Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1052862That seems disingenuous. Just because something was not an earthling does not mean it will be unrecognizable or that it will have less in common with us than we do with jellyfish. Niches exist independently of planets and there is no reason to believe that alien life will be fundamentally different with regards to that.

And I feel like you are falling into the logical fallacies of moving the goal posts and arguing from ignorance. There are numerous speculative biology projects. Do you really think all of them are too similar to terrestrial life and do not paint a believable picture of alien life?

My point is we have no way of knowing until we actually encounter extraterrestrial life. Until then, it's all various degrees of speculation. Maybe they will be "humans with bumpy foreheads" because of convergent evolution, or maybe they will defy our expectations of what life fundamentally means, and we will go "Bwuh?"

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1052871My point is we have no way of knowing until we actually encounter extraterrestrial life. Until then, it's all various degrees of speculation. Maybe they will be "humans with bumpy foreheads" because of convergent evolution, or maybe they will defy our expectations of what life fundamentally means, and we will go "Bwuh?"

Science fiction has already explored stuff that defies our expectations regarding the definition of life and intelligence. We have gotten the xeelee from the Xeelee Sequence, the scramblers from Blindsight, the soft ones from Orion's Arm, the babyeaters and superhappies from Three Worlds Collide, the aliens/demons from Lovecraft pastiches and more. Someone even analyzed the possible psychology behind the Dunwich horror.

We have yet to exhaust every possibility, but we do have a fairly imaginative picture of what alien life could be like.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1052974Science fiction has already explored stuff that defies our expectations regarding the definition of life and intelligence. We have gotten the xeelee from the Xeelee Sequence, the scramblers from Blindsight, the soft ones from Orion's Arm, the babyeaters and superhappies from Three Worlds Collide, the aliens/demons from Lovecraft pastiches and more. Someone even analyzed the possible psychology behind the Dunwich horror.

We have yet to exhaust every possibility, but we do have a fairly imaginative picture of what alien life could be like.

I don't think the HP Lovecraft stuff helps your case though. It's rooted in human psychology and human fears. An actual alien observing the fiction might find them very specifically tailored to trigger human emotions.

And yeah, I'm aware of the more far-out stuff from sci-fi. The Caliebans from Herbert's Consentiency universe are another example. Interesting ideas, but not outside human expectations, since somebody thought them up. That's the logical trap we cannot escape until we actually encounter real world alien beings.

Quote from: MonsterSlayer;1051572They are absolutely plaid differently and the inter actions between different races are highlighted.

Great, now I have the image of my dwarf druid dressed in a checkered shirt burned into my brain....

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1052828Really? What would you call "alien" then? I think your line of reasoning is excessively broad to the point where it makes "alien" impossible because every form of life can be reduced to "human-relatable" terms.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "human-relatable".

CJ Cherryh's books have aliens nobody understands. (See her Chanur and Foreigner series.) Their thought processes are too different. In the Chanur books, the one species that can talk to one particular alien species kind of got the idea of trade across. Now, instead of just taking stuff (including people), the aliens leave something (sometimes other people) in return. We know what the alien species does, but not why.

Several post-singularity authors have the AIs also impossible to understand. The AIs operate at a level we can't conceive, any more than a Flatlander can really understand "up but not North".

But most aliens that take up significant portions of a book are written as "one particular aspect of humans take to an extreme" because that's what humans can understand. The zerg are understandable, if extreme.

Quote from: Tod13;1053026But most aliens that take up significant portions of a book are written as "one particular aspect of humans take to an extreme" because that's what humans can understand. The zerg are understandable, if extreme.

Saying that such aliens take a specifically human aspect to an extreme is disingenuous. The zerg's defining traits are not unique to humans but are basic facets of life itself taken to their logical extreme. The zerg's assimilation is just bacterial conjugation and viral replication taken to its logical extreme. Their deliberate manipulation of their own genes is just natural selection and horizontal gene transfer taken to its logical extreme. Their drive to expand infinitely and consume all life that is not themselves is the basic drive of all life and viruses and even prions taken to its logical extreme.

The only aspect of the zerg that is uniquely human is that they are a biological equivalent to the Singularity, complete with a materialistic God complex, which itself is unique to modern cyperpunk fiction and was completely unknown to humans in ages past. If the most human aspect of an alien is that they are what humans consider to be beyond the ability of their own minds to comprehend, then I think saying they are just a human aspect exaggerated is outright falsehood.

All this stuff about the Zerg and completely alien biology/psychology is kinda beside the point to the topic. One of the core aspects of demi-humans is reflected in their very group name; they are human-like beings. They are social beings that reproduce sexually, are born, eat, drink, rest, defecate and, even it sometimes takes centuries, eventually grow old and die.

Heck, as I understand it one of the reasons "races" got used instead of species was because a lot of the initial source material referred to elves, dwarves and hobbits as being among the "races of Men." Half-elves got added specifically because Tolkein (and a lot of folktales he pulled from) had elves/fae and humans produce fertile offspring; something that just doesn't happen (naturally anyway) unless you shared a common ancestor less than a hundred thousand or so years back.

In other words, at best we're looking at modern humans vs. Neanderthals in terms of how "alien" the demi-humans would be from the humans. It's not like they're Thi-Kreen (insects), Lizardmen (reptiles), Aaracroca (avians) or even Wolfen (canine mammals). The demi-humans are at the very least hominids, if not actual homo sapiens (some refer to anatomically modern humans as homo sapiens sapiens to distinguish from extinct subspecies like homo sapiens idaltu).

Personally I tend to view the demi-humans of most D&D settings to be homo sapiens (homo sapiens sapiens, homo sapiens subterranus, homo sapiens immortalus, homo sapiens diminitus, etc.)... which is why, at least in the pre-3e editions, the use of "race" to distinguish makes absolute sense. Some settings may establish the races differently (ex. Dwarves are sapient stone, elves are plant-based) but they seem like the exceptions that prove the rule.

That said, if you're including dragonborn, reptilian kobolds, thri-kreen and warforged in the section you should probably be calling them species instead of races.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1053109Saying that such aliens take a specifically human aspect to an extreme is disingenuous.

Nope. It is accurate. To repeat because all the clauses are important: But most aliens that take up significant portions of a book are written as "one particular aspect of humans taken to an extreme" because that's what humans can understand.

Nothing you say changes what I said. But I think the problem, see below, is that you think I said something I did not say.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1053109If the most human aspect of an alien is that they are what humans consider to be beyond the ability of their own minds to comprehend, then I think saying they are just a human aspect exaggerated is outright falsehood.

I never said that. I said most aliens that take up a large portion of a story are exaggerations of aspects of humanity. Please note the qualifiers.

Before that though, I gave a couple examples where the alien's (if you want to call post-Singularity AIs "alien") motivations and reasoning really are incomprehensible. But in those books, the aliens are not significant portions of the story. You're drawing some connection between the two (incomprehensible aliens and aliens as exaggerated humans) that I never made (or intended).

Quote from: Chris24601;1053146All this stuff about the Zerg and completely alien biology/psychology is kinda beside the point to the topic. One of the core aspects of demi-humans is reflected in their very group name; they are human-like beings. They are social beings that reproduce sexually, are born, eat, drink, rest, defecate and, even it sometimes takes centuries, eventually grow old and die.

Heck, as I understand it one of the reasons "races" got used instead of species was because a lot of the initial source material referred to elves, dwarves and hobbits as being among the "races of Men." Half-elves got added specifically because Tolkein (and a lot of folktales he pulled from) had elves/fae and humans produce fertile offspring; something that just doesn't happen (naturally anyway) unless you shared a common ancestor less than a hundred thousand or so years back.

