This is NOT meant to start a thread just to gripe about the current trend of dropping "race" from player characters, and replacing it with some weird combination of "species" and "ancestry" etc., because I agree much of this trend doesn't make sense and is often contradictory.
What this whole issue makes me think about is how so often we create worlds where Demi-human or humanoid races tend to often be monoculture—all the High Elves basically have the same government, culture, social structure, etc., though Wood Elves might have their own but consistent version; all the Dwarves basically come from same culture, etc. Meanwhile, our human races have a myriad of governments, cultures, languages, etc.
Has anyone played around with this, and had for example one group of High Elves be a feudal society, another group based around an Asian-inspired culture, a set of Dwarven clans that have the typical king, etc., while another acts like Scottish highland clans, etc.? One group of Orcs are insane cannibals, while another group has a tribal organization like the Zulu empire? An island culture of Hobbits as well as a "Shire" and not just the Shire?
Quote from: GamerforHire on April 22, 2023, 05:53:14 PM
This is NOT meant to start a thread just to gripe about the current trend of dropping "race" from player characters, and replacing it with some weird combination of "species" and "ancestry" etc., because I agree much of this trend doesn't make sense and is often contradictory.
What this whole issue makes me think about is how so often we create worlds where Demi-human or humanoid races tend to often be monoculture—all the High Elves basically have the same government, culture, social structure, etc., though Wood Elves might have their own but consistent version; all the Dwarves basically come from same culture, etc. Meanwhile, our human races have a myriad of governments, cultures, languages, etc.
Has anyone played around with this, and had for example one group of High Elves be a feudal society, another group based around an Asian-inspired culture, a set of Dwarven clans that have the typical king, etc., while another acts like Scottish highland clans, etc.? One group of Orcs are insane cannibals, while another group has a tribal organization like the Zulu empire? An island culture of Hobbits as well as a "Shire" and not just the Shire?
I guess it all depends on how far apart one settlement is from another both physically and in time.
It also depends on how tied to the race are some characteristics, meaning how much of their culture is strictly cultural and how much comes from their biology/magic.
Take for instance Vulcans and Romulans, both come from the same ancestor species (Ancient Vulcans) distance and time have made them different.
You also need to take into account the longevity of the race, Elves being immortal (or close to) means their culture would change very little even many miles apart.
Non-human races are, in my opinion, intended to be archetypal and monocultural.
If you have a bunch of elven "ethnicities" -- sun, wood, moon, grey, dark, water, whatever -- then you've lost the point of having elves in your setting to begin with.
This is probably the only place I could say this.
So you take a group of sentients, they come from the same stock so have commonalities in appearance. You place them somewhere in a world, in an environment. They develop a common culture because they (mostly) interact with each other (rather than outsiders). If for example they're in the mountains they might have a preponderance of mountain skills as the most likely, maybe bonuses to those activities. If you take another group of the same base stock and place them in the hills, bam no mountain skills or bonuses. They develop their own skills and bonuses.
And thus we have Hill Dwarves and Mountain Dwarves. IMO they're differentiated straight out of the tin. So yeah, High Elves are different from Wood Elves already. Can you subdivide them further? Sure, and I have. I started out with Judges Guild's Wilderlands back in the 70's. There are villages all over the place, along with their general alignment and what their race is and even their government type. Took me a while to stretch my head around that, but I did and now I have no trouble with it. Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, as many different types of government and cultures as Humans. Remember when Gary introduced Valley Elves? Elf-type who lived in this valley. There you go, a new entry.
Quote from: GamerforHire on April 22, 2023, 05:53:14 PM
Has anyone played around with this, and had for example one group of High Elves be a feudal society, another group based around an Asian-inspired culture, a set of Dwarven clans that have the typical king, etc., while another acts like Scottish highland clans, etc.? One group of Orcs are insane cannibals, while another group has a tribal organization like the Zulu empire? An island culture of Hobbits as well as a "Shire" and not just the Shire?
That is the way I used to do it, working with existing systems.
For my own system, I've got six races, all distinct mechanically (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and 3 others of my own creation). Then there are six cultures: Agrarian, Herders, Frontier, Itinerant, Urban, and Wild. Culture is a guideline for what kind of weapons, armor, and environment the society operates in, as well as influencing how the cultures interact.
Then there are locations in the setting, which can put their own spin on any particular mix. This is the key part, which can, of course, be done in any system. I just find it easier to do with my setup, which is why it is built that way. Think of the culture tags as descriptive, not prescriptive, in that I envision the region, then decide the predominant racial mix and the major cultures within it.
The location is the thing that sets it apart. It's not Agrarian Elves over there, and Frontier Elves over here. Instead, it's this particular region which is mostly Agrarian, some Herders, and a modicum of Urban, which has a lot of Elves, a few humans, and miscellaneous other races. Then on the edge of that civilized region, there's another area that is a mix of Herders, Wild, and Frontier, with the "Herders" being mostly sea-based raiders and merchants. Again, there's a mix of races, but it's seen by most outsiders as elven because of the type of ships they use and the nature of the Frontier/Wild territory. Well, that and there isn't a lot of metal used by these societies, because one of the things that makes elves distinct is their strong distaste for large concentrations of it.
There may be a mostly human society on the same sea, perhaps Herders and Urban. It's got its own spin, yet the sea-based Herders give it something in common with the mostly elven society.
