I've been thinking about this lately. Dwarves, goblins, elves... these are staples of the genre, and a lot of people are really attached to them. Whether we're using long-established extra races or new ones of our own creation (or a mix of the above), most fantasy world writers are playing with the idea of "otherness" by including races of people that are not humans.
I think that in its roots, this was a way of playing with xenophobia. I think that a lot of fantasy was (and still is) allegorical at some level, either very overtly or very faintly. Having a race (or several) of people that is unquestionably different makes it easy to set up a contrast.
We've gotten more egalitarian since Tolkien, but we've got to give him credit for starting some trends. He uses humans and hobbits as people the reader is meant to identify with closely, and elves, dwarves, and orcs as various types of exotic "other." Whatever we may think of this setup today, it performs some important functions very efficiently: it sets apart various groups quite unmistakably. The lines between good and evil are clearly drawn in this particular literature, and it's easy to tell at a glance what side most people are on. There's no need to ask if a particular orc is a bad guy; we can tell, because he's an orc. The "elfness" of the elves helps characterize them, and helps draw the line between those who are waxing in power and staying to fight (humans), and those who are waning in power and leaving the world.
This is a longwinded way of saying that I think the distinction of races here serves a purpose. Tolkien doesn't harp on themes of alienation and xenophobia the way some others do, but if you were to rewrite his literature with all the characters changed into humans, you'd need something to draw the lines between various groups. The racial distinctions serve a purpose.
In a lot of gaming, there's less distinction between races we're meant to identify with and races we're meant to regard as "other." It's hard to define an elf as mysterious and exotic, for example, if you're supposed to be able to play as one-- you have to be able to identify with them as closely as you'd identify with Tolkien's humans and hobbits. Also, when all races mingle freely (as they do in many adventuring parties, as well as in the more cosmopolitan areas of lots of settings), it's harder and harder to use race to draw those same lines. Race loses its power to generate strife, and becomes relegated to a mere physical characteristic. "Jim is a gnome" often carries little more visceral weight than "Bob is tall" or "Sarah has blue eyes."
I struggle a lot with this lately. I have eight playable races in the Jade Stage, and I'm starting to wish I didn't. I don't use race to its fullest potential-- in many cases, it does just feel like a physical description, no more. I know that in my first drafts, these races got included because everybody else was including lots of races, too. I invented several whole new races just because I wanted to give players options, and the narrative grew to support them (or to leave them unsupported) much later. In a lot of cases, changing everything to humans wouldn't prevent me from using the themes I am trying to use, and in some cases, eliminating the multiple races would solve some thorny problems for me.
So, my questions for discussion:
Do you use multiple races, and if so, why did you choose to include them?
Do races serve a function in your work, to support or highlight a particular theme?
Do you get the sense that many people write in multiple races as a matter of habit, or just because it's often expected in the genre?
If so, do you think that's a problem?
What awesome things are made possible by the use of multiple races? What problems are caused?
I'm really interested in hearing your opinions, here.
Do you use multiple races, and if so, why did you choose to include them?
I use multiple races in my world, but, if I were to run a game in it, probably only humans (and maybe centaurs or vanara) would be playable.
Why did I include them? I have endeavored to use all the creatures featured in various world mythologies. With the exception of phaneans (which I mostly made up as the race of the Golden Age), the creatures in Kishar all come from myth/folklore.
Do races serve a function in your work, to support or highlight a particular theme?
Sometimes. Phaneans do. Most of the other "races" are variant species of fae, which as a whole serve both as nature spirits (and thus gods for animistic societies) and an alien other which men fear.
Do you get the sense that many people write in multiple races as a matter of habit, or just because it's often expected in the genre?
Yes. I get that sense. I often try to avoid it.
If so, do you think that's a problem?
Sometimes. It depends on what the setting is going for. If you want a high-fantasy typically D&D esque world, these tropes can be a good thing.
What awesome things are made possible by the use of multiple races? What problems are caused?
Awesome things? I don't know, racial wars, maybe? Maybe historical themes not possible with humans?
Problems: I say the biggest is that either they are alien and thus not plausible as playable races, or just humans in funny suits, in which case their inclusion can be questionable. I also feel like non-human races can erode a setting that is supposed to be dark, or gritty, or realistic, or remotely representative of any real historical culture. It's why so much of the supernatural stuff for Kishar has wound up getting pushed out to Otherworld, Jotunheim, and other underworlds.
Before I make a swipe at your questions, I want to actually discuss the topic first. I agree completely that races have lost a lot of their value. I think a lot of this can be compared to the elven subrace debate, where all of the subraces are all the same race they just have different cultures. The campaign I'm currently running features mostly core races, and I don't feel like the characters truly portray their races. It's exactly true what you said: their races have become "relegated to a mere physical characteristic." Sure, the dwarf talks like a dwarf and the elf talks like an elf, but those could just be personality quirks.
Dwarves, for example, are too human. I could describe the human kingdom of Staldorn, where the men wear their beards long as a sign of tradition, the wives are kept in their homes nestled in the mountains of Staldorn, and they have a lot of loyalty to their various clans. If I just made them a foot shorter, we would have a human kingdom that plays like a dwarven one.
The only person in my campaign who plays their character like an actual different race is the karthen player, which is a humanoid with fox features (and the player's not even a furry or into that sort of thing). The elf, dwarf, kobold, and satyr could all be described as humans with different personalities.
Now I'll answer questions as it fits into my post -
Do you use multiple races, and if so, why did you choose to include them?
In my old campaign world, Aldreia, I used multiple races as force of habit. Elves, dwarves, and other such unworthy of note races filled the world. My new world, Tephra, has a very different approach, where I've created the races to be very different from one another. Some of them will be humans with very different cultures and a couple different abilities, but the rest are created to have a very unique roleplaying experience.
My new world's races were developed almost formulaically. I knew, for example, that I wanted to have no more and no less than eight races from the get-go. That may sound like a bit much, especially when all of the races are unique and very different, but it's the differences in the races that let me do it. Furthermore, we don't have any monstrous races that aren't core races (like fourth edition gnomes, the bastards).
But they were designed to fill different roles in the world, and they all fill them and bring another unique aspect to the world. Sure, I could drop one or two of them and be fine, but I think it would leave holes in the world. They bring flavor to it.
[b\Do races serve a function in your work, to support or highlight a particular theme?[/b]
Here I am getting ahead of myself. So, continuing from before, yes, they are. The haudi, for example, were designed to be the epitome of a superior race with cutthroat social Darwinism and to be a race that isn't afraid to be completely inhumane. If I were to cut out the haudi I could just give a human nation the same culture, no sweat. However, this human culture wouldn't be nearly as tall or strong as the haudi, and therefore make it a little more of a stretch to consider these humans fit for their culture.
Do you get the sense that many people write in multiple races as a matter of habit, or just because it's often expected in the genre?
Quite a bit. I mentioned above that my original world was full of fantasy genre races. I eventually ventured away from the mold a little bit (by making satyrs and kobolds core), but even that wasn't enough. The world didn't feel like its own world '" it felt like a fantasy world that I had no control over. The genre precedents influenced it too heavily.
If so, do you think that's a problem?
Not always. It doesn't work for me, because I want something more out of world-building. Elves and dwarves and halflings are fun races to play, and using them is more than just genre stereotypes but also a chance to play races that everyone knows and loves. How are old-fashioned D&D players going to feel when they get to Tephra, look around, and say, 'Where are my pretty elves? I can either play a mutated brutish elf or I can play a daemon that has possessed an elf's body?' It's not core D&D anymore, which is good sometimes. But sure, every once in a while we just want to play the classic.
What awesome things are made possible by the use of multiple races? What problems are caused?
Having multiple races is easier on writers and DMs for making stereotypes. When a human nation and a dwarven nation are at war, they can easily mark each other as enemies. This holds truer with goblins, orcs, and ogres who are always enemies. Rather than saying, 'You see a man with sharp facial features and a long nose '" he looks like a Vildergraut, which you're kingdom's at war with,' the DM would simply say, 'You see a goblin.' Is this a problem or is this a good thing? I guess it depends on how much immersion you want in your game. I think some people would have issues with having a game where you raid complexes full of those humans with sharp features and long noses. Because they're goblins it takes away some of those humanitarian feelings, let's us distance ourselves. For my style of DMing, I would say that's actually a problem. For others, it's a good thing.
I suppose my contention is that races should fill a definite hole in a world. If a world-builder can replaced dwarves with a human culture, like above, then why don't they? Well, whatever the reason, there should at least be a reason.
Do you use multiple races, and if so, why did you choose to include them?
In Wonders, I do. It was for several reasons - firstly, it was originally partially inspired by a separate setting (or rather, a mix of other settings and works) that contained other races. The Daemons, for example, HAD to be alien - because that was what they were, alien. I think I also wanted humans - who are alien, yet not, for various different reasons - to have very few things to identify with in the new world they are now trapped in, apart from the daemons (who they have nothing but a 'master-slave' relationship with). The Duer are there because I needed a very foreign, very different culture to set the main setting in, and I included elves because I simply wanted to make them something different, and I needed a 'template' species to fit in where everything else didn't. Finally, the Eldritch and Hariij are there as the sort of local 'good-vs-evil' shadow-war, but where both sides are morally ambiguous. They're more like Tolkien's elves, or even the Valar, and are unintended for play if a game is actually done - they're more there to manipulate people, the puppeteers behind the scenes whom the players will only encounter if they get to the root of some plot against them.
Do races serve a function in your work, to support or highlight a particular theme?
As mentioned, the Hariij and Eldritch are there to perform political warfare against one another, and to manipulate PCs or characters in fiction. The species are effectively there for the purpose of creating completely alien creatures opposed to each other - and to play around with the idea of 'normality' and worldview from creatures possibly incapable of various human functions or emotions.
Do you get the sense that many people write in multiple races as a matter of habit, or just because it's often expected in the genre?
I think this is definitely a problem. I do it, I know, and would much prefer all-human settings in many cases. It's expected more in DnD than in the fantasy genre as a whole, though - DnD gives preset races and easy tools to create new ones, whereas fantasy is full of all-human settings or settings where non-humans are your standard epic-powah individuals. However, the greater problem (IMO) is that races are often made to be more 'humans in funny suits' than actual 'alien' creatures in their own right.
If so, do you think that's a problem?
See above.
What awesome things are made possible by the use of multiple races? What problems are caused?
Mmm, as I said before, I think that the MAIN problem is that you end up with multiple humans-in-funny-suits-and-stereotypical-cultures. Oh, also the nasty tendency of DnD to encourage making 'The dwarven nation. Made up of dwarves. Who speak dwarven. All dwarves come from here.' Happily, we do tend to see much more linguistic and cultural diversity/realism amongst settings on the CBG, and/or reasons given for 'this race speak this language have this accent and this culture' (i.e. genocide everywhere else).
On the PLUS side, you can get a lot more xenophobia without resorting to potentially-offensive actual racism ('pointy-ears' being less likely to offend real people than, well... yeah), and you can, if you take the NON-humans-in-funny-suits route, create genuine alien cultures or alien worldviews which provide a challenge for the best of roleplayers/authors to play/write.
Do you use multiple races, and if so, why did you choose to include them?
No. I allow only "human" races, although there are about 13 different and distinct subethnicities/cultures amongst them.
Do races serve a function in your work, to support or highlight a particular theme?
It functions as a part of the key conceits of my campaign, as to instill a greater sense of suspension of disbelief and "ground" characters within believable and familiar cultures wrapped tightly into a low magic world that is on the verge of the fantastic rising again from mythology.
Do you get the sense that many people write in multiple races as a matter of habit, or just because it's often expected in the genre?
Definitely expected.
If so, do you think that's a problem?
Absolutely. Fantasy as a whole is predictable. My aim at the time I'd written the basis for my homegrown back in 1992 was to bring fresh ideas to the norm of which my players were accustomed.
What awesome things are made possible by the use of multiple races? What problems are caused?
How can we possibly conceive to roleplay the psychology of an Elf that is hundreds of years old; more specifically, his or her's approach to the most mundane of tasks and thoughts? It is much easier to accept fantasy elements when they're embodied within men who face the same issues we do today: racial tension, religious issues, pride in one's country and ethnicity. Set against a backdrop of low fantasy and magic, it sets a more believable tone for a campaign. One has to look no further than George RR Martin to understand the strength of his literature and to empathize with the characters.
Do you use multiple races, and if so, why did you choose to include them?
I do, and I included them so that the PCs, being Humans, would feel more keenly the alien nature of their new surroundings.
If the natives of Reth Jaleract were just different-coloured Humans, or Humans with a different culture, then yes, they would have been alien, but not AS alien.
Do races serve a function in your work, to support or highlight a particular theme?
Their main function is, as I said above, be different to Humans. However, aside from physical and cultural differences, I haven't yet touched on exactly how they're so different yet.
Another theme I intend to explore with my non-Humans, but haven't yet, is that of their nature as.. I dunno, maybe elemental is the right word.
A lot of my setting is to do with Humans struggling to survive in this strange new land. To reinforce this theme, I would like the explore the notion of the non-Humans being as much a part of Reth Jaleract as they are inhabitants of Reth Jaleract.
Do you get the sense that many people write in multiple races as a matter of habit, or just because it's often expected in the genre?
Yes.
If so, do you think that's a problem?
It CAN be a problem, but it doesn't have to be. It all depends on the execution. A badly written and thought-out world with only Humans in is still bad, and a great world in every sense other than the fact that it has no really good reason for it's plethora of races existing is still pretty damn good.
What awesome things are made possible by the use of multiple races? What problems are caused?
Good things :
Hm... well, the obvious, highlighting a difference between two peoples. They're not just different culturally and socially, but physically, as well!
Also, some players, no matter how roleplay-focussed they might be, still like to have fun with supernatural powers, and non-Human races let them enjoy this without having to take a specifically magic-oriented class.
Bad things :
The old Humans With Pointy Ears syndrome.
Also, they can detract from certain moods and flavours. An otherwise fine African-themed setting will suddenly seem very strange once a High Elf wanders into the village - unless, that is, a considerable amount of high-quality justification for their presence is given.
It's going to be hard answering your questions individually because I just have so much to SAY on this issue. I think I'd better just answer in my own way.
For me multiple races is a requirement. I get to see humans every day and being one I know what they're like. When I think about a fantasy world I want something different. The thing is, though, I don't want "Star Trek"-style races, humans with a bit of makeup and a couple of prosthesis. Give me intelligent wolves, beings made of smokeless fire, and/or shades of blue if it comes to that!
Why? Because to me the look of a character is very important as it indicates what the person on the inside of the player wants to be. I'm not playing a game just to wear my same old restrictive human skin. If someone else feels comfortable that way then it's fine, but when I write my worlds I want there to be options so that hopefully people will find something that expresses on their character's outside what they are on the inside.
Now on to the issue of "humans in funny suits": If something doesn't look human that what is it like mentally? My answer: It doesn't matter. By that I mean my work ends at a race's appearance. Sure I think that some bits of personality are hard wired into us as instincts, but I'm not willing to risk creating a restriction for any non-human race until someone gives me one for humans. The idea of "alien minds" doesn't occur to me: I have trouble understand many members of my own species. That suggests to me that understandability is not based purely off the mind created through genetics. (Also it's my hope that by not stereotyping racial personalities that I can avoid the "humans are the most culturally variable race" pitfall. It's way too arrogant in my view.)
(Please excuse any typos. My hands seem to not want to properly obey my brain today, and while I ran this through a spellchecker, if any typos happened to create real words, it (and I) could have missed them.)
Do you use multiple races, and if so, why did you choose to include them?
Depends on the setting. I'm seriously considering cutting out the majority of races besides humans, cephaliths, and sea devils out of my Pirates setting, whereas I feel that Sooth needs more and more races. Really, it comes down to size of the setting: if the setting is large enough, then multiple races work well, whereas a smaller, one world or one landmass setting often feels cluttered to me if multiple races are used. Part of this also stems from my desire for quasi-realism in a setting: there needs to be a justifiable evolutionary or magical reason for these races to exist. (IE: Cephaliths and Sea Devils evolved to fill an aquatic niche that is a void in the real world, whereas in Sooth each race evolved on their own Material, and therefore would not be human simply because of evolution.)
Do races serve a function in your work, to support or highlight a particular theme?
Yes and no. I'm carefully cutting out extraneous races from my settings except for those that fill a particular purpose, because otherwise I think the world loses a lot of flavor. Now, if your intent is to create a setting that semi-adheres to traditional fantasy norms, then by all means use the traditional fantasy races (much as I hate the "gods each created their own race and therefore there are different races.) However, settings that are meant to be played in also need to be fun for players, and many players thrive on having options: classes, magic types, and races. If you're writing a setting for your players to game in, you have to take into consideration what the players would have fun with, because otherwise you're just indulging in the masturbatory DMing style that has become a pet peeve of mine, but that's a different rant.
Do you get the sense that many people write in multiple races as a matter of habit, or just because it's often expected in the genre? If so, do you think that's a problem?
[note=Side Rant]A huge race problem I have is "Humans exist in multiple cultures and have numerous Gods, but all other races exist as part of a homogeneous culture with either one god or a separate racial pantheon that caters to them alone. It doesn't make sense in most settings that society evolved this way: the elves that exist in the Arctic woods of the north should not be the same, culturally and value wise, as the elves that inhabit the jungles to the southeast without an explanation for it. If both elves were once part of a massive elven empire that spanned both these areas, then that is fine by me. On the flip side, giving every race their own distinct culture works equally fine as long as humans have a homogeneous culture as well, including a specific pantheon and such. [/note]Yes to both. I'm not accusing anyone on the CBG of doing this, but I think a large number of gamers write in various races because various races are expected to exist within a world. Again, if this is done to make the world more fun for your players, then by all means do it, but if it's done because you feel like fantasy should have multiple races because that's what fantasy does, then it's weak logic that damages the setting more than helping it. If there is a reason for dwarves, then let there be dwarves! If dwarves are in your setting because they are in the PHB, however, then I think you should seriously consider if dwarves really deserve to be in your setting.
What awesome things are made possible by the use of multiple races? What problems are caused?
