D&D General Words which replaced "race" in fantasy games

[FitzTheRuke]

I like Folk best, Species least, but I can't say that it'll effect my opinion of a game in any substantial way.

I'm fine with 'species' myself. After all, if the game is sticking with the scientific term 'psionics', then using 'species' too is no different.

And Dinosaur. 4e called them "Behemoths" and I sometimes still use that, but then I remember that none of the characters are speaking English, and every single thing we say is for our playing benefit, with an implied translation, so... who cares?

 

[CreamCloud0]

It is weird that "psionics" as a term doesn't get as much pushback as "species." Maybe because it's just a subsystem that doesn't affect every single character.

I think it’s likely due to psionics being the kind of word not typically encountered in everyday conversation, it doesn’t have as much ingrained feel of being ‘modern’ the same way species does.

IMO at least.

 

[Tonguez]

I think it’s likely due to psionics being the kind of word not typically encountered in everyday conversation, it doesn’t have as much ingrained feel of being ‘modern’ the same way species does.

IMO at least.

Psionics is interesting since its a portmanteau of psyche and ion both of which as old Greek words manags to maintain its ancient feel despite being a only being created in the 1950s for sci-fi, it also has the benefit of being niche and thus is still 'exotic'. Originally the word Psion was a speculative unit of Psychic energy.

Of course Species is also Latin for "appearance" of a thing, but is more imbedded in general discourse

 

[Pauln6]

Sporting event.

 

[Li Shenron]

Not all hybrids are sterile, and it's far more complex than that. It's just that the most famous hybrid (mules) are almost always sterile.

Many hybrids such as ligers are sterile for one sex, but fertile for the other. In mammals it's usually male hybrids which are infertile, and females which are fertile. With birds and reptiles it's the opposite.

And many other hybrids are completely fertile, and the parents don't interbreed simply due to behavioral barriers. Coyotes and wolves, brown and polar bears, and many species of whale fall here.

Nature isn't a perfectly neat set of rules.

This, a million times.

It's incredible and incredibly disappointing how the human mind has such difficulty accepting the continuum of nature, which always leaves something possible between any two, and pretends to fit everything into category boxes. And when their categorisation fails, they say it's because nature made a "mistake".

On the original topic, I am fine with many option but if I had to choose I'd go with "creature".

 

[Micah Sweet]

IMO that Runs into the same exact problems that the word ‘race’ does.

Not the exact same. It seems to me a person is far more likely to refer to their folk as "my people" than as "my race".

 

[Micah Sweet]

But the term generally IS being applied to biology, not culture, in this context. I could have dwarven cultural heritage if I was a human raised by dwarves, but my species would be human.

Yup, which is why IMO including the culture metric is better than not including it. It allows you to represent characters like the one you reference above more accurately, for one thing.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's all very tricky. None of us are perfect, and leading with humility, grace, and good intentions are what matter.
You seem to be going about it right.

In another thread I responded to Micah Sweet about the goal of D&D, and I think the goal of the game's makers is to be as big tent as possible in a large part because they presume that that will make them the most money – and retain the largest audience in their subscription services and buying more books, but in a larger sense, D&D is also the first point of contact most people have with TTRPGs because it's such a big name, so it's sort of locked into the big tent mentality the same way Megalodon was locked into hunting whales in a time of massive whale diversity. D&D's niche is that it isn't niche, as RPGs go. Other RPGs can corner markets on other niche perspectives and can have more controversial takes because they're oriented towards a smaller audience to begin with (as long as they don't drive away that smaller demographic).

So D&D wants to be as inclusive as possible as part of its strategy to go after the most players as possible. And I think that's both the economically sensible thing for Hasbro, but also the morally right strategy because it says "yes, you can be a part of this game too." The danger of this strategy is a sort of tyranny of the majority (or tyranny of fun as some have put it), but I think the benefits currently outweigh the risks. And when D&D does well, other TTRPGs do well in its coattails too, so if you don't love the choices D&D makes, other niche-er RPGs may scratch your itch, like LevelUp: Advanced 5E does for Micah.

I don't actually think WotC's success does much of anything for other RPGs, but otherwise I'm right there with you.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It is weird that "psionics" as a term doesn't get as much pushback as "species." Maybe because it's just a subsystem that doesn't affect every single character.

Psionics has been the term since 1e, and unlike race is not specifically offensive to anyone. I'm not surprised at all that it's sticking around.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

This, a million times.

It's incredible and incredibly disappointing how the human mind has such difficulty accepting the continuum of nature, which always leaves something possible between any two, and pretends to fit everything into category boxes. And when their categorisation fails, they say it's because nature made a "mistake".

On the original topic, I am fine with many option but if I had to choose I'd go with "creature".

When discussing the definition of a species, I believe a quote from a famous pirate sums it up perfectly: