Quote from: Chris24601 on September 12, 2022, 09:21:15 AM
So Arthurian legend is right out I guess. Merlin was essentially a Tiefling after all.

Merlin is an NPC.    I get your point, but there is some room for nuance here.

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 12, 2022, 09:21:15 AM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 11, 2022, 08:24:10 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 11, 2022, 08:21:00 AM
magical tieflings (descendants of fallen noble houses) and mighty dragonborn as PCs

Too magical for me. I like more low fantasy stuff in general.

So Arthurian legend is right out I guess. Merlin was essentially a Tiefling after all.

According to whom?

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Merlin-legendary-magician

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 12, 2022, 09:21:15 AM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 11, 2022, 08:24:10 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 11, 2022, 08:21:00 AM
magical tieflings (descendants of fallen noble houses) and mighty dragonborn as PCs

Too magical for me. I like more low fantasy stuff in general.

So Arthurian legend is right out I guess. Merlin was essentially a Tiefling after all.

I don't think Merlin is a teifling, just being a devil child isnt quite the dame imo, a tiefling is a specific thing.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 12, 2022, 10:36:50 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 12, 2022, 09:21:15 AM
So Arthurian legend is right out I guess. Merlin was essentially a Tiefling after all.

According to whom?

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Merlin-legendary-magician

Your brief source still mentions:

QuoteThe author of the first part of the Vulgate cycle made the demonic side of Merlin's character predominate

Wikipedia has more details about Geoffrey of Monmouth's version, who first created the character of Merlin.

QuoteTherefore, Geoffrey's account of Merlin Ambrosius' early life is based on the story from the Historia Brittonum. Geoffrey added his own embellishments to the tale, which he set in Carmarthen, Wales (Welsh: Caerfyrddin). While Nennius' "fatherless" Ambrosius eventually reveals himself to be the son of a Roman consul, Geoffrey's Merlin is begotten by an incubus demon on a daughter of the King of Dyfed (Demetae, today's South West Wales). Usually, the name of Merlin's mother is not stated, but is given as Adhan in the oldest version of the Prose Brut,[16] the text also naming his grandfather as King Conaan.

This was continued and embellished by later authors.

QuoteSometime around the turn of the following 13th century, Robert de Boron retold and expanded on this material in Merlin, an Old French poem presenting itself as the story of Merlin's life as told by Merlin himself to the author. Only a few lines of what is believed to be the original text have survived, but a more popular prose version had a great influence on the emerging genre of Arthurian-themed chivalric romance. In Robert's account, as in Geoffrey's Historia, Merlin is created as a demon spawn, but here explicitly to become the Antichrist intended to reverse the effect of the Harrowing of Hell. The infernal plot is thwarted when a priest (and the story's narrator) named Blaise is contacted by the child's mother. Blaise immediately baptizes the boy at birth, thus freeing him from the power of Satan and his intended destiny. The demonic legacy invests Merlin (already able to speak fluently even as a newborn) with a preternatural knowledge of the past and present, which is supplemented by God, who gives the boy a prophetic knowledge of the future.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 11, 2022, 08:24:10 AMToo magical for me. I like more low fantasy stuff in general.

I mean reasonable, and why I think pure human camapigns can be preferable. But I find Tolkien low fantasy, thats not Middle earths 3rd age, to be a terrible basis for it.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 10, 2022, 12:13:52 PM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 10, 2022, 08:33:14 AM
I've always preferred humancentric games. But I'll allow Elves, Dwarfs, and Halflings in its WFRP or OSR.

Absolutely NO tieflings or bipedal flowery unicorns or any of that nu D&D namby-pamby krud.

Or Kinder...

Kender are usually the worst things at the tables they're at not because they aren't RP'ed (See the "only mention they're an elf as much as mentioning they're wearing a green robe" comment earlier in the thread), but because they're RP'ed too much....as monstrous little thieving shits.

I hate them, but thankfully, not playing Dragonlance takes them off the table. (If it weren't for Kender, I'd rather like the setting.)

I'm alright with player characters with demonic ancestry, but they should be called cambions instead of tieflings.