Awesome: Multiple races allow the exploration of some very interesting themes: racism, cultural tension, religious conflict, xenophobia, and ethnocentrism, to name a few. Also, using traditional fantasy races in new ways can be amazing because it plays with players stereotypes: imagine their surprise when the learn that Orcs, despite what their characters were raised to believe, (and what the players thought from past games) are not brutal killers that slaughter for fun and because they hate humans, but rather live in a culture that emphasises individual achievement and freedom of expression, only raiding human lands because centuries of human expansion forced them out of their ancestral lands into a banner land that prevents them from engaging in sufficient agriculture to survive, forcing them to raid humans simply so their children do not starve (though many still do.) In addition, races can make fun foils for the PCs: if a character has part of their back story parents who died in orcish raids, then meeting an orc paladin who is dedicated to the preservation of innocent life that they must ally with to deal with a great evil forces the character to deal with their racist attitudes and creates great roleplaying opportunities. Also, for more mature games, different races allow for interesting exploration of various themes that focus on sexuality. Sexual preference, interracial relationships (especially when they cannot produce offspring), "impure" halfbreeds, gender roles, and more can be explored from a whole new angle when races are introduced. (for example, the women of race X are physically more powerful than the men, putting them in the role of hunter and provider except during the X months they are pregnant and therefore must take care to avoid hurting the infant, while members of race Y are egg laying, and therefore male and female differences are virtually non-existent besides which race lays eggs and which race fertilizes. Meanwhile, race Z only mates once a year while they are in heat, but otherwise have almost no libido, therefore causing them to look at human sexuality with bemusement.) Of course, such themes should only be explored with gaming groups that have the emotional maturity to handle them.
Problems: Clutter is the main one. A setting with too many races (and often even three or four can be too many) feels cluttered and forced if not handled properly. If multiple races exist in a setting, they need to fill a role, even if that role is largely thematic. Otherwise, they're dead weight that has no need to exist. This also applies to settings where race X once existed but is now extinct. Unless there is a need for that race to have existed or they fill a purpose, they should be cut out. (Elves once enslaved humanity until a revolt and the following genocide wiped the race out, explaining why human peasants are allowed much more political freedom than they had in the real world past work as an extinct race, while gnomes that once existed but were killed in a demonic invasion are just dead weight 90% of the time).
A secondary problem is Humans With Pointy Ears Syndome (HWPES), when other races exist, but they are just like humans except from some cosmetic and mechanical differences. If other races exist, they should be distinct, with a semi-alien worldview and thought process. This doesn't need to be pronounced dramatically - people still have to be able to play these races, after all - but there has to be differences to create interesting roleplay and to fit the setting.
Another problem that develops is the "obviously evil" problem. If Orcs are Evil, then they must be killed, even though they are intelligent thinking humanoids with their own lives, culture, feelings, passions, hopes, and dreams. It doesn't matter - a player can slaughter them gleefully while still being considered Good, because they are "Usually Evil." Most groups do this and don't have a problem with it, despite the fact that it's a form of racism (even directed at an imaginary race). It provides an intellectual shortcut, at least in my opinion, allowing players to skip attempting a subtle or rational approach to a problem and instead killing the humanoids that are ugly and have green skin. (Aside: why are evil races always the more dramatically physically different? Racially Good elves could pass for humans with their hoods up, while racially Evil elves have odd skin, eyes, and hair, marking them plain as day.)
Quote from: KindlingBad things :
The old Humans With Pointy Ears syndrome.
Heh. I hadn't even read your post when I posted mine, yet we both came up with the same term for the same problem.
Also, I left this out, but I think you have an excellent point with the supernatural powers. I'm one of the players that loves playing races with innate powers, because it's just fun and kind of cool. Plus, it allows me to feel like I'm playing in a fantasy setting even if I'm playing a rogue or fighter or other non-magical class, and gives me a taste of magic when I normally wouldn't have it.
Before I get to looking specifically at individual replies, let me say that I don't want you to feel bound by my particular questions. If you want to talk about other things, wonderful! I just wanted to ask something, to get some sort of discussion started.
So feel free to avoid, ignore, or alter my given questions, or add questions of your own. Whatev.
Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawNow on to the issue of "humans in funny suits": If something doesn't look human that what is it like mentally? My answer: It doesn't matter. By that I mean my work ends at a race's appearance. Sure I think that some bits of personality are hard wired into us as instincts, but I'm not willing to risk creating a restriction for any non-human race until someone gives me one for humans. The idea of "alien minds" doesn't occur to me: I have trouble understand many members of my own species. That suggests to me that understandability is not based purely off the mind created through genetics. (Also it's my hope that by not stereotyping racial personalities that I can avoid the "humans are the most culturally variable race" pitfall. It's way too arrogant in my view.)
I agree fully with the previous part of your post, but I'm going to have to disagree here.
Humans have a number of wired in desires that other races might not have. A lot of them tie back to the sex drive - humans are influenced by this to a large degree, and a race with a different sex drive (such as one that has a mating season but is otherwise sexually disinterested) would have entirely different family relationships, generally only being raised by the mother with males protecting the young. Their leadership would be different, because it would likely be difficult to establish who is whose father, so it would either be maternally passed or, more likely, would pass through some other method. (I've actually been working on a project about different sexuality that could arise from different biologies in fantasy/sci-fi, and there's hundreds of different ways of handling it - all of which would carry a certain amount of personality baggage.
