Quote from: tenbones;1114314makes me squint when thinking of them just running around the Realms or Greyhawk. I mean I find it ludicrous that Tieflings would just be "accepted" without batting an eye in those settings.

I agree that races Tieflings appear and be accepted in Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms is a head scratcher.

My own (unintended) solution is that I had the Viridistan Empire which in Judges Guild canon as an empire ruled by a race of half demons half mermen (the Viridians).

That morphed into it being ruled by a lesser race of demons (the Viridians still).

Then the empire collapsed into anarchy and civil war because, (again JG Canon) there were not a lot of Viridians left and the PCs killed the Emperor and his wife in an epic adventure.

Then when the civil war was winding down in later campaigns that were set in Viridistan, I stared to flesh out what it was like to live in a Demon ruled empire, so came up with the idea of half-Viridians. Bastards children of the Viridian ruling race. Plus I expanded the number of surviving Viridians but none of the survivors have the "Imperial Blood" so had no claim to the throne (except for one that I kept from JG Canon)

So the cultural situation is that half-Viridians existed, many of them were despised as a reminder of the days when demons ruled. But could and did prosper. However surviving full blood Viridians had to remain underground would be hunted and killed.

So this developed around the time that Tieflings became a things in the aughts. So I never had trouble adapting the mechanics of Tieflings to representing half-Viridians when ran D&D 3.X, 4e, or 5e in the Wilderlands.

However I did not use the RAW backstory each of those editions gave them and had my own list of what constituted demonic features.

Quote from: estar;1114301He wasn't explaining OD&D to you. He was pointing out how oddball races existed from the start of the hobby. For example Gronan playing a Balrog PC.

Why should today's mix should be considered unusual?  Especially one knowledgeable about the history of the hobby.

I remember the party with the "token" human was present in the days of AD&D 1st edition.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114303I don't understand why there is so much opposition to oddball races. Why exactly would Tolkien races be kosher, but tieflings, warforged, and dragonborn not?

My feeling is that people like Africans but dislike Elbonians because everyone knows about Africa and have seen people from Africa but Elbonia is just super unrealistic full of people and strange things that no one has ever heard of.

Quote from: tenbones;1114314**GENERALLY**

Because the conception of the world of Middle-Earth has all these races as part of the creation-myth.

Tieflings, Warforged, and Dragonborn - were more or less, like all of the other races that creeped in via other settings - tacked on.

Individually I have no problem with any of them. But when you start to hit maximum capacity of a world with all these new races, you lose the "vibe" of the setting. ALL of these races have very specific conceits to them that inherently makes me squint when thinking of them just running around the Realms or Greyhawk. I mean I find it ludicrous that Tieflings would just be "accepted" without batting an eye in those settings. But if you create a setting specifically - like in Golarion where you have devil-worshipping nations... it makes a lot more sense. And even then...

 Planescape and Spelljammer are huge exceptions to this. Gonzo to the max. I've let all kinds of crazy into those campaigns I've run.

Ok, Tieflings and Greyhawk - has anyone ever heard of Iuz?  Is he a thing in Greyhawk or is he something that was tacked on to the setting in a way that does not make sense?

I would be the first to admit my knowledge of Greyhawk is patchy at best but maybe one of the older Grognards could tell me what I dont understand about half breed planar characters in Greyhawk and how they dont fit the "vibe" of Greyhawk.

Quote from: tenbones;1114314**GENERALLY**

Because the conception of the world of Middle-Earth has all these races as part of the creation-myth.

Tieflings, Warforged, and Dragonborn - were more or less, like all of the other races that creeped in via other settings - tacked on.

So if you're NOT playing Middle Earth, but a setting where tieflings, dragonborn and warforged are woven into it instead of tacked on there shouldn't be any problems with having them.

Which is just about any WotC setting out there (ex. Eberron, Nentir Vale, post-Spellplague FR).

In my home setting 'malfeans' (elemental-themed tieflings), dwarves (who are also arcane cyborgs... warforged are "full-conversion" cyborg dwarves), eldritch (embodied nature spirits not good enough for heaven nor wicked enough for hell) and humans are central to the creation myth while Beastmen (minotaurs, wolfen, crocodin, etc.) are central to the fall of the first human empire and rise of worship of the astral gods.

Elves are far more tacked on to that setting; they literally showed up because a magic cataclysm just a century or two back ripped open the barriers between worlds and dumped them into the setting.

