.).

And some races that just don't seem right to me -- dragonborn and half-anything that's not "human adjacent" -- are out, not just for PC's, but from appearing in the campaign at all, as just being too nonsensical and not the right campaign feel.

-- Tolkien races can be pretty much everywhere, but should have homelands with their own culture by itself. And a special wahoo area -- like monsters visiting an underdark city or something -- is fine. It just should never be the normal routine to walk into a bar and see a beholder playing darts with fire elemental!

 

[haakon1]

B5 made a big deal about the racial tensions and politics between the races. However, I don't think most RPG campaigns focus on that. Usually it's about dealing with tension Outside, not tension between/within the main races. It's "X is trying to destroy all of us" as opposed to "The elves and the dwarves hate each other and that influences the entire plot of the campaign".

Probably true of most campaigns. In my campaign (perhaps unsurprisingly), the main conflict is between two human cultures. The storyline is literally inspired by Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" political science theory.

And while neither side is actually EVIL, they have different kinds of friends -- humans + goblinoids + human mercenaries from different cultures on the one side, v. humans + Tolkien races on the other side.

Part of the campaign does revolve around the reluctance of different races to get involved . . . the elvish party members are from a neutral elvish country and defying their leader to help, for instance. And one adventure involved trying to stop another group of elves who were interfering with supplies for a dwarven mine . . . for what turned out to be unexpected reasons.

Not using a broader palette of races doesn't mean the only possible plot is "all the good races" against all the monsters to save the world from Sauron or "some guys kill things and take their stuff, to pay for ale and whores". Though honestly, it's usually something close to one of those, I guess!

 

[Rechan]

Ah. I take it you're a psychiatrist or other medical professional? And your basic view is: humans are a species. They are a certain set of organs and personality traits and so on, with diseases and variation therein. But basically, one set of creatures, with whom you are thoroughly conversant and don't have more questions to explore. Fair enough.

I'm in grad school to be a psychology professor. Which means that in addition to teaching, you also have to do research studies on human behavior. I'm up to my neck in what people are capable of cognitively, emotionally, etc.

But being aware of what we are capable of makes me aware of what we are limited to. Pushing past those limits, thus, is a fun creative exercise for world building and characters and such.

I come at it from a different place. I studied humans as my specialty too. But I studied history and political science -- SOCIETIES, not individuals -- and saw there's incredible variation over time and space in what human societies are like.

My focus is on Social psychology, which deals with all the stuff relating to human interaction (it also now has Evolutionary psychology in there). So, thinking about this sort of stuff - what makes people tick - is part and parcel of what I will be doing for the rest of my life. So, when I get my spare time, I'd like to apply those questions to things that don't exist, things that I know people aren't, and ask the same kinds of questions I do about people.

For instance. Warforged and Shardminds don't need to breathe, sleep, or eat. This is fairly huge. It means that they can do a lot of things that organics can't. And they're not vulnerable to the same things. A group might cultivate a chemical weapon (or other sort of inhaled irritant) and fill their "base" with it, rendering it fairly problematic for organics to invade. Or they might construct an underwater hideout, raiding coastal areas and having no problems in or out of the water. They could serve as wreckage crews - retrieving the cargo of lost vessels. They are great miners, not susceptible to poisonous gasses (the reason miners used canaries), not needing to worry about blacklung or other unfortunate effects. They can work all night, and do not "need" breaks in terms of biological needs. They make better eunuchs than eunuchs. They can sit for LONG periods of time, inactive, so a PC could be introduced simply by being unearthed from a ruin.

But just because they DON'T NEED TO, what does that mean for them? Might they like to? For example, drinking water to clean their throat or to enjoy the temperature. Drinking things we can't because they appreciate the texture or the "flavor". Their senses of touch and taste and smell might be dull, so they seek out even sharper, harsher things just to be detected ("Oh god the Warforged hugged a skunk!" "I wished to smell something.") Would they be non-plussed by biological waste, or disgusted by all biological compounds (seeing no difference between blood and urine). If they aren't capable of sex, then what do they do to express companionship? If they don't have a drive to procreate, do they have another drive to make more of themselves, expressed a different way?