Also, a personality trait a huge number of humans have is that we form emotional attachment to other living creatures. A different race might lack this drive, instead interacting with other creatures because of some other drive - perhaps it sees the survival benefits of such interaction, perhaps it is curious about their behavior, perhaps they have broken away from a racial hive mind and desire the company of other races to provide some semblance of the community they once had, perhaps they do it because they enjoy the mental and sensory stimulation provided by other beings: all of which can be done without the emotional attachment many humans feel.
Then there is the desire for individual survival and propagation, something most humans have. However, a member of a different race may have a desire for species survival and propagation without much concern (if any) for their own individual role in it, making them more self sacrificing but less independent than humans.
I'm not saying every race should have a laundry list of mandated personality traits, and I think we'd agree that races that share human origins (either divine or evolutionary) should be mostly humans with different skin. I just think that humans with different skin is not using other races to their fullest potential: a few personality traits or outlooks defined by genetics makes more sense to me than races with a basically human outlook on life.
You may have misinterpreted what I said:
I'd be willing to put in a species's wired personality traits (which I do believe exist), but only once I can also do the same thing for humans. And as it stands I don't trust myself in determining a general human outlook (or more likely I don't trust anyone else to accept one of my own devising).
(Possibly my "alien mind" comment may be a little misleading: I'm reacting to my perception that this means "can never be understood by a human". By saying that there are human minds which I completely fail to understand I'm trying to point out that the difficult parts of another species's outlook would not be indecipherable simply because of genetic differences.)
Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawYou may have misinterpreted what I said:
I'd be willing to put in a species's wired personality traits (which I do believe exist), but only once I can also do the same thing for humans. And as it stands I don't trust myself in determining a general human outlook (or more likely I don't trust anyone else to accept one of my own devising).
(Possibly my "alien mind" comment may be a little misleading: I'm reacting to my perception that this means "can never be understood by a human". By saying that there are
human minds which I completely fail to understand I'm trying to point out that the difficult parts of another species's outlook would not be indecipherable simply because of genetic differences.)
[/quote]
Ahh, okay, I did misunderstand that point. I'll agree that "never understood by a human" is a misleading outlook for races - humans, as you point out, are hard enough to understand by other humans, and besides, it'd be impossible for a player to play as a race (or a writer to write a race) that has motivations beyond human comprehension - that's best reserved for entities that are not races, such as the Great Old Ones of Lovecraft.
Quote from: Xathan, Not Quite Actually Back But Kinda IsWhile some exceptions exist, most of these exceptions are either considered to have some form of psychological difference from the norm, or they form emotional attachements to nonhumans
It's the exceptions that get me: are they still a reflection of an already understood instinct or do they show that the one in question isn't hard-wired?
Quote from: Xathan, Not Quite Actually Back But Kinda Isa race'¦that has motivations beyond human comprehension - that's best reserved for entities that are not races, such as the Great Old Ones of Lovecraft.
Actually the "Great Old Ones are beyond human comprehension" thing is how I developed the idea that "alien minds" might not be as hard to understand as we think: it's the proposition that just because something is different from a human we can create no mutual frame of reference.
When I was working out the outlines of Axa (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?15630.0#post_20414), I considered having human-only, since I wanted to focus on cultures rather than races. But I ended up wanting some cultures that were physically different, adapted to different climates and locations. I'm not sure why exactly, it was more of a feeling that the world seemed insufficiently fantastic without some variations.
In the end, I settled on the idea that all the races are really just humans that have been shaped by their environment over the eons to create different races. So, no vast differences in lifespan, all cross-fertile, yet ranging in average height from about 4 feet to upwards of seven. Varying in build, constitution, hair or hairlessness, etc. In cases where there was an analog among the core races, I've adopted the core name as a short hand, such as "elves" and "dwarves", but they really aren't the same thing. In other cases, such as the beast men, you've really got three different races that are all referred to (by non-beast men) by the same derogatory name.
That ended up implying that the races don't really live together, because their preferred environments are so different. In really cosmopolitan areas, you might find trader towns from one or two of the other races, but even that not so much. I wanted to retain the idea of a world that had lots of room for exploration and the unknown, so most trade is still pretty local, meaning relatively little ocean-going trade.
This leaves lots of room for racial/cultural animosity where appropriate. But really, the denizens of my world consider the dark-skinned, hairless humans just as foreign and exotic as the dwarves.
(Just as an aside, how the heck do D&D dwarves eat? They are supposed to like ale and meat - but living underground, I'm not sure how they would grow grain for the ale or raise cattle or sheep. Best I can figure, they must subsist on slimes, fungi, and lichens they can grow in their caves, and water from deep aquifers. My "dwarves" ended up being short, stocky, hairy humans who live in the mountains and build in stone, but they live on the surface to tend sheep and hunt mountain goats.)