Quote from: DM_Curt on September 12, 2022, 02:40:20 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 10, 2022, 12:13:52 PM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 10, 2022, 08:33:14 AM
I've always preferred humancentric games. But I'll allow Elves, Dwarfs, and Halflings in its WFRP or OSR.

Absolutely NO tieflings or bipedal flowery unicorns or any of that nu D&D namby-pamby krud.

Or Kinder...

Kender are usually the worst things at the tables they're at not because they aren't RP'ed (See the "only mention they're an elf as much as mentioning they're wearing a green robe" comment earlier in the thread), but because they're RP'ed too much....as monstrous little thieving shits.

I hate them, but thankfully, not playing Dragonlance takes them off the table. (If it weren't for Kender, I'd rather like the setting.)

IMHO certain races attract certain types of player, Kender usually attract "That Guy" type of player.

Other races tend to attract the "Here's my character's 582 pages of backstory" and/or the "why would you kill my character just because he stuck his neck in the demon's head mouth in the wall?".

Which is why I don't allow them at my table, unless I know you as a player well enough as to trust you're not one of those.

On the other hand playing always the same 4 races/classes can get boring, so I'm making my own 3 non human races for my Mayan inspired Fantasy Game and special classes for some games that need them for the flavor.

The latter tend to always be one of the base 4 in disguise everywhere you look anyway.

Just started a new random camping yesterday. Didn't know I was gonna be DM till almost the last moment, so I went with FR as a setting to keep things simple and minimize prep. No one played human. Not that I mind, since I had an elf myself (I always play a DMPC, plus I thought I was gonna be a player initially), but someone snuck a centaur on me, and I didn't know till we were about to start, so I just rolled with it, cuz it was too late and it was just a random get together, non serious game type of deal (half the people barely even knew the game, so lots of hand holding). But, damn, that's the sort of thing I need to know up front.

It was mostly just cosmetic, though. Stats didn't even come up, but "captain of the royal guard leader of all the king's men" as a starting character type of backstory we had to tone down. That wasn't even the most annoying character, though. Someone played a stupid evil Tiefling and almost got the group killed. The Tiefling part wasn't even the bad part. Character started playing pranks on the centaur in the middle of an investigation while heading down a tunnel near a cult's hideout and ended up alerting the enemy we were there.

Main reason it wasn't a TPK was cuz we were running late and had to cut it short, so I ended it after they killed the first wave of reinforcements. But there were more enemies on the way and most of the group was near dead by then. They were one fireball away from kicking the bucket and the cult leader had that spell ready. Plus they also had a wyrmling-young black dragon they had been feeding homeless people to, so one breath weapon would've killed any survivors.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 09, 2022, 09:26:50 PM
But TBH most my players use races as cosplay (they behave exactly like humans), which I dislike but doesn't bother me enough to forbid it.

Also, "cosplay" is what MOST people use, I'd bet. I've rarely seem people playing really otherworldy elves, for example.

I don't have other good solution except just ignoring it.

I think if you really want races to be meaningful the best bet is a FATE-like aspect system. Expressing unique characteristics of biology & psychology is not really possible at the resolution that most game mechanics operate at. It's not possible to cover every possible circumstance, so you need both GM & players to be able to invoke those characteristics when relevant & useful.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 12, 2022, 09:42:54 AM
The issue I personally have with the race proliferation is that traditionally the game has operated on a scheme where you can tell good and evil races on sight by their appearance.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 12, 2022, 09:42:54 AM
You can't just mix up contrasting conventions from Star Trek and Middle-Earth and expect the world to still make sense, because Tolkien's and Roddenberry's worlds were created with dramatically different intentions. In Middle-Earth, it's okay to kill orcs on sight because they're all evil. In Star Trek, it's wrong to shoot first because you can never be sure the other ship are bad guys and even known bad guys like the Borg might straight up ignore you if you're inconspicuous.

As I read Tolkien, he explicitly denies this "kill on sight" principle. Seeing an evil creature like Gollum doesn't mean that it's OK to kill it on sight. There are trends, but benevolent-seeming figures like Saruman can still be dangerous, and evil-seeming figures can be important to save.

Within D&D, it has been similar. The 1978 Player's Handbook introduced half-orc PCs with no alignment restrictions, and the game soon also introduced evil elves (drow) as a common adversary and also a PC class (in Unearthed Arcana).