And lest anyone mistake me for a cosmopolitan mushy mix, there are only six playable races in the setting because those are the ones that get along well enough to have those kind of mixes. There's also more monolithic "monster" societies. Likewise, if a particular group of elves was xenophobic, a PC couldn't be from there.
In my opinion wood elf, grey elf, sea elf are cultures. They are all elves. biologically the same, but the wood elves live in the woods and are more hillbilly hunters than the others. Grey elfs are more urban and obsessed with magic.
Dwarves are divided into Hill and Mountain Dwarves. Hill Dwarves are more cosmopolitan than Mountain Dwarves who are more insular. Different cultures.
As far as humans go most of Western Europe would be one type of human, East Asia might be another, or it might be two. We are farm more familiar with these cultures so we don't call them Wood, or Grey or Hill or Mountainl or anything.
Quote from: Ruprecht on April 23, 2023, 12:06:16 AM
In my opinion wood elf, grey elf, sea elf are cultures. They are all elves. biologically the same, but the wood elves live in the woods and are more hillbilly hunters than the others. Grey elfs are more urban and obsessed with magic.
Dwarves are divided into Hill and Mountain Dwarves. Hill Dwarves are more cosmopolitan than Mountain Dwarves who are more insular. Different cultures.
As far as humans go most of Western Europe would be one type of human, East Asia might be another, or it might be two. We are farm more familiar with these cultures so we don't call them Wood, or Grey or Hill or Mountainl or anything.
Obviously there are different ways to handle it - but this roughly matches my most common approach.
In most fantasy worlds, there isn't an explicit West Europe or East Asia either. They have other names, but there are parallels for them. Likewise, there are generally cultural roots for different races like elves and dwarves. D&D dwarves are most commonly based in Scottish culture -- with some borrowing of Scandinavian culture (which had influence on Scotland). D&D elves are also more a mix of Welsh and Celtic, though also with some Scandinavian influence. D&D gnomes tend to be more early industrial Germanic, with esthetics coming in part from Germanic folk tales like the Brothers Grimm.
These have been adapted to other settings and cultures in a number of the other D&D settings, but they still tend to show their roots.
In my current D&D setting, all the standard races and cultures are adapted to fit the region of the pre-Columbian Incan Empire. The different fantasy races are parallels for the mix of ethnicities within the region. For example, gnomes in my world are split between forest gnomes (who are based in Amazonian cultures) and rock gnomes (based on Chimu culture).
Quote from: GnomeWorks on April 22, 2023, 07:31:48 PMIf you have a bunch of elven "ethnicities" -- sun, wood, moon, grey, dark, water, whatever -- then you've lost the point of having elves in your setting to begin with.
I disagree with this on the basis that Elves are basically fey, Fey are basically a type of nature spirit that are the embodiment of different natural forces, qualities or endeavors (such as smithing, creation, etc.), and have a bunch of variants in real life folklore (Dryads, which are very similar to elves, being a perfect example of this, with pretty much the whole gamut of wood dryads, spring dryads, mountain dryads, sea dryads, etc.). And even if you reduce them to just "archetypes", monocultures or whatever, all those variant "ethnicities" can and do tend to embody such monocultures or archetypes, so there's nothing contradictory about having sun elves, wood elves, or whatever, even if reducing them to that particular function.
But yeah, even from this particular perspective, plus GeekyBugle's point about the longevity of such entities, it does make sense for this type of creatures to lean towards monocultures based around their "ethnicities" or the type of archetype or forces they embody. In the case of fantasy races that are not supernatural creatures, but more like natural species, though, there probably should be more variation in cultures.
In my settings race works one of the following ways
Sci-fi: Phenotype. What kind of genetically engineered abomination (if any) is your character.
Fantasy: Bloodline. Only one species but different regional adaptations due to divine blessing.
In real-world myth, "human" is generally code for one's own culture. So in Greek myth, "humans" are Greek - while in Incan myth, "humans" are Incan. The mythic origin of humans will be centered in their own land - like around Mount Olympus in Greece, or Lake Titicaca in Peru. The human gods all are based in the local region. The important mythic events in the history of humans take place locally. etc.
This is of course counter to our modern understanding of humans having originated in Africa from evolution, and spread across to the other continents. Some fantasy authors mirror myth, while other fantasy authors take the scientific view of humans as having full real-world variation as in our modern view - but then also mix in old mythic concepts where there are specific gods, events, and creatures that are tied to a particular region.
In practice, any author is limited in the variety of cultures they can effectively portray - which will always be less than the true variety of real-world human culture. In practice, fantasy cultures are always based on real-world ones - which is true of both fantasy human cultures and fantasy non-human cultures.
That doesn't mean that anyone is monocultural. In Tolkien, dwarves are roughly monocultural - but elves have multiple cultures. This can be seen in the variation of Tolkien's multiple elvish languages and scripts, for example. That's the opposite of what one would expect from their lifespans, but I'd say that's fine given that it's fantasy. In ElfQuest (by Wendy and Richard Pini), elves are even more varied in culture - like Sun Elves, Wolf-riders, Gliders, etc.
If one is mirroring myth, it might make more sense for humans to be monocultural, and non-humans could be more varied in culture.