Quote from: Snakefing(Just as an aside, how the heck do D&D dwarves eat? They are supposed to like ale and meat - but living underground, I'm not sure how they would grow grain for the ale or raise cattle or sheep. Best I can figure, they must subsist on slimes, fungi, and lichens they can grow in their caves, and water from deep aquifers. My "dwarves" ended up being short, stocky, hairy humans who live in the mountains and build in stone, but they live on the surface to tend sheep and hunt mountain goats.)
I think that, because they typically can't have ale or meat, their love for it is overplayed on the surface due to their lack of it. Dwarves love it because they can't get much of it. Maybe they brew other alcoholic beverages with mushrooms. (That sounds at least a little gross, but it'd explain where they get the alcohol tolerance.)
Okay, that took it off topic. Anyways.
Hmm again.
I finally have a few minutes to sink my teeth into this one.
I write this from the perspective of a GM that has run a very long campaign: and from an honest perspective as a GM who admits that things have changed dramatically from whence it began.
Originally more of an outgrowth or reflection of much of the fantasy of the time, my fist look at race was very superficial, with seperate cultures and religions, and sometimes even seperate countries for different races.
As my more scholarly readings and experiences began to color this, and I started to understand migration, warfare, gamete theory, and ethnicity better, race began to be more of a challenge to me as a GM, and I started to complicate the interactions of my setting.
[spoiler=Weber's definition of 'Ethnicity']
'Those human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration; this belief must be important for group formation; furthermore it does not matter whether an objective blood relationship exists.'-Weber
Dump the word human from the beginning, and mix a healthy dose of Weber's exasperated skeptisism of real racial differentiation (in that he finds it is mainly internally created and
maintained), and the revolution of my setting was on.
[/spoiler]
so I set it up so that purity and racial beloning-ness was a feature of the past in Celtricia, but that the last millenia leading into the current time was one of diminishing importance of race. 'Aculturated' orcs fight with town militia against their less civilized, 'tribal' cousins, making the race less important than the cultures that are swallowing them. Race vs culture vs country vs history makes for a interesting storyline. And that is what all race is doing in a setting, either adding to the richness and individuality (stress that word, please) of A Gm's work and a player's experience or detracting from the setting with poorly written, typical stereotypes. Elves have been fading for millenia, but the time of the humans seems to be slipping as well, and the industrious hobyts and orcs are actually the most populous races in Celtricia. Yes, elves are bright and tragic, but Bugbears are actually smarter on average than any other player race, just not fertile. These racial differences make the world richer by their differfences.
Race plays a huge part in my setting, and my setting would be weaker without it. I could, perhaps get a similar effect from different ethnicities of human, but the wider divergence of possibities given by different lifespans, and greatly different abilities make actual race differentiation a worthwile tool.
Quote from: Xathan(Aside: why are evil races always the more dramatically physically different?
Ease of vilification.
If I'm trying to write a race designed to be hated categorically, making them look far-removed from the humans playing the game will make them easier to classify as "other", and harder to empathize with.
(I like to play with this idea, as well. The most dramatic "other" in the Jade Stage are the elves, and it's not because of the green blood. It's because they feel no love, empathy, or affection, rendering them mentally and emotionally separate from everyone else.)
This is an awesome thread full of fascinating ideas. I am enjoying it!
[blockquote-The inestimable LC](I like to play with this idea, as well. The most dramatic "other" in the Jade Stage are the elves, and it's not because of the green blood. It's because they feel no love, empathy, or affection, rendering them mentally and emotionally separate from everyone else.) [/blockquote]
Mine are my Bugbears. I made them a playable race in '86, when one of my groups ran into one of my bugbears, who are incredibly sarcastic, and he became the most popular NPC of that year. Most players from other games spend a while grappling with bugbears (the Gartier, as they6 call themselves) being the most intelligent PC race out there, on average. Big, strong, and sarcastic as hell, they are distrusted by almost all.
They are an anti-hero race, as they were created as an 'ogrillite' race (read that as 'bad, enemy') in the beginning of the Age of Heroes, but over the millenia, as things have changed, they have moved closer and closer to the civilized world.
[ooc=from Celtricia site]
The Gartier question is a very complicated one. Of all the Ogrillite families, the Gartier are the most difficult to grasp and the most tortured. When created in the beginning of the Age of Heroes by Anthraxus, they were bred to lead. For thousands of years, almost every humanoid tribal band has been either led by a bugbear or bugbears, or they were the brains behind it. When asked about their near worship of irony and sarcasm, they often reply with a variation of, "You spend hundreds of generations trying to tell every bloody goblin and gnoll which hand is for eating and which is for ass-wiping, and unsuccesfully mind you, you'd be a little jaded too". Strong, smart, and hardy, they were the perfect captains and generals for the other ogrillites...except they were too smart, and too clever, and for generations they looked in at the civilized world, and hated it for not being able to be part of it. Every gaertier for thousands of years has, internally and mainly subconsiously, despised themselves for being a barbarian and being outside civilization. The gartier hatred of culture and civilization was not the orcash or ograk mindless hatred whipped by priests and zealots, it was the deeper mirror of hating what they could not have but knew they were worthy of.