And just because they are not vulnerable to some things, it means they are vulnerable to new things. One lost at sea would be lost at the bottom of the ocean, unable to find his way home. A cave in means they are trapped, perhaps forever, entombed. A warforged who is not "dead", but just "taking 10 on his death saves" might be believed dead and wind up as scrap metal/spare parts. These are phobias that, while similar, are a little different.

Shardminds are telepathic. So how is this going to effect their body language? And on the topic of body language, the faceplate of the warforged is fairly hard, which I think would limit facial expressions. So how do they communicate nonverbally? Would both of these races simply not pick up, or just not understand, the flailings and twitchings of other races (the same way other races just have trouble reading them)? An empathically "tone deaf" shardmind/warforged sounds like a really fun character; a "tone deaf" human would garner rolled eyes and he'd be considered a loser or a jerk, but if the race has this trait, it becomes a characterization about them as a people, it effects their relations with others, it goes beyond "That guy is a bit underdeveloped" and becomes "OK guys, remember to express yourselves fully and be blunt when talking to these guys".

And don't even get me started on tri keen. I grin just at the IDEA of making clicky mantis noises (along with doing mandible motions with my fingers), perching very close to sleeping companions, and otherwise just being unnerving. And being utterly terrified of females.

This is just more fun to think about then being limited to just culture/religion/ideology that humans provide. Don't get me wrong. I love anthropology, sociology, world religion and politics and all that good stuff. But I've been exploring and observing those for a Long time, been saturated with Tolkein and typical fantasy for about ten years now. Looking beyond to "how would everything be different if I had six arms or didn't have any biological functions" become more intriguing.

Simple philosophical questions like "What is it to be human" and such like that become far more when you've got lots of not-humans. But then, I also think transhumanism is intriguing.

 

[Wik]

Sorry. Not a fan of the Cantina. The way I see it - the Cantina represents the entire universe. Each alien in that bar scene was from another world. Whereas in D&D, there is one world (at least, one world in the games I play - we don't get super planar).

So, twenty-odd intelligent races choking up the major cities just doesn't do it for me. Right now, in my setting, there are a good dozen or so races:

1. Humans
2. Elves/Eladrin/Drow/Shadar-Kai (all the same race, with Shadar-Kai being half-drow half-eladrin, and Elves being non-feywild eladrin)
3. Dwarves
4. Orcs
5. Tieflings (technically cursed humans)
6. Halflings
7. Genasi (they exist, but have never been seen in the current campaign)
8. Dragonborn
9. Minotaurs

...there are also a bunch of goblin races, kobolds, lizardfolk, trolls, and ogres as minor races.

And that list is probably too long for me. I'd prefer there to be perhaps six "major" races, with humans forming about 50% of the total population. My reasoning is that this makes the world more manageable for the players to understand, and lets the GM put in some thought on how the world acutally works. Also, and this is personal opinion, here - if you set a restriction upon your world design, it tends to force you to be a bit more creative with things, making for a better game overall.

Now, all that being said, I have no problem with weird and fantastic races. I would love for my next world to consist of humans, and then five random "weird" races (Flying Bugs, Plant-People, Rock-Men, dual-personality schizo people, and warforged would make a great setting!).

Really, a whole gaggle of races in the books are great, but I prefer to take only a few to drop in my campaign. Or, to put it another way - when a painter starts work on the canvas, he selects a few complimentary colours, and gets to work. He doesn't try to use every colour he has available - sometimes, they just don't belong in the painting.

 

[Klaus]

If every place is the Cantina, what is the Cantina of those places? A single-species tavern?

I don't mind having a breadth of race options, but I don't want them to be ever-present, all-integrated. Because then you remove the whole point of the breadth of race options, which is to include a breadth of social reactions.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I know academically and from direct experience that people from different cultures can see things rather differently.

And some people will take all that experience and instead see humans as so similar that the standard "humans are the variable one while every other race has one culture/personality" becomes laughable.

Not trying to suggest your view is wrong, just pointing out that no everyone take away the same meaning from what they learn.