I do a few things to make traveling to new places unique. Trigger snowflake warning. My worlds are not utopias. A world with problems are realistic and provide a source for adventures. All stories are based on conflicts, so the more, the better.
1. No half races. Yup, I'm on board with this. It's a hold over from my Palladium Books days where that game didn't have them because of biology. The only Palladium races that interbreed successfully are ogres and humans, but the child is always an ogre, usually male. It's obviously to imply that male ogres raid human settlements for their women, and that's a great motive for a campaign scenario. It also helps explain the divides between races.
2. No Neapolitan cities. It's one race in charge. It's not nice to modern sensibilities, but it's not unrealistic either. If there is another race as a significant population, they are second class and often live in a ghetto.
3. No Neapolitan human cities. Just like an elf city is nearly all elf, a Japanese island will be nearly all Japanese.
However, I'm guilty of doing what the OP said. Only humans are widespread enough to be distinct cultures. Dwarves of the north are just like dwarves of the south. I might have to rethink that.
Quote from: weirdguy564 on April 23, 2023, 12:41:08 PM
I do a few things to make traveling to new places unique. Trigger snowflake warning. My worlds are not utopias as I feel they're unrealistic and provide a source for adventures. All stories are based on conflicts, so the more, the better.
Please don't give trigger warnings. I'd like to think we're all thinking adults here with a minimum of common sense.
IMHO Trigger Warnings are the fasted way to, depending on sincerity, look like either a spinless soymilk drinker who weeps at the sight of a well cooked steak or an edgelord who is trying to show everyone they're so edgy that they have to warn everyone about the edginess of their edge.
Quote1. No half races. Yup, I'm on board with this. It's a hold over from my Palladium Books days where that game didn't have them because of biology. The only Palladium races that interbreed successfully are ogres and humans, but the child is always an ogre, usually male. It's obviously to imply that male ogres raid human settlements for their women, and that's a great motive for a campaign scenario. It also helps explain the divides between races.
In my fantasy games I normally make it so humans can breed with almost anything humanoid, largely because humans are the progenitor race. An Orc and an Elf breeding as an example would probably kill the mother if she's an elf due to the brutally short pregnancy and massive child and would result in a mule. Humans though have the Fuck Anything superpower.
Quote2. No Neapolitan cities. It's one race in charge. It's not nice to modern sensibilities, but it's not unrealistic either. If there is another race as a significant population, they are second class and often live in a ghetto.
To a degree this is historically inaccurate. Large cities tended to be cosmopolitan due to the nature of trade. Smaller cities, large towns, and centers of
internal trade though, this may fit.
Quote3. No Neapolitan human cities. Just like an elf city is nearly all elf, a Japanese island will be nearly all Japanese.
Cities tended to even in the pre-modern era be cultural mixing pots. Japanese cities were all Japanese because Japan was insanely isolationist for the longest time and the only reason why more modern cities aren't is unlike in ye olden days of conquest modern colonialism had a very harsh concept of anti-miscegenation which prevented the formation of social bonds and for the most part the Europeans left en mass when colonialism collapsed unlike in the olden days. Hell, reason China is as universally Han as it is now is because the PRC has been systematically genociding minorities and destroying Chinese culture for the past 70 years
I mean just look at Constantinople under the Turks. They might have put pressures on the Christians to convert after conquest, but they liked money way too much to burn the house down in the name of Turkish purity.
However, I'm guilty of doing what the OP said. Only humans are widespread enough to be distinct cultures. Dwarves of the north are just like dwarves of the south. I might have to rethink that.
[/quote]
One way to do this would be to make a list of dwarven ideas and stereotypes, about 20 or so, fill a hat, and pull 10 out for each sub-faction to serve as a foundation for their culture, refilling with each drawl.
Quote from: GamerforHire on April 22, 2023, 05:53:14 PM... so often we create worlds where Demi-human or humanoid races tend to often be monoculture—all the High Elves basically have the same government, culture, social structure, etc., though Wood Elves might have their own but consistent version; all the Dwarves basically come from same culture, etc. Meanwhile, our human races have a myriad of governments, cultures, languages, etc.
Part of the reason this tendency occurs is that in practice, setting books have limited volume, and every subculture you add to any given racial template reduces the word count you can devote to each subculture. If you have 30 pages for your chapter on Races, you can devote ten pages each to elves, dwarves and hobbits, but if each one of those has five subcultures, you're down to two pages per subculture.
Couple this with the fact that the players who really want this kind of detail in their fantasy settings are more likely to create it themselves than to wait for a given company to publish however many setting supplements might be needed, and it isn't surprising that publishers tend to err on the side of the manageably simple rather than the realistically complex.
I'll add this. I once got into a disagreement with others over whether or not to use known human cultures over fully invented ones.
The thing is I like a lot of real life cultures and wanted them in my fantasy games with little to no changes. Samurai are just as fun as knights riding giant centipedes and wearing glass armor.
It was my game so we kept the cultures, but I was called lame for doing so.
Regarding half-races, long ago when I was less Sword & Sorcery minded I decided a Half-Elf and Half-Orc were the fantasy version of calling someone an Oreo. A not so nice way of saying they hang out with humans far too much. I'm not sure if the woke would like or hate that but also I don't care.
Quote from: VisionStorm on April 23, 2023, 06:56:30 AMI disagree with this on the basis that Elves are basically fey
That's one interpretation of them, sure. Not everybody codes elves as fey. Regardless, this is just nitpicking: I could've written "dwarf" or "gnome."
From a realism standpoint, sure it would make sense that if a given race is all over the place, they'd (probably) have different cultures. But my approach stems more from a game standpoint. It's much easier for players to grok a race that is effectively an archetype, and easier to roleplay as one. It also helps makes humans stand out since they typically do have varied cultures in pretty much any setting you can name.
Quote from: GnomeWorks on April 23, 2023, 07:47:52 PM
Quote from: VisionStorm on April 23, 2023, 06:56:30 AMI disagree with this on the basis that Elves are basically fey
That's one interpretation of them, sure. Not everybody codes elves as fey. Regardless, this is just nitpicking: I could've written "dwarf" or "gnome."
From a realism standpoint, sure it would make sense that if a given race is all over the place, they'd (probably) have different cultures. But my approach stems more from a game standpoint. It's much easier for players to grok a race that is effectively an archetype, and easier to roleplay as one. It also helps makes humans stand out since they typically do have varied cultures in pretty much any setting you can name.
Cultures change as one generation dies and is replaced by the next, little by little.
Now picture an immortal race, sure, you could say Elves in X region eat more fish because there's less of other meat, but the basic underlying culture would remain the same because there's no room for change due to the longevity of Elves.
[/quote]
Cultures change as one generation dies and is replaced by the next, little by little.
Now picture an immortal race, sure, you could say Elves in X region eat more fish because there's less of other meat, but the basic underlying culture would remain the same because there's no room for change due to the longevity of Elves.
[/quote]
I had not thought of this point. It would affect any attempt to "mix it up" with long-lived Demi human or humanoid cultures.
I largely dealt with the monoculture issue by limiting my setting to a single region. You really can fit quite a bit of adventure into a roughly 85 x 110 mile area.
Another factor is that several species, while having existed prior in spiritual realms, have only been present in the material world for the past 200 years, having been dragged here by the energies of the Cataclysm that also obliterated most of the previous mortal civilizations.
The result is that the mortal populations are a potpourri of cultural elements and schizotech levels of development from whoever the survivors were and what they had access to and the new, generally immortal, arrivals generally haven't even fully assimilated to a mundane reality that doesn't just bend to their wills; much less had an opportunity to diverge into separate cultures based on geography.
It's hitting the elves; natives of the dream realms; especially hard as their leaders' demands to maintain the illusion of their dreamtime existence exceeds the resources the lower castes who must now toil to produce can actually generate. This has led to a defacto cultural split as the "dark caste" who rejects the castes that works effortlessly in the dream realms has abandoned the elven monoculture to live among mortals while the leaders of the monoculture have created an order of inquisitors to hunt down heretics and "recycle" them (elven souls reincarnate) so as to return them to their proper place in elven society.
Well, in most modern settings, elves are in different cultures, not a monoculture.
This gives variety but also makes elves more similar to every other humanoid. Drow, deep dwarves and deep gnomes might have more in common that elves and drow, for example.
Creating dozens of unique AND alien cultures for each species would be too much to grasp at once, IMO.
In my old setting, nature and nurture would mix in interesting ways. For example, lizard men had an instinctive fear of deities due to some past trauma, so they'd never become polytheist, but they could either become atheists (or really maltheists, worshipping no one) or hardcore monotheists, despising all gods but one. Dwarves were very traditional, so the ones who didn't fit would be cast away and become pirates and criminals among men. Elves would either feel superior to all, or would join humans so they could fight others. Some nations went full half-elf accepting both as equals.
Cat people would differ not only physically (cat, tiger, lion), but also in personality and culture. They didn't have their own kingdoms - too individualistic for that - but made strong warriors, with mighty clans in the red wastelands, while the most cat-like would happily live among humans studying magic and chilling.
Gnomes were the most peaceful so they got persecuted in some places.
No orcs, because they are boring, but there was a few elephant-folk and greyish apes.
Conversely, some realms were eager to accept valorous foreigners if they adopted the same deity (or just followed orders), while others would be tolerant to different religions but not to foreigners, and so on.
It was a cool setting, with some good ideas but also plenty of dumb stuff, as I started creating this as a teenager. Maybe Ill clean it and publish one day.
Here is a bit I like.
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-empire-of-dead.html
Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 24, 2023, 11:58:34 AM
No orcs, because they are boring, but there was a few elephant-folk and greyish apes.
For a while in a setting where animal-human hybrids were a fixture (a former created slave race(s) that won freedom) I had aggressive muscular boar-men who were called... Porks.
...Ba dum tish...
Quote from: Chris24601 on April 24, 2023, 01:04:46 PM
Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 24, 2023, 11:58:34 AM
No orcs, because they are boring, but there was a few elephant-folk and greyish apes.
For a while in a setting where animal-human hybrids were a fixture (a former created slave race(s) that won freedom) I had aggressive muscular boar-men who were called... Porks.
...Ba dum tish...
Sounds better than orcs to me! ;D
Quote from: Chris24601 on April 24, 2023, 01:04:46 PM
For a while in a setting where animal-human hybrids were a fixture (a former created slave race(s) that won freedom) I had aggressive muscular boar-men who were called... Porks.
I hope they didn't wind up hogging all the campaign time.
Quote from: Psyckosama on April 23, 2023, 01:01:21 PM
Quote2. No Neapolitan cities. It's one race in charge. It's not nice to modern sensibilities, but it's not unrealistic either. If there is another race as a significant population, they are second class and often live in a ghetto.
To a degree this is historically inaccurate. Large cities tended to be cosmopolitan due to the nature of trade. Smaller cities, large towns, and centers of internal trade though, this may fit.
Quote3. No Neapolitan human cities. Just like an elf city is nearly all elf, a Japanese island will be nearly all Japanese.
Cities tended to even in the pre-modern era be cultural mixing pots. Japanese cities were all Japanese because Japan was insanely isolationist for the longest time and the only reason why more modern cities aren't is unlike in ye olden days of conquest modern colonialism had a very harsh concept of anti-miscegenation which prevented the formation of social bonds and for the most part the Europeans left en mass when colonialism collapsed unlike in the olden days. Hell, reason China is as universally Han as it is now is because the PRC has been systematically genociding minorities and destroying Chinese culture for the past 70 years
I mean just look at Constantinople under the Turks. They might have put pressures on the Christians to convert after conquest, but they liked money way too much to burn the house down in the name of Turkish purity.
"Merchant tourism" and diplomats does not a cosmopolitanism make, the vast majority of these people had the equivalent of work visas with limited privileges, not the outright suffrage granted with citizenship to the local folk. But instead you say: "Yeah well the Chinese and the Japanese and the Turks are only three one-offs, nbd, because every nation has always been multicultural ever since the Egyptians enslaved the Hebrews."
You might also count the Ottomans as "anti-miscegenation" since they let the regions they conquered maintain their ethnic (i.e. non-Turk) populations as long as they paid their taxes to the sultan. If Turks don't live in the Balkans they conquered because they agreed not to live in the Balkans they governed, you don't get a whole lot of miscegenation, which apparently results in Turkish bigotry if I understand that right.
I think it's acceptable to make non-humans in fantasy settings act or think inhumanely. Dwarf biology isn't human biology. Dwarves have about 6 times the life expectancy of humans and most source material suggest that females are rare or reproduction is asexual. Maybe dwarves are like other mammals that have a limited breeding window and lady dwarves only entertain romance every 12 years. Without a heliocentric chronometer and with a physique that allows for standing in one place for hours polishing stones, cutting gems, or crafting, the idea of a day to a dwarf might be 50 hours with a normal work shift spanning 18-20 hours is plausible. Perhaps dwarf brains are naturally better at memory and geospatial tasks. Add in a religious tradition that rewards duty and hard work with social norms that celebrate honorable behaviors.
Fertz Felspar should not just be a short human with a beard. He'll be frustrated with the humans who have to stop marching after just 8 or 10 hours. He recalls every stupid thing the elf has said for the last three months and finds no value in the bard's bawdy songs. Natural things that don't grow into right angles or look like platonic solids will appear ugly. He can't ditch the party because he gave his word to help them find the treasure so he appears grumpy and stubborn to non-dwarf observers.
One could follow a similar thought experiment with any race. Maybe drow aren't evil because they are black; perhaps they appear evil to humans because they have a religious tradition that rewards those that acquire and display personal power and deifies spiders. Such a culture would create sacraments around torture and violence. Biologically females are bigger and stronger, and favored by their goddess so males are marginalized. Many spider species see the male devoured by the female after he's done his biological duty. Life isn't a miracle when a brood contains hundreds of individuals, only those select few who survive are worthy. Want to be seen as worthy start killing and eating those around you... Nasty, brutish, and short from a human vantage point, but just a day in the life of a Ched Nassadian.
As humans IRL trying to represent non-humans I think a lot of GMs just apply the physical traits to a mostly human psyche and social norms. You wind up with games peopled with grouchy drunk short humans with beards, stout height-challenged gourmands with hairy feet, hot chicks with pointed ears, etc. It makes the world less vibrant.
Now I'm gonna go off into a "kids these days" tangent. I wonder if this more prevalent today because of the fantasy pop-culture mainstream. Back in the 70s one had to read this material, on paper, and imagine for themselves the Shire or Narnia or Hyperboria. I wonder if that slow thinking and reflection lent to a deeper connection with the materials. Today you can flip on the tube and just passively watch Galadreil, Willow, Gimli, or any one of 1000 orcs. My folks were right, TV is rotting our minds...
Quote from: JackFS4 on May 03, 2023, 09:21:59 AM
I think it's acceptable to make non-humans in fantasy settings act or think inhumanely. ...I think a lot of GMs just apply the physical traits to a mostly human psyche and social norms. You wind up with games peopled with grouchy drunk short humans with beards, stout height-challenged gourmands with hairy feet, hot chicks with pointed ears, etc. It makes the world less vibrant.
I thought your hypotheses of the backgrounds behind non-human psychologies were great, but I do think that the tendency to err towards "humans in funny hats, clothes and makeup" is a little older than the dominance of TV/films suggests -- it's less an outcome of lack of imagination, I think, and more just because it's
easier.
I strongly suspect the players with enough interest to learn such complicated nonhuman backgrounds, and enough commitment to roleplay them out as well as they can, aren't as common as might be hoped. In practice I can't help but think a good many gamers just like having a few hallmark tropes to remark every now and then for the XP award. And even the committed roleplayers can drop down to that level if they lose energy over time, which inevitably most do.
Quote from: GnomeWorks on April 23, 2023, 07:47:52 PM
Not everybody codes elves as fey.
Elves are fey. That is what they literally are. Any other interpretation is a departure from the source material. Which is fine, of course, but then they are no longer elves. They are something else. Like boys putting lipstick on and calling themselves girls.
Quote from: JackFS4 on May 03, 2023, 09:21:59 AM
I think it's acceptable to make non-humans in fantasy settings act or think inhumanely. Dwarf biology isn't human biology. Dwarves have about 6 times the life expectancy of humans and most source material suggest that females are rare or reproduction is asexual. Maybe dwarves are like other mammals that have a limited breeding window and lady dwarves only entertain romance every 12 years. Without a heliocentric chronometer and with a physique that allows for standing in one place for hours polishing stones, cutting gems, or crafting, the idea of a day to a dwarf might be 50 hours with a normal work shift spanning 18-20 hours is plausible. Perhaps dwarf brains are naturally better at memory and geospatial tasks. Add in a religious tradition that rewards duty and hard work with social norms that celebrate honorable behaviors.
Fertz Felspar should not just be a short human with a beard. He'll be frustrated with the humans who have to stop marching after just 8 or 10 hours. He recalls every stupid thing the elf has said for the last three months and finds no value in the bard's bawdy songs. Natural things that don't grow into right angles or look like platonic solids will appear ugly. He can't ditch the party because he gave his word to help them find the treasure so he appears grumpy and stubborn to non-dwarf observers.
I think it is more about views of human nature than any particular time or sources, though I'll grant that more recent sources might color one's view of human nature too.
I don't see anything in that dwarf description that couldn't be recognizably human given sufficient fantasy evolution--i.e. some humans stayed underground so long they changed. You could do the same thing in sci/fi with lost colonists on a mining planet. It's human nature taking to an fantastical extreme, not really alien. A human that spent time with these dwarves and thought a little could get where they were coming from.
I say that as someone that as all but given up on film for entertainment, and vastly prefers mostly older written material. Non-human playable races are played by humans, and are humans with pointy ears or funny hats, but the range of human behavior is vast, and leaves a lot of room for a thoughtful player to distinguish the character independent of the game race.
To be less nice about it, the argument usually goes like this: "Playing an elf as a human with pointy ears is shallow. Playing an elf as a non-human because I do X is depth." Whereas, I see focusing on the non-human aspect so strongly as a sophomoric crutch to avoid dealing with the depth of the individual character. Or perhaps more charitably, putting a lot of effort into playing a non-human as alien doesn't mean much if every time you play that race, it amounts to the same thing. (Reflexively playing against type and stopping there is also a sophomoric crutch frequently used as an illusion for depth, but that's another discussion.)
What Bjorn the dwarf warrior did when confronted with the onrushing horde of goblins at the bridge, and how he coped with the loss of his companions, and what he did with the treasure afterwards--and so on--says more about his character than whether he's a short human with a Scottish accent or your dwarf. And that gets into the difference between develop in play versus extensive backgrounds, which is another separate but related discussion.
Quote from: Thor's Nads on May 04, 2023, 12:49:09 AM
Quote from: GnomeWorks on April 23, 2023, 07:47:52 PM
Not everybody codes elves as fey.
Elves are fey. That is what they literally are. Any other interpretation is a departure from the source material. Which is fine, of course, but then they are no longer elves. They are something else. Like boys putting lipstick on and calling themselves girls.
Elves aren't real. Being fantasy creatures they're whatever anyone wants to make them. Otherwise you could say elves over 2' tall aren't elves anymore because they're a departure from the source material, and Rowling's elves are more true to the source material than Tolkien's.
Quote from: Thor's Nads on May 04, 2023, 12:49:09 AM
Quote from: GnomeWorks on April 23, 2023, 07:47:52 PM
Not everybody codes elves as fey.
Elves are fey. That is what they literally are. Any other interpretation is a departure from the source material. Which is fine, of course, but then they are no longer elves. They are something else. Like boys putting lipstick on and calling themselves girls.
Ah, but then arises the question... what are the Fey in your setting?
Are they beings from the Dream Realms? Nature Spirits? Servants of the Gods/Lesser Gods? Angels neither pure enough for heaven nor wicked enough for hell? The spirits of the ancestors residing in the Otherworld with permiable barriers? Are they an otherwise normal lifeform from another dimension or parallel timeline?
Are all supernatural entities Fey? or just the elves and other near-humans?
What if your setting has some creatures native to the realm of dreams who are lesser gods, but you also have other creatures who are nature spirits/angels not good enough for heaven? Can Fey be one and not the other?
Saying Elves must be Fey is almost meaningless when the term Fey is so fluid as to mean practically anything.
Quote from: GamerforHire on April 22, 2023, 05:53:14 PMWhat this whole issue makes me think about is how so often we create worlds where Demi-human or humanoid races tend to often be monoculture—all the High Elves basically have the same government, culture, social structure, etc., though Wood Elves might have their own but consistent version; all the Dwarves basically come from same culture, etc. Meanwhile, our human races have a myriad of governments, cultures, languages, etc.