In other words, at best we're looking at modern humans vs. Neanderthals in terms of how "alien" the demi-humans would be from the humans. It's not like they're Thi-Kreen (insects), Lizardmen (reptiles), Aaracroca (avians) or even Wolfen (canine mammals). The demi-humans are at the very least hominids, if not actual homo sapiens (some refer to anatomically modern humans as homo sapiens sapiens to distinguish from extinct subspecies like homo sapiens idaltu).

Personally I tend to view the demi-humans of most D&D settings to be homo sapiens (homo sapiens sapiens, homo sapiens subterranus, homo sapiens immortalus, homo sapiens diminitus, etc.)... which is why, at least in the pre-3e editions, the use of "race" to distinguish makes absolute sense. Some settings may establish the races differently (ex. Dwarves are sapient stone, elves are plant-based) but they seem like the exceptions that prove the rule.

That said, if you're including dragonborn, reptilian kobolds, thri-kreen and warforged in the section you should probably be calling them species instead of races.

The word "species" seems too modern IMO to fit into a pseudo-medieval European setting. What about ancestries, heritages, kinds and so forth?

Also, why are we conflating biological phenotype with culture? That seems a bit racist to me because we know that in real life every "race" has multiple different cultures. Using "white" people as an example (since SJWs love to claim Europeans lack culture while simultaneously rewriting European history to be more politically correct), we see this in European countries and the American states. Something as commonplace as fast food constitutes cultural cuisine. (Although this depends on how you define race, since racial classifications are unscientific, arbitrary and usually ignore or downplay the existence of ethnic groups like Indians, First Nations peoples and that island tribe that independently evolved blond hair. The Nazi's, for example, considered Slavs and Mediterraneans to be PoC.)

Quote from: Tod13;1053227Nope. It is accurate. To repeat because all the clauses are important: But most aliens that take up significant portions of a book are written as "one particular aspect of humans taken to an extreme" because that's what humans can understand.

Nothing you say changes what I said. But I think the problem, see below, is that you think I said something I did not say.



I never said that. I said most aliens that take up a large portion of a story are exaggerations of aspects of humanity. Please note the qualifiers.

Before that though, I gave a couple examples where the alien's (if you want to call post-Singularity AIs "alien") motivations and reasoning really are incomprehensible. But in those books, the aliens are not significant portions of the story. You're drawing some connection between the two (incomprehensible aliens and aliens as exaggerated humans) that I never made (or intended).

The "one particular aspect of humans taken to an extreme" is classically considered bad writing because it is a giant plot hole. A civilization based around one concept like warriors or scientists cannot function. Even the simplest civilization requires a dizzying variety of jobs to maintain their infrastructure (including food, shelter, clothing, legal disputes, etc). Unlike the klingons, the zerg have dedicated miners, geneticists, and everything else they need to actually fund a war effort.

Your statement is wrong about the zerg. They are not "one particular aspect of humans taken to an extreme" and saying that they are is so reductionist as to be essentially meaningless because if they are then so are ants (communism to the extreme), octopuses (childcare to the extreme), mushrooms (LGBTQ+ to the extreme), trees (veganism to the extreme), rocks (stupidity to the extreme), stars (light pollution to the extreme), and black holes (obesity epidemic to the extreme).

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1053236The "one particular aspect of humans taken to an extreme" is classically considered bad writing because it is a giant plot hole. A civilization based around one concept like warriors or scientists cannot function. Even the simplest civilization requires a dizzying variety of jobs to maintain their infrastructure (including food, shelter, clothing, legal disputes, etc). Unlike the klingons, the zerg have dedicated miners, geneticists, and everything else they need to actually fund a war effort.

This is addressed in the Enterprise episode Judgement. I can't find a clip so...

"You didn't believe all Klingons were soldiers?"
"I guess I did."
"My father was a teacher. My mother, a biologist at the university. They encouraged me to take up the law. Now, all young people want to do is to take up weapons as soon as they can hold them. They're told there is honor in victory – any victory. What honor is there in a victory over a weaker opponent? Had Duras destroyed that ship, he would have been lauded as a hero of the Empire for murdering helpless refugees. We were a great society, not so long ago. When honor was earned through integrity and acts of true courage, not senseless bloodshed."
"For thousands of years, my people had similar problems. We fought three world wars that almost destroyed us. Whole generations were nearly wiped out."
"What changed?"
"A few courageous people began to realize... they could make a difference."

