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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CruelSummerLord" data-source="post: 4351235" data-attributes="member: 48692">Boy, you're not kidding on this one.  As an aside, I deliberately go out of my way to insert political incorrectness into my version of Greyhawk-slavery is sanctioned even in some good societies, women and demihumans are denied certain rights afforded human or dwarven males, etc.-as a way both of making the world more "grey" and believable and also as, admittedly, my dislike of the increased insertion of 21st-century morals in just about every aspect of the setting.   Just so we're clear, of course, my including it in a fantasy setting doesn't mean I like it in real life.  And I also make sure that there are just as many places where women and demihumans can get equal opportunities with the men.   I also hate some of the types of speech different authors use in gaming fiction, like Jeff Grubb's dialogue for Olive ("the little halfling's room?" "Boogers?" gag me) and Paul Kidd's valley-girl fairies.  Blech.   But I digress.   One of the points I wanted to address here is one in general, is that the level of magic is going to affect technology in one way or another.  SOme folks posit that there's no reason to develop technology if magic works just as well...but if you have a low-magic setting like mine, such magic alternatives simply don't exist.   You're going to have to look very long and very hard to find even a 6th or 7th level wizard, much less one who can manufacture a golem or skeletal triceratops.  In many cases, there simply isn't a wizard powerful enough to do the job, if there is one at all.  Besides, wizards are not going to waste their powers and resources crafting golems or giant skeletons for something so mundane as farming...and most farmers would either laugh out loud at you for suggesting they try that...or burn you at the stake, depending on their inclinations.   Don't get me wrong, if your setting is geared for that, then great, but mine isn't.  Part of what I'm trying to do with this discussion is generate ways in which a low magic setting, that simply doesn't have the capacity to do something like that, can maintain its pseudo-medieval stasis.   As for DrunkOnDuty's questions about racial determinism, I'd reply that it's a false dichotomy to compare the racial determinism that might exist in Howard or Tolkien with that of your typical D&D fantasy campaign.  Remember, many of the "good" races all look human in one way or another, and the "evil" ones don't.   My favorite orc artwork is the one that depicts the orc as a cross between a man and a warthog; this thing obviously isn't human, and its culture doesn't really mesh with any human equivalent.  Trolls look like spindly green things with pure-black eyes and long carrot noses-you really have to stretch, and more than likely have some axe to grind, to connect them with some sort of culture.   This is part of the reason why, I think, it helps to expand the D&D world beyond your typical Feudal European model.  We can see how the fantasy equivalents of other real-world cultures interact with the elves, orcs and dragons of the world; how do elves get along with a Somali-inspired culture?  Where do halflings fit in a nation derived from the Incas?  How would gnomes fare in their interactions with a society based on medieval Vietnam?   As with the European-inspired cultures, so too with others.  Some of them will be in many ways benevolent and good, much like their European counterparts.  Others may be in league with demons, devils or other malevolent spirits...again, much like some of the European-based societies.  When it comes to humans of ALL ethnic groups, your skin color won't determine your basic tendencies towards good or evil.  It doesn't work that way for the European-inspired parts of the world, and it won't work that way for the rest of the world.   By fleshing them out, and giving them each their own distinct culture and history, freely throwing in whatever original bits you can think of, and mixing and matching, you can make your world far more than a standard plain-vanilla pseudo-European setting.   In my mind, this can also act as a fairly effective way of responding to those critics who read too much into your typical fantasy setting.  If they say an orcish race is equivalent to a real-world human culture, you can point to a good-aligned human society, and tell them you were inspired by that human culture when you created it.   Again, it's no accident that the "evil" races don't look human at all.  The "good" ones do.  It becomes harder, in my view, to equate a nonhuman race with a given real-world culture if the creature looks like a cross between a man and a wild boar, or is otherwise fifteen feet tall and wears iron-plate armor in a volcanic region.</blockquote>

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