What I'm seeing from this post is a very modern (or post-modern) way of thinking. If you were growing up in a medieval town, your entire life would be spent in a single monoculture. Sure, if you're in Prague then someone from Germany or Hungary would seem strange and exotic but for modern people, those differences are almost insignificant now.
So the need to create multiple variation of each race of non-human has no real practical benefit as the players in a game wouldn't even be encountering them. Instead I think the effort to make elves meaningfully different from humans is a much more valuable use of time than making certain elves slightly different from other elves. Especially when the party might only ever encounter one group of elves in the entire campaign.
The alternative being that you have six completely different kinds of elves living in close proximity to each other which is also a bit absurd.
I've always appreciated the idea that non-human fantasy races, of those capable of any degree of culture, are fictions through which we could explore an exaggeration of collected aspects of our own nature, as a recursion of a universe attempting to understand itself through being. The abuse lies in grabbing a few appealing qualities only to exalt them into absurdity: "Kitsunes are clever and playful and that's my entire identity so I'm literally a foxman now!" And then the hyenas crash the party.
For the sake of a game, they are like wardrobes for masquerades and carnivals. Though you could have more than one costume, maybe for a given festivity you even have a favorite one (perhaps certain aspects are never entertained), but otherwise regular life continues. As long as you can relate to a fantasy race as a sentient yet external attitude, you should be able to meet the expectations of the rest of the adventurers, honoring the immersion without excusing for "lived experience" or "irony."
This is why rolling for attributes under race/class constraints is the best way to create characters, because you can avoid over-investing in the "story" of that individual, and racial level-limits likewise prevent you from running out of ideas to keep that non-human character personable and fresh, regardless of the setting. Unless you decide that the dwarf gets too cranky to stay with these adventurers as an excuse to roll up a new character, given whatever might be confronted next.
Quote from: Thor's Nads on May 04, 2023, 12:49:09 AMElves are fey. That is what they literally are. Any other interpretation is a departure from the source material. Which is fine, of course, but then they are no longer elves. They are something else. Like boys putting lipstick on and calling themselves girls.
Take your holier-than-thou attitude and shove it up your ass.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on May 04, 2023, 08:04:10 AM
I say that as someone that as all but given up on film for entertainment, and vastly prefers mostly older written material. Non-human playable races are played by humans, and are humans with pointy ears or funny hats, but the range of human behavior is vast, and leaves a lot of room for a thoughtful player to distinguish the character independent of the game race.
Thank God for librivox.org and gutenberg.org right? I'm listening to Sabatini's Captain Blood on my commute.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on May 04, 2023, 08:04:10 AM
To be less nice about it, the argument usually goes like this: "Playing an elf as a human with pointy ears is shallow. Playing an elf as a non-human because I do X is depth." Whereas, I see focusing on the non-human aspect so strongly as a sophomoric crutch to avoid dealing with the depth of the individual character. Or perhaps more charitably, putting a lot of effort into playing a non-human as alien doesn't mean much if every time you play that race, it amounts to the same thing. (Reflexively playing against type and stopping there is also a sophomoric crutch frequently used as an illusion for depth, but that's another discussion.)
I agree that bad role play can happen at either end of the spectrum and I think the worst thing to hear at the table is one player telling another, "Oh you can't do that because you're a
Fill-in-the-Blank and according to book
X page
Y fill in lengthy rules at written quotation here." That may be worse than "I'm a valley girl with pointy ears who wants to date me?"
I guess the key is to find a group who has the same level of interest in RP and lore.
Quote from: JackFS4 on May 05, 2023, 09:15:12 AM
I agree that bad role play can happen at either end of the spectrum and I think the worst thing to hear at the table is one player telling another, "Oh you can't do that because you're a Fill-in-the-Blank and according to book X page Y fill in lengthy rules at written quotation here." That may be worse than "I'm a valley girl with pointy ears who wants to date me?"
I guess the key is to find a group who has the same level of interest in RP and lore.
Or just RP, full stop. Lore can take care of itself, more or less. Sure, there are preferences for how lore gets communicated, which lore is important to the game and which is mere color, etc. Whatever lore the group values at the table, and however they approach it, that's the only lore that matters. Whereas, the role play of the individual character matters all the time.
Of course, there's some minimal level of interest in the specific lore pertinent to the setting, or the player is likely to be a bad fit. I run into this whenever I try to play in most superhero games, for example. I'm just not into the tropes enough to fully engage. Well, it's the same thing with race/ancestry/culture meaning something in the game. There's got to be something there for the players at the specific table to engage with, with that minimal level of interest.
I had some vivid examples of this in testing my races and cultures in my own system. My cultures weren't working the way I wanted. And it was across the board. I did another pass in the rules for how they fit in, and now the players are more engaged. There's still some holes, but I've made progress, and identified what the next step is.
With my six races, it was completely different. I got mild positive interest in humans, same with elves, bit of disinterest with my dwarves, and of the 3 new races, 2 were a major hit and the third was a complete dud in the interest department. Did a major revision. Interest picked up with the human/elf/dwarf group to match the success of the 2 other successful ones. Tossed the dud completely and replaced with a new concept. It's pulling the same interest as the rest now. Once we tested that and found we were in the ballpark, I did another minor revision to reinforce the distinctions that the players found attractive. We'll see how it goes.
