Quote from: jhkim on March 27, 2023, 07:57:39 PM
Right. I agree that it's a potential mess. But then what's the internal world logic for shutting this down? For example, if a dwarf PC takes a romantic liking to a gnome NPC, do they think they can start a family? If they ask an oracle why they can't, what would the answer be?

"It just wouldn't be fitting."
Seriously.  There might be physical compatibility, but not genetic.

Klava below said about what I would say in more detail.

Quote from: Klava on March 28, 2023, 04:05:02 AM

Quote from: jhkim on March 27, 2023, 03:07:08 PM
As I'm detailing more of my setting background, I get a little stuck on half-elves and half-orcs. It would be weird given a variety of races, only these two should be able to breed, and then only to half.

the "only to half" part could be explained by introducing a kind of real word biology - they could all be infertile. that would also deal with why there were no human-orc-elf-dwarf-<whathaveyou> hybrids.
but then again, that would not be very Tolkien.

I seldom use "all of the above" but my current project is "D&D (West part of the continent) meets Runequest (East)" so pretty much anything.  I ruled that all "races" are actually species.  So absent divine authorized one shots, no races are inter-fertile. With the exception that Hobbits can give birth to half humans and half gnomes:  These are called halflings, and are universally sterile.
For example, my elves are Gloranthan (grown from trees) and my orcs are Warhammer (mushrooms) except they are the same race.  Some are grown for grace, others for robustness.  But half plants would be kinda silly IMO.

Hackmaster has Half-Hobgoblins. Currently, the 5e version is on their web site. I can post the info on the 4e version later.

Quote from: Klava on March 28, 2023, 04:05:02 AM

Quote from: jhkim on March 27, 2023, 03:07:08 PM
As I'm detailing more of my setting background, I get a little stuck on half-elves and half-orcs. It would be weird given a variety of races, only these two should be able to breed, and then only to half.

the "only to half" part could be explained by introducing a kind of real word biology - they could all be infertile. that would also deal with why there were no human-orc-elf-dwarf-<whathaveyou> hybrids.
but then again, that would not be very Tolkien.

Thanks, Klava - but as you say, it's not very Tolkien. More broadly, it doesn't fit high fantasy in general to have explanations about chromosomal incompatibility or similar.

Even in more scientific fantasy worlds with a real-world biology explanation, it seems odd that half-elf and half-orc are the only two hybrid possibilities among all the races - given that other races seem more phenotypically similar.

Quote from: tenbones on March 28, 2023, 10:48:56 AM
I read your setting introduction. I like it... but there are things about it where I have serious questions.

Are your choice in races strictly based on gaming-considerations? I mean, you're going off-roading with the Incan milieu but you're using D&D races as a homogenous culture which demands its own setting assumptions (which I'm assuming you have worked out in your head)...

Thanks for the interest, tenbones. Boldface is mine above.

Actually, I am deliberately trying for a non-homogenous culture, and I'm actually trying to emphasize the variety of culture. The Incan empire spanned a wide range of cultures, speaking many different languages and ethnicities, with many environments. In Tolkien, it's closest to Numenor at its height when elves and men worked in harmony -- but with even more disparate cultures involved, like the Roman Empire spanning from Britain to Egypt. That's why we picked multiple core races (elf/dwarf/human/orc), to make it clear that there are different cultures even within the center of the empire.

Quote from: tenbones on March 28, 2023, 10:48:56 AM
Which is why I'm asking - why use D&D races at all? (If it's to adhere to "D&D" formalities - I get it, but I think your setting deserves it's own array of ancestries imo).

This is an issue with learning curve. If a game has all-new races, classes, spells, items, and monsters that are authentically Andean -- along with an unfamiliar environment, culture, history, religion, and cosmology -- then it will be a confusing mess to my American players. It will feel more often like difficult homework rather than a fun casual game.

I'm not trying to be a history lesson or a real-world cultural lesson, so having obvious ahistorical aspects is good. I'm trying for a fun game setting that anyone can drop into quickly. Notably, I've got one young teen player in my regular group, and I've run multiple one-shots in the teen room at local conventions.

Because of this, I want full compatibility with core D&D. There's already plenty to learn with the environment, culture, and religion -- I didn't want to also introduce confusion with game system, magic, etc.  So all the races and classes in the Player's Handbook should be available. I'm willing to add a few new races or optional races, but they should still be easy-to-understand archetypes.

----

Quote from: tenbones on March 28, 2023, 10:48:56 AM
So much so, that the Elves and Dwarves would subsume their own cultures and merge into the Human's *and* interbreed with them.