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Judgment_(episode)

Quote from: Chris24601;1053146That said, if you're including dragonborn, reptilian kobolds, thri-kreen and warforged in the section you should probably be calling them species instead of races.

Why?

The Dragonborn Race or the Kobold Race is as useful as the Human Race, Elven Race or the Dwarven Race. If you think of Race in those terms then it makes sense. If you think of Race as a sub-type of a species, then you automatically consider elves, dwarves and so on as different types of human, which doesn't really work.

Quote from: soltakss;1053246Why?

The Dragonborn Race or the Kobold Race is as useful as the Human Race, Elven Race or the Dwarven Race. If you think of Race in those terms then it makes sense. If you think of Race as a sub-type of a species, then you automatically consider elves, dwarves and so on as different types of human, which doesn't really work.

Are human races still a thing in such a setting? Would the term "race" be used in both contexts or would another term be substituted? Something weird I noticed in most fantasy with demi-humans is that human racial or ethnic differences are completely ignored.

Quote from: soltakss;1053246Why?

The Dragonborn Race or the Kobold Race is as useful as the Human Race, Elven Race or the Dwarven Race. If you think of Race in those terms then it makes sense. If you think of Race as a sub-type of a species, then you automatically consider elves, dwarves and so on as different types of human, which doesn't really work.

You realize that I literally just said that I consider the demi-humans (elves, dwarves and hobbits/halflings) in most D&D settings to be subspecies of homo sapiens (homo sapiens sapiens = human, homo sapiens immortalus = elf, homo sapiens subterranus = dwarf, homo sapiens diminutus = halfling).

They have different sizes/builds, different lifespans, minor variations in amount/color of body hair and facial features; it's a bit more extreme than in the real world (particularly lifespans; but then a lot of myths and legends have humans of past ages who lived for hundreds of years before we fell to our current state), but there's nothing about the demi-humans that wouldn't fall outside of "human with a birth defect" levels of deviation from human norms.

In terms of deviation, there are actually several extinct subspecies of homo sapiens in the real world as well.

Running specifically along these lines is that "Adventurers in Middle Earth" for 5e lists elves, dwarves and hobbits alongside the Bardings, Duindain, Men of Bree, Men of Rohan, Men of the Lake, etc. In other words, they're all "Races of Men."

If elves, dwarves and halflings are just homo sapiens subspecies (and those are the only PC types available) then calling them "races" is entirely justified as it's pretty much the same context as we use race today.

However, if the setting also includes PC races that are completely distinct (ex. Lizard men, Bug men, sapient plant life) as well, that's when using 'race' seems silly to me because the options available cross species boundaries, not just racial ones.

Likewise, I do think it's rather logical that most racial distinctions other than subspecies (because of the obvious physiological differences) would be relatively downplayed in D&D settings because, even if they aren't available to the players, there do exist a wide array of hostile sapient species in most D&D settings that must be contended with. A human from the Danish ethnic group and one of the Pygmy peoples have only relatively minor variations in height and pigmentation compared to say any human and a lizardman, much less something like a dragon which doesn't even have the same number of appendages, much less body form.

Also worth noting is that unless the setting has had rather sizable migrations or easy travel in the past, most particular regions of any given fantasy world will tend to be relatively homogeneous in terms of ethnicity.

Paleolithic humans in Europe were more likely to interact with a tribe of their Neanderthal cousins than with other anatomically modern humans from say, southern Africa or Southeast Asia. The need to distinguish between European and African ethnic groups just wouldn't be part of their day-to -day existence while distinguishing between fellow Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals one valley over would be frequent.

This is relevant to the subject:

[video=youtube_share;RwvqXDdIeeM]https://youtu.be/RwvqXDdIeeM[/youtube]