Point being, there's almost no lore there at all. There's some very strong, implications of lore in the races, and hooks for me to build on those implications, but all I've got right now for the players is hints. On the surface, except for the replacement of the dud races, there's not much difference in the original versus the current. Yet, I'm getting a completely different level of engagement.
well like if you're playing conan, I tend to treat cultures and ethnic groups there the way classic dnd would treat races; Nemedians get +2 to any horsemanship related rolls for example, whilst a Zingaran would get the same on any roll related to seamanship or nautical lore.
Quote from: Slipshot762 on May 05, 2023, 09:57:39 PM
well like if you're playing conan, I tend to treat cultures and ethnic groups there the way classic dnd would treat races; Nemedians get +2 to any horsemanship related rolls for example, whilst a Zingaran would get the same on any roll related to seamanship or nautical lore.
And Picts get +2 for Sheep Bothering.
Quote from: GamerforHire on April 22, 2023, 05:53:14 PM
What this whole issue makes me think about is how so often we create worlds where Demi-human or humanoid races tend to often be monoculture—all the High Elves basically have the same government, culture, social structure, etc., though Wood Elves might have their own but consistent version; all the Dwarves basically come from same culture, etc. Meanwhile, our human races have a myriad of governments, cultures, languages, etc.
Has anyone played around with this, and had for example one group of High Elves be a feudal society, another group based around an Asian-inspired culture, a set of Dwarven clans that have the typical king, etc., while another acts like Scottish highland clans, etc.? One group of Orcs are insane cannibals, while another group has a tribal organization like the Zulu empire? An island culture of Hobbits as well as a "Shire" and not just the Shire?
Guess I might be the odd one on here because I don't normally run 'Fantasy' or "Sword asnd SorcerY" settings all the time.
My default RPG background is some sort of sci-fi setting with spaceships an non-human aliens in the game. Years ago I ran
GURPS:TRAVELLER, these days I am doing the
"Star Trek" setting.
The way I run it not 'all Klingons' think the same way, just like not all 'Humans' think the same way, and not 'all Andorians' think or act alike.
In the series "Deep Spsce Nine" the character of Dax had theline "They are as varied as any other species". She was referring to Klingtons - but I always loved that line because it meant that even the non-human races are not all 'cvlones' of eac other acting the way all the time.
-Ed C.
The main conflict, ie the motivation for any battle and subterfuge between various factions, should be as important as the setting itself.
With this, you could narrow down which sub-races a game master could offer as playable for character creation (or not to be present at all), since each sub-race offers a variation on how their over-arching racial goals are pursued. Drow and Eladrin might not be habitually different concerning their penchant for ornate architecture, fine crafted weapons, desire for magical power, and routine battle tactics, but these and other elves may differ exponentially in how they handle agreements with their enemies, how they prioritize their resources, and what they consider venerable, beyond just a favored terrain and fashion sense.
Especially scarce resources in a given campaign might still be jealously guarded by both of those example parties, but their unique reasons for doing so should provide a foil during to the adventurers, as well as provide room to variate upon the more familiar racial formulae. If you dislike elves altogether, there's no reason why Eladrin couldn't act upon evil intentions without possessing the open visceral aggression of the Drow, the latter whom might in a different campaign understand the circle of life with a superficially cold understanding, yet less brutal manner in practice.
Quote from: Koltar on May 05, 2023, 10:13:55 PM
Quote from: GamerforHire on April 22, 2023, 05:53:14 PM
What this whole issue makes me think about is how so often we create worlds where Demi-human or humanoid races tend to often be monoculture—all the High Elves basically have the same government, culture, social structure, etc., though Wood Elves might have their own but consistent version; all the Dwarves basically come from same culture, etc. Meanwhile, our human races have a myriad of governments, cultures, languages, etc.
Has anyone played around with this, and had for example one group of High Elves be a feudal society, another group based around an Asian-inspired culture, a set of Dwarven clans that have the typical king, etc., while another acts like Scottish highland clans, etc.? One group of Orcs are insane cannibals, while another group has a tribal organization like the Zulu empire? An island culture of Hobbits as well as a "Shire" and not just the Shire?
Guess I might be the odd one on here because I don't normally run 'Fantasy' or "Sword asnd SorcerY" settings all the time.
My default RPG background is some sort of sci-fi setting with spaceships an non-human aliens in the game. Years ago I ran GURPS:TRAVELLER, these days I am doing the "Star Trek" setting.
The way I run it not 'all Klinygons' think the same way, just like not all 'Humans' think the same way, and not 'all Andorians' think or act alike.
In the series "Deep Spsce Nine" the character of Dax had theline "They are as varied as any other species". She was referring to Klingtons - but I always loved that line because it meant that even the non-human races are not all 'cvlones' of eac other acting the way all the time.
-Ed C.
I was never a big DS9 fan but I vaguely remember that quote/phrase, which is exactly what I was talking about in the original post.
A few replies have questioned the utility of this, but they seemed to presuppose a smaller world with only one kingdom each of Elves, Dwarves, etc. My original question was more oriented to the creation of a bigger campaign world, with the possibility of multiple clusters of some demihumans and humanoids.