The unspoken "thing" is that any conflicts of that assimilation would surely have sub-cultural artifacts. They may be "good/bad" but to me those elements demand that you have actual cultural distinctions between races that existed pre-assimilation. I believe those are very important otherwise why have these other races at all?

OK, so this is something I'll try to communicate better in the doc.

For this setting, what I want to convey is that mountain dwarves and high elves and orcs did not assimilate into human culture. Instead, there was a joint culture that was formed by the union, while still preserving differences. There is a vital principle called ayni in Andean culture, which is translated as reciprocity. I don't want the game to be a real-world history or cultural lesson that I'm not qualified for -- but it's a principle that I'd like to reflect in the setting design.

As a high fantasy setting, Inti is a true good deity -- like Ilúvatar for Tolkien or Christ for King Arthur -- and Inti supports the principle of ayni. There is evil to fight from evil gods, cults, and creatures -- but other peoples can be integrated.

Quote from: tenbones on March 28, 2023, 10:48:56 AM
So when it comes to "which" races can cross-breed? I think if you understand the cultural underpinnings that lead to the homogenous nature of the Empire as you're proposing it answers those questions pretty easily. But I also think there is a tremendous amount of setting flavor that is missing but implied by the your setup that could give a *lot* of context to your world that would make having these non-human races, including half-breeds cultural relevance.

It might be that the Elves have a different nuanced view of the metaphysics (or none at all) of the Sun God culture. Same with the Dwarves. As to whether they can all interbreed - just make sure *any* kind of interbreeding has a cultural relevance, otherwise what's the point?

Thanks, and I agree -- though with another caveat that the Solar Empire is not supposed to be homogenous.

I'd want half-elves and half-orcs to help represent the reciprocal union of the empire. Having orcs as part of the empire was important, because to the Incans, one of their self-seen strengths was accepting and integrating disparate peoples without imposing conformity. In historical reality, the Inca did give a lot of latitude to local government. They also force migration of some conquered peoples to different locations to reduce resistance -- but then, the historical King Arthur also likely wasn't a paragon of Christian virtue, if he was even Christian at all. This is high fantasy, not history.

Mountain dwarves represent the fantastic stonework and goldsmithy of the Incas. High elves represent especially the understanding of nature that brings innovative agriculture with terraced fields of corn, potatoes, and quinoa. Humans bring herding and weaving. And orcs form the core of their military.

Putting this into words has helped clarify my thinking here. I'm more solid in liking half-elves and half-orcs. I'd like a dwarf-elf halfbreed to represent that part of the union, but I need a good name and other qualities to make the archetype clearer. I'm thinking of repurposing the name "grey elf" to explicitly mean a dwarf-elf cross. (I considered some other fey name like brownie, but nothing seems to fit.) They should have an affinity with stone while also having some elven traits.

Cool! I know I was making assumptions, but now that you have made a more granular point about it, I think it means that the exploration of these cultures, pre-assimilation, are at *least* as equally important as to figuring out which races can interbreed.

To address that interbreeding part, *obviously* there must be some "commonality" to allows two species to interbreed. How much of that is directly important? I'm not sure. I think the cultures are more important. In many of our other threads we talk about - I've mentioned I've lived in Asia (Japan and the Philippines) and I'm a half-breed myself, but I *look* obviously Asian. My father is full-blooded Cajun French, I've lived down in Lousiana too. Those cultural differences are *massive* and there most certainly were assimilation issues. I had to get into fist-fights to be accepted by my Cajun cousins, and even then most of those outside of my immediate family have never really accepted me. Same is true with the Filipino cousins, but they had a much smaller bar for entry, but the "half-breed" thing manifests itself in funny weird ways. My Japanese relatives? by far the most unaccepting. Polite, but no.

So my thoughts in terms of gamins - half-breeds should have some in-cultural status. Either good or bad is up to you. Historically it would probably be "bad" or at least "lesser" than the norm. But hey! this is a fantasy game, other cultures might revere them. Think of how humans would react to Elves in real life? A Humanocentric culture might find it a blessing to have a half Elder-race child? It's up to you to contextualize it.

Since you're committed to the standard races, I'd do some writeups for all those races in deep context to your setting. I'd toss out most of the "traditional" assumptions, or at lease recontextualize them to your own cosmology. Having Elder races like Dwarves and Elves probably means they have a deeper (in terms of their basic longevity) understandings of concepts that might run parallel to the mainline Sun God culture of the humans. Maybe they have nuanced secrets that allowed their assimilation and acceptance in the human dominated (presumption) culture. By dominant, I'm only speaking about population. There are a lot of ways you can play it obviously, I'm just tossing out seed-concepts to build towards whatever status half-breeds might have in the larger culture.