If not for their usefulness as opportunistic antagonists (because of how they arrived they were MUCH more numerous and organized than the native survivors) with a truly alien culture, I probably would have just skipped them entirely and included an elf-like option among the Eldritch (an array that already includes everything from sprites to giants to talking animals, dryads, undine, sylphs, unicorns, werebeasts and dragons).

Middle Earth is a fine setting, but insisting that every other setting be Tolkein-based is nonsense to me; just play in Middle Earth if all you want are humans, elves, dwarves and hobb... er, halflings. I'd much rather play in a setting where human, tiefling, dragonborn and warforged were the core races than another Tolkein rip-off.

Quote from: estar;1114323I agree that races Tieflings appear and be accepted in Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms is a head scratcher.

I thought the tiefling that's the face for The Faithful Quartermasters of Iuz (I'm serious) in Ghosts of Saltmarsh was worse than a head scratcher. Because of course Keoland is OK with a demonic demigod-backed business that trades in magical items...they have something similar in Seattle, right?

Quote from: Shasarak;1114326Ok, Tieflings and Greyhawk - has anyone ever heard of Iuz?  Is he a thing in Greyhawk or is he something that was tacked on to the setting in a way that does not make sense?

I would be the first to admit my knowledge of Greyhawk is patchy at best but maybe one of the older Grognards could tell me what I dont understand about half breed planar characters in Greyhawk and how they dont fit the "vibe" of Greyhawk.

Iuz is definitely Greyhawk, but he is a cambion/demigod, not a tiefling. The tieflings are a whole race (or species if you prefer) of devilish origin while Iuz was a singlular being of demonic  origin (of Graz'zt). Iuz grew from a bandit lord to a demigod in a relatively short period of time, but he wasn't tacked on.

If you want to use 5e tieflings in Greyhawk, they would not come from Iuz. Far better to have them start popping out of Great Kingdom nobility as a consequence of voided infernal contracts after the fall of Rauxes. Those Aerdy nobles were pretty naughty, and now their lands are a fallen empire of Hell on Oerth (with few actual fields remaining thanks to that asshole from Veluna).

Quote from: Shasarak;1114326Ok, Tieflings and Greyhawk - has anyone ever heard of Iuz?  Is he a thing in Greyhawk or is he something that was tacked on to the setting in a way that does not make sense?

But but he is a cambion!

Quote from: HappyDaze;1114333Iuz is definitely Greyhawk, but he is a cambion/demigod, not a tiefling. The tieflings are a whole race (or species if you prefer) of devilish origin while Iuz was a singlular being of demonic  origin (of Graz'zt). Iuz grew from a bandit lord to a demigod in a relatively short period of time, but he wasn't tacked on.

If you want to use 5e tieflings in Greyhawk, they would not come from Iuz. Far better to have them start popping out of Great Kingdom nobility as a consequence of voided infernal contracts after the fall of Rauxes. Those Aerdy nobles were pretty naughty, and now their lands are a fallen empire of Hell on Oerth (with few actual fields remaining thanks to that asshole from Veluna).

If we are quibling about Demonic half-breeds as opposed to Hellish half-breeds then we have already accepted the fact that there are half-breeds.

Whether there is actually a "race" of half-breeds or not is a pretty fluid idea within the DnD cosmology because you could look at Half-Elves and Half-Orcs and ask the same question of them, were their parents Human and Elf (for example) or are Half-Elves actually a new race of people that breed true.  Certainly the oringinal Planescape Tiefling was an individual more then a race and there is no good reason to suppose that any individual PC Tiefling lacks a unique backstory similar to the way that Iuz does.

If you are hell bent (heh) on having Tieflings descend from Devils then sure your idea is a perfect way to integrate a Tiefling into Greyhawk.

As for Cambion they are found in the Monster Manual 2 on page 37.

QuoteWhen a human female mates with a demon, the offspring is always a cambion male. The general characteristics and abilities of a cambion depend upon its parentage.

....

Any cambion can range from 6-7' feet in height. Their build is stocky and strong. Many cambions will have demonic features such as an odd-colored complexion, scaly skin, misshapen ears, fangs, small horns, etc. There is no set pattern, cambions being nearly as varied in appearance as humans.

There is enough information in the entry to allow Cambions as PC race if you want to go that route.

Tieflings first appeared as part of the AD&D 2nd edition Planescape setting.

Quote from: rawma;1114121In any case OD&D alone versus OD&D+Greyhawk(+anything else) should be carefully distinguished.