I agree that there are conventions one should follow or not, but it's not just a choice between pulp fantasy and Star Trek. A lot of campaigns will have something in between.

Quote from: jhkim on September 12, 2022, 07:58:58 PM
As I read Tolkien, he explicitly denies this "kill on sight" principle. Seeing an evil creature like Gollum doesn't mean that it's OK to kill it on sight. There are trends, but benevolent-seeming figures like Saruman can still be dangerous, and evil-seeming figures can be important to save.

I would second that. The Valar tried to give Melchor a second chance, and Gandalf makes the same offer to Saruman. Neither one works out very well, but Tolkien clearly thinks it was the right thing to do, so he probably ascribed to the idea that very few individuals were irredeemable.  In modern parlance, the orcs in Lord of the Rings would be enemy combatants during an active war, but when the goblins are first encountered in the Hobbit, the Dwarves at least try to parley with them. You could say that's because they've already been taken prisoner, but the mere fact that they tried always read to me like success was a possibility.

Quote from: jhkim on September 12, 2022, 07:58:58 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 12, 2022, 09:42:54 AM
The issue I personally have with the race proliferation is that traditionally the game has operated on a scheme where you can tell good and evil races on sight by their appearance.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 12, 2022, 09:42:54 AM
You can't just mix up contrasting conventions from Star Trek and Middle-Earth and expect the world to still make sense, because Tolkien's and Roddenberry's worlds were created with dramatically different intentions. In Middle-Earth, it's okay to kill orcs on sight because they're all evil. In Star Trek, it's wrong to shoot first because you can never be sure the other ship are bad guys and even known bad guys like the Borg might straight up ignore you if you're inconspicuous.

As I read Tolkien, he explicitly denies this "kill on sight" principle. Seeing an evil creature like Gollum doesn't mean that it's OK to kill it on sight. There are trends, but benevolent-seeming figures like Saruman can still be dangerous, and evil-seeming figures can be important to save.

Within D&D, it has been similar. The 1978 Player's Handbook introduced half-orc PCs with no alignment restrictions, and the game soon also introduced evil elves (drow) as a common adversary and also a PC class (in Unearthed Arcana).

I agree that there are conventions one should follow or not, but it's not just a choice between pulp fantasy and Star Trek. A lot of campaigns will have something in between.

Bravo, you found ONE exception and think this disproves the trend. Typical leftist thought process.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 12, 2022, 09:42:54 AM
The issue I personally have with the race proliferation is that traditionally the game has operated on a scheme where you can tell good and evil races on sight by their appearance. The good races look like humans in the cheapest Star Trek makeup. The evil races look like contestants on Face Off. When you muddy this then it becomes difficult to imagine how people in the game world keep their kill-on-sight lists straight. How do you know that those orcs, drow, or dragon-snails are actually evil without asking them? It exposes the artificially of the game world by having players rely on the DM telling them which targets they can kill without bothering to pay attention to appearance.

You can't just mix up contrasting conventions from Star Trek and Middle-Earth and expect the world to still make sense, because Tolkien's and Roddenberry's worlds were created with dramatically different intentions. In Middle-Earth, it's okay to kill orcs on sight because they're all evil. In Star Trek, it's wrong to shoot first because you can never be sure the other ship are bad guys and even known bad guys like the Borg might straight up ignore you if you're inconspicuous.

That's a point, but I wonder how many people are running games in which that concern ever arises. After all, murderhobos are as traditional to the hobby as evil orcs are. Even playing with grognards, and specifically telling them that my campaign rewards heroism, I'm hard-pressed to get even one character in my party that won't kill pretty much anyone if they think they can get away with it. From what I've seen of the nu-schoolers, it seems like the whole Game of Thrones grey morality thing has so proliferated pop culture that they just expect good and evil amongst every faction.

EDIT: That's probably a bit unfair to my PCs. I wouldn't strictly call them murder hobos, but I do get an overabundance of cynical mercenary types.

FURTHER EDIT: it's probably more accurate to say that nu school players don't think I'm terms of good and evil at all.

I am planning to write something on how the "elves" people play are really some kind of half-elves - not the immortal fey of legend, but humanoid with pointy ears that live maybe 200 years.

Same goes for other races, maybe even more so.