Of course sub-cultures might equally have interesting possibilities too. And you can nestle Tieflings and Aasimar accordingly - any highly religious culture that has magic on the level of D&D would have congress with extra-planar entities that could produce Tiefling/Aasimar bloodlines. To me the more important point is you grounding the status of such bloodlines into your setting.

But yeah - overall I think your concept has a lot of potential. Stick that landing, man!

I've homebrewed my races and have an inworld explanation for the types of hybrids that are allowed. In my world, first gnomes and halflings are the same species. But don't try to tell them that. They hate each other. But others just call them "haffles." Orcs and goblins are specific to a certain region - one that is recovering from a magical apocalypse millennia ago. They are literally humans and haffles that have experienced mutations due to the ambient wild magic in their homeland.

Thus humans and orcs can interbreed and produce "half-orcs". Ditto gnomes, halflings, and goblins. Each of those races has its own features, and hybrids can take any mix of those features, but no more than the total available to any one race. So a half-orc can pick some combination of human and orc traits. Some half-orcs favor their human side, some their orcish. You know, like in real life. I let the player explain it any way they like.

Elves no longer exist. They're creatures of myth. Dwarves and a few other playable races exist, but they're all unique species in the scientific sense and unable to produce offspring with members of any other species. There are no half-dwarves or half-giants, etc. You can play my version of a bugbear, but never a half-bugbear.

Quote from: tenbones on March 28, 2023, 03:40:26 PM
So my thoughts in terms of gamins - half-breeds should have some in-cultural status. Either good or bad is up to you. Historically it would probably be "bad" or at least "lesser" than the norm. But hey! this is a fantasy game, other cultures might revere them. Think of how humans would react to Elves in real life? A Humanocentric culture might find it a blessing to have a half Elder-race child? It's up to you to contextualize it.

Good point - and here I'm going with the fantasy. In the high fantasy mode, half-elves like Elrond were respected. In setting, the first emperor and empress were and elf/human marriage, and the second emperor was their half-elf son. I might split the difference that half-elves and half-orcs have special cultural status for the religion and wider empire, so have no trouble finding positions - especially as arbiters and judges. However, they have some bias against them in unofficial social circles, so they don't get arranged marriages or other support as easily.

Quote from: tenbones on March 28, 2023, 03:40:26 PM
Since you're committed to the standard races, I'd do some writeups for all those races in deep context to your setting. I'd toss out most of the "traditional" assumptions, or at lease recontextualize them to your own cosmology. Having Elder races like Dwarves and Elves probably means they have a deeper (in terms of their basic longevity) understandings of concepts that might run parallel to the mainline Sun God culture of the humans. Maybe they have nuanced secrets that allowed their assimilation and acceptance in the human dominated (presumption) culture. By dominant, I'm only speaking about population. There are a lot of ways you can play it obviously, I'm just tossing out seed-concepts to build towards whatever status half-breeds might have in the larger culture.

I'm trying to keep with traditional assumptions where possible, to keep things as easy to learn as possible. There are definitely some things I will recontextualize - especially with orcs. I'm writing more, and I'll post when I've finished another pass on the document.

Quote from: tenbones on March 28, 2023, 03:40:26 PM
Of course sub-cultures might equally have interesting possibilities too. And you can nestle Tieflings and Aasimar accordingly - any highly religious culture that has magic on the level of D&D would have congress with extra-planar entities that could produce Tiefling/Aasimar bloodlines. To me the more important point is you grounding the status of such bloodlines into your setting.

I don't know if you saw it in the doc, but I'm connecting tiefling along with aasimar and genasi with the Nazca lines / geoglyphs of the cold southern deserts. The take is that the deserts have ancient powerful magic flowing through the land, which has resulted in long-standing lines of magic-tainted humans.

Quote from: Grognard GM on March 28, 2023, 01:40:56 AM

Quote from: jhkim on March 28, 2023, 01:42:21 PM

Quote from: Klava on March 28, 2023, 04:05:02 AM

Quote from: jhkim on March 27, 2023, 03:07:08 PM
As I'm detailing more of my setting background, I get a little stuck on half-elves and half-orcs. It would be weird given a variety of races, only these two should be able to breed, and then only to half.

the "only to half" part could be explained by introducing a kind of real word biology - they could all be infertile. that would also deal with why there were no human-orc-elf-dwarf-<whathaveyou> hybrids.
but then again, that would not be very Tolkien.

Thanks, Klava - but as you say, it's not very Tolkien. More broadly, it doesn't fit high fantasy in general to have explanations about chromosomal incompatibility or similar.