Good point. OD&D could not, in my opinion, be run Rules as Written because there were almost no rules. That made DMing rather difficult but it also led to a healthy variety among the campaigns of those who could hack it. On Wednesday nights I had to choose between two great campaigns run by brilliant GMs. It took ingenuity to take a character from one campaign to another because they were so different. But it was all "D&D."

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114303I don't understand why there is so much opposition to oddball races. Why exactly would Tolkien races be kosher, but tieflings, warforged, and dragonborn not?

For me, it is the number of species that causes problems, not their identity. I find that the survival of so many bashes against my suspension of disbelief.

Quote from: estar;1114345As for Cambion they are found in the Monster Manual 2 on page 37.

There is enough information in the entry to allow Cambions as PC race if you want to go that route.

Tieflings first appeared as part of the AD&D 2nd edition Planescape setting.

I dont know if the Gord the Rogue books are supposed to be canonical of not, but I am sure Gord is supposed to be related in someway to the Cat Lord.

So much complaint about too wide a variety of races!

In my view, a great strength of D&D, pickup games in particular, is the weird mix of ideas that people come up with for player characters, more in their interests and attitudes than in race. A game with one GM and one player, or any number of players who all manifest exactly the same tastes in fantasy, is going to miss out on the opportunity for creativity when disparate elements clash. (OK, I was going to say "is like kissing your sister" but I don't want to know who thinks that would be an endorsement.) Letting source material dictate how a player character is played seems antithetical to RPGs; do you forbid players from playing, say, an elf unless they are certified in Middle Earth trivia and promise to abide by it?

I adventured with what was, for Barovia, a wildly mixed set of player character races, but they were there because we all wandered through a fog bank from somewhere else. I can see the decision that "there is no tiefling community in this world, even if your character is a tiefling", but D&D worlds probably have hundreds of sentient races of monsters, and DMs deal with that, so why not twenty that can be player characters?

(OK, D&D Beyond says 39 races, not counting subraces, some of which seem distinct to me, but 12 are not legal for AL. So many! I must swell up with ineffectual nerd rage at this travesty of -- hmm, no, still good with it. )

Quote from: tenbones;1114314**GENERALLY**

Because the conception of the world of Middle-Earth has all these races as part of the creation-myth.

Tieflings, Warforged, and Dragonborn - were more or less, like all of the other races that creeped in via other settings - tacked on.

Individually I have no problem with any of them. But when you start to hit maximum capacity of a world with all these new races, you lose the "vibe" of the setting. ALL of these races have very specific conceits to them that inherently makes me squint when thinking of them just running around the Realms or Greyhawk. I mean I find it ludicrous that Tieflings would just be "accepted" without batting an eye in those settings. But if you create a setting specifically - like in Golarion where you have devil-worshipping nations... it makes a lot more sense. And even then...

 Planescape and Spelljammer are huge exceptions to this. Gonzo to the max. I've let all kinds of crazy into those campaigns I've run.

From the get-go the idea was the DM could "prune the race tree" as they saw fit. Its in most if not all the rulebooks and sure as hell is in several setting books. No orcs? Done, Human only? Done, No halflings? Done. And so on. The Creature Crucible series for BECMI pretty much were all about playing non-standard races. (or optionally meeting them and their strange worlds.)
Others opened up just a handfull of raves specific to the area. Which tended to be more the norm for D&D settings. Red Steel introduced Lupin, Rakasta and Tortles for example. Which you didnt see much anywhere else.

But at the end of the day the DM can just say "No gnomes" and poof, gnomes are not a PC race, or dont exist in that setting. They were not a PC choice for my 5e Known World campaign as they were not a PC race in BX. Dragonborn are not a race unto themselves and are only an option for Dragon Blooded Sorcerers. (because that was how I was introduced to them.) and so on.

Here that old list I was talking about earlier.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3988[/ATTACH]

Quote from: rawma;1114354In my view, a great strength of D&D, pickup games in particular, is the weird mix of ideas that people come up with for player characters, more in their interests and attitudes than in race. A game with one GM and one player, or any number of players who all manifest exactly the same tastes in fantasy, is going to miss out on the opportunity for creativity when disparate elements clash.

One kind of creativity is lost, yes, but another is gained.  Creativity that springs out of restraints can be muted but satisfying.  Also, note that I did not say "exactly" the same tastes.  There is a lot of overlap--enough to have something coherent that appeals to our joint tastes--but also differences.  The differences can be small, but are magnified in the game because of the base similarity.  

There is also the tonal preference for subtle or over the top.  We prefer something that leans somewhat towards the subtle, or at least allows room for it.  Spelljammer and the like simply doesn't appeal.