Quote from: danbuter;535535I'd actually prefer full-blooded orcs or goblins as a PC race to half-elves or half-orcs. Dragonborn are fine, as well. I just don't really care for half-races. I think they are dumb.

That was one of my earlier points. Of course there is a strong tradition in the source literature for 'half elves'... but then I'm perfectly happy to have 'half elves' count as 'full elves' for the purposes of the game, but I also don't want to piss on the parade of people who really really like Tanis Half-Elven or think Elrond was the swellest.

Well.... I do, actually, but mostly because I'm a bastard and they suck. But not at the cost of the hobby. I'm generous that way.

Quote from: Spike;535657That was one of my earlier points. Of course there is a strong tradition in the source literature for 'half elves'... but then I'm perfectly happy to have 'half elves' count as 'full elves' for the purposes of the game, but I also don't want to piss on the parade of people who really really like Tanis Half-Elven or think Elrond was the swellest.

Well.... I do, actually, but mostly because I'm a bastard and they suck. But not at the cost of the hobby. I'm generous that way.

Fuck you Spike.

Elrond is ok but I want to be the princess, so I can slap Tanis silly, dumb bastard that he is. It even fits!

I wish at least one time the elves would kick human ass back to the Stone Age like they should do instead of being Obama's butt buddies. At least Fantasy Craft, Burning Wheel and Rolemaster does elves much better.

Quote from: Marleycat;535661Obama's butt buddies

my WTF of the day :confused:

never would associate elves with obama :huhsign:

Quote from: beeber;535687my WTF of the day :confused:

never would associate elves with obama :huhsign:

Environment--->Green initiatives* at least he is trying to go that direction. I always think of elves as being eco-terrorists in the right for some reason.

*Not Obama he just a President so he doesn't really have as much power as he would like just like any President.

Quote from: Marleycat;535714He doesn't really have as much power as he would like, just like any President.

Thank God and what's in the Constitution for that.

Quote from: Marleycat;535661Fuck you Spike.

Elrond is ok but I want to be the princess, so I can slap Tanis silly, dumb bastard that he is. It even fits!

I wish at least one time the elves would kick human ass back to the Stone Age like they should do instead of being Obama's butt buddies. At least Fantasy Craft, Burning Wheel and Rolemaster does elves much better.

I aim to please.  

The Secrets of Zir'an had an interesting take on Elves.  Oddly, there is a web comic I used to read (whose name escapes me... Errant Story?) that sort of reminds me of it in some ways.  Aside from plot induced amnesia (Zir'an, not the webcomic... nobody knows nothing about the elven homelands, and elvish characters who should know, won't tell anyone so they don't know either...).. it was pretty alright.

As I recall The Elves were the first race made by the Gods and the gods actually hung out with the elves for a while (this is both Zir'an and Errant Story), but either the Elves got Uppity or the Gods got bored with their perfect children, and so presto, instant disaster for the Elves, and a bunch of not-elf races wandering around. Cue Tragic Music as the Gods abandon their perfect children (for which the elves blame the lesser races, yadda yadda) and you've got an immortal race of relative bastards who see themselves as divine inheritors, but are 'too perfect' to keep up with everyone else.

Quote from: Marleycat;535661I wish at least one time the elves would kick human ass back to the Stone Age like they should do instead of being Obama's butt buddies. At least Fantasy Craft, Burning Wheel and Rolemaster does elves much better.

I'm sure you didn't mean to troll or anything, but do please try to keep overt political references out of discussions on the main RPG forum, it tends to derail threads.

RPGPundit

I would prefer that Men alone be in the core rulebook.  As every campaign will be specific to the Game Master that creates and runs it, I would prefer every other race to be shunted into a supplement or article.  Likewise, I prefer that just Fighters, Magic-Users and Rogues/Thieves (and I see good arguments for both labels; I err for "Rogue") be in the core rulebook; religion will be specific to each campaign, therefore I see no need to imply that there is a one-class-fits-all-religions approach.  (Hence, "Magic-User" instead of "Wizard"; the former includes non-Cleric priests.)

Given that today we have a large and well-known Lord of the Rings brand machine, and many younger gamer-types' understanding of what "fantasy" is is driven less by trad fantasy lit and more by WoW - I have to wonder if including the standard Tolkien races isn't going to hurt them in the market.

Then again, there seems to be very little uptake of D&D in the high-school crowd, at least around here.

Quote from: daniel_ream;536082Given that today we have a large and well-known Lord of the Rings brand machine, and many younger gamer-types' understanding of what "fantasy" is is driven less by trad fantasy lit and more by WoW - I have to wonder if including the standard Tolkien races isn't going to hurt them in the market.

Then again, there seems to be very little uptake of D&D in the high-school crowd, at least around here.

Most of my friends were big Tolkein fans learning 3.5 in highschool FWIW. The movies might have been bigger at the time, but the Hobbit is on its way. I wonder sometimes if WoW subscriptions skew older than people seem to think, as I've known very few players my age or younger (most of whom were people with long gaps between classes in college).

Quote from: Acta Est Fabula;535261Monstrous races don't have a place at my table unless we are specifically designing a campaign around them.

I do use Bugbears, orcs, 1/2-ogres as playable races, but it is more about them being sort of tribal and just coming in acculturation.  They often have to deal with racism and discrimination from both sides.

Quote from: jibbajibba;535278Fantastic plan .

Then add new races with the setting books but make the Human cultural options in those books just as interesting.

Yep.
I use six different human cultural strains as well as 'mixed' humans.

I'm reminded of that old joke that the proof that D&D is not Lord of the Rings is that in the very first combat encounter in tFotR, the entire party runs like hell while the magic-user attacks with a sword.

Back in the day, fantasy was a lot less mass-market, there was a bibliography in the DMG if you wanted to look it up, and stealing shamelessly from existing works seemed to be de rigueur for the hobby.  These days, the second some new player sees elves, dwarves, orcs and hobbits, I can see them going "oh, so like Lord of the Rings, then? Cool!" Except then they're going to run into all the ways D&D is not like Lord of the Rings, and I can't help but think that might be a turnoff for some of them.

Life: The ultimate Bait & Switch!

Quote from: daniel_ream;536132I'm reminded of that old joke that the proof that D&D is not Lord of the Rings is that in the very first combat encounter in tFotR, the entire party runs like hell while the magic-user attacks with a sword.

Back in the day, fantasy was a lot less mass-market, there was a bibliography in the DMG if you wanted to look it up, and stealing shamelessly from existing works seemed to be de rigueur for the hobby.  These days, the second some new player sees elves, dwarves, orcs and hobbits, I can see them going "oh, so like Lord of the Rings, then? Cool!" Except then they're going to run into all the ways D&D is not like Lord of the Rings, and I can't help but think that might be a turnoff for some of them.

The strength of D&D is that you can use it to run a reasonable LotR (or anything else) game without many tweaks