Yep. In a mileu with Owlbears and Chimeras and Centaurs, genetics just doesn't fit very well, if at all.

Quote from: Insane Nerd Ramblings on March 28, 2023, 10:14:36 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on March 28, 2023, 01:40:56 AM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 28, 2023, 11:24:11 PM

Quote from: jhkim on March 28, 2023, 01:42:21 PM

Quote from: Klava on March 28, 2023, 04:05:02 AM

Quote from: jhkim on March 27, 2023, 03:07:08 PM
As I'm detailing more of my setting background, I get a little stuck on half-elves and half-orcs. It would be weird given a variety of races, only these two should be able to breed, and then only to half.

the "only to half" part could be explained by introducing a kind of real word biology - they could all be infertile. that would also deal with why there were no human-orc-elf-dwarf-<whathaveyou> hybrids.
but then again, that would not be very Tolkien.

Thanks, Klava - but as you say, it's not very Tolkien. More broadly, it doesn't fit high fantasy in general to have explanations about chromosomal incompatibility or similar.

Yep. In a mileu with Owlbears and Chimeras and Centaurs, genetics just doesn't fit very well, if at all.

But are the Owlbears the result of Bears breeding with Owls, and the Centaurs the result of Humans breeding with Horses?

Quote from: jhkim on March 27, 2023, 07:57:39 PMRight. I agree that it's a potential mess. But then what's the internal world logic for shutting this down? For example, if a dwarf PC takes a romantic liking to a gnome NPC, do they think they can start a family? If they ask an oracle why they can't, what would the answer be?

You are asking the wrong question here. A half-Dwarf/half-Gnome PC isn't a Dwarf PC that falls in love with a Gnome, but it is a character whose parents are a Dwarf and a Gnome. So in order to limit a PC racial choice, you don't have to explain my it is impossible for a dwarf and a gnome to have a child but only explain why this doesn't happen often enough to be a basic in-game racial choice.

And for that, there are an endless number of excuses, from physical proximity, standards of beauty, cultural norms, or even preferred diets, all that would make certain mixes highly unlikely.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on March 29, 2023, 09:26:06 AM

Quote from: jhkim on March 27, 2023, 07:57:39 PMRight. I agree that it's a potential mess. But then what's the internal world logic for shutting this down? For example, if a dwarf PC takes a romantic liking to a gnome NPC, do they think they can start a family? If they ask an oracle why they can't, what would the answer be?

You are asking the wrong question here. A half-Dwarf/half-Gnome PC isn't a Dwarf PC that falls in love with a Gnome, but it is a character whose parents are a Dwarf and a Gnome. So in order to limit a PC racial choice, you don't have to explain my it is impossible for a dwarf and a gnome to have a child but only explain why this doesn't happen often enough to be a basic in-game racial choice.

And for that, there are an endless number of excuses, from physical proximity, standards of beauty, cultural norms, or even preferred diets, all that would make certain mixes highly unlikely.

The Half-Elf also throws a wrench in things, because you can already play an Elf. Normally a Half-Race is to let you kind of play a Monster that isn't otherwise allowed. You can't play an Orc, but you can play a Half-Orc. You can't play an Ogre, but you can play a Half-Ogre. These are also Evil enemy species. Elves can be played, and they're Good allies. So the Half-Elf is completely unnecessary. I don't think anyone would miss the Half-Elf as an option when Elf stays an option.

So the way to do it is to make Elves xenophobes that rarely come out, so you don't get to play an Elf PC, but you can play a Half-Elf. Halflings and Gnomes are social enough you can play them anyway. And while Dwarves are somewhat xenophobic, they're not as extreme as Elves. Then you've got Human, Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling, Half-Orc, Half-Elf and maybe Half-something else.

Just occurred to me that what I did in my last 5E campaign might be an option:  No half-races in the setting, but used the half-races mechanically as alternate humans. 

For example, there were no half-elves in the setting, whatsoever.  There were a group of humans that are thought to be affected by fey who used the half-elf mechanics.  I called them "fair humans" in the setting because they were one of the few human cultures that tended to be blond, but it really doesn't matter.  I left the explanation for how they came about as a mystery to be solved, and included several popular theories in setting assumptions.  One was that there were descended from a long ago blending of elf and human.  Another was that they were magically altered by a deity.  The reality was that they were humans who had wandered into an area that had a lot of fey/material plane crossovers and had absorbed some of the same fey magical radiation that makes elves and other fey "fey". 

If you want to include something that doesn't really fit with the label it has on it, change the label to something that does fit.  They you don't need to justify how the genetics work, because they are irrelevant.