So, to understand the civilized gartier, on the surface all self-reliant and sarcastic, you have to take what was has been passed on from parent to child for years about how soft and unworthy the civilization of towns and cities is and what they have perached to their near-idiot followers, and add that to a near 75 years, just over one lifetime, of being allowed to partake in this civilization, and stir in the very-prevalent racism and prejudice of beings generally weaker and stupider than yourselves. Then add in all the tribal gartiers sneering at you for 'going soft' and 'being a hobyt-lover'...now maybe you can understand a tiny bit of the Gartier mentality. On a good day, they hate the rest of the world more than they hate themselves.
To circle back to the question about their mercenary appearance, I think it is that very solitary nature you are seeing. Julian, The Horn-minister in Waiting in Igbar, has actually taken it under advisement secretly to create a situation that would speed the acceptance of the gartier, due to the possible benefit and also the posible backlash. [/ooc]
Beating on my player's expaectations is a favorite pastime, and making a traditionally stupif enemy race a tortured, brilliant group of outcasts has made my players really thnk about the racism in the setting.
I really considered editing out that parenthetical comment, because I didn't want to derail the thread with specific examples of my own ideas. But now I guess they're helpful, especially since multiple people are doing the same.
So, I was halfway through wording a comment about how this Gartier thing relies on contrast against the players' OOC knowledge about what "bugbear" typically means (knowledge none of the characters would be likely to have, I presume), until I realized I'm doing exactly the same thing. :ermm:
It's really fascinating information, but for some reason, the font it's posted in is barely legible on my computer.
truth disguised by art...Out, out, damned font...
It's kind of sad that ugly so often equals evil. It throws out some nice possibilities for skins to wear. Plus beauty is in the eye of the beholder: I actually think a lot of the Monster Manual uglies look lovely.
I've been meaning to respond to this for some time. If you don't understand something in this essay, please say so right away so I can try and explain it clearer.
I think it's both a matter of habit and that it's felt to be an expectation of the genre to some extent. Non-human races seem to be one of the least broken tropes in fantasy.
The Fantasy genre's founders, people like Tolkien, did use multiple races in their literature, and Gygax, our direct ancestor, borrowed a lot from them because that's the only thing he had to base what he was doing off of. Thus, we are left with multiple races as one of the foundational tropes in fantasy gaming. However, I think a lot of us have come to realize that in using multiple races, things such as actual cultures (emphasis on the plural, there) for each race, get left out. However, as most Fantasy game creators I know are not really anthropologists, so creating even just a single culture in itself is difficult for reasons I will discuss a little later.
Another reason people hesitate to use only humans, I think, is because humans are familiar, and designers want something fantastic in their settings. Non-humans seem to be an easy way to go about this. As I mentioned above, however, most designers are not anthropologists, and creating cultures is, in my opinion, actually one of the harder things to do in setting design. Thus, many of the non-human races have their race and culture merged into one whole, when this shouldn't really be the case.
So why is creating a realistic culture so difficult for many setting designers? It's a related set of problems. The first problem is what I'll call cultural reflex. When designing a culture, it is easy to base them off of your own culture in some aspects. Many of these are the idealized aspects that we like to say we have in Western society; things like the equality of women and minorities, a single common language for each culture where there would be a single language that overreaches multiple cultures or many dialects, and many others. However these can also include direct opposites to these idealized aspects, such as a culture rife with inequality of some form, or a culture in which one gender or the other is in control. Cultural reflex is a problem because it doesn't allow a designer to truly create something that is fantastic, just something that is different than what they are familiar with.
The way to not fall into the trap of cultural reflex is taught in basic anthropology classes, and should be one of the tools in a designer's bag of tricks is to learn to distance oneself from their own culture. Go look at some of the cultures you or others have created and see if you can't identify elements common to both the fictional culture and your own culture. However, it's not to say you can't ever use aspects of your own culture, just use them sparingly and diffuse them through various cultures.
The second problem is what I'll call identity reflex. Identity is, in this case, your image of yourself. Things like your gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, cultures and subcultures you associate with, and many others determine your identity. While identity is an individual thing unique to oneself, as the philosopher David Hume puts it, 'the mind has a great propensity to spread itself on external objects,' meaning that it is easy for many designers to simply approach design without trying to include identities they are not familiar with. A better way to put it would be it is difficult for most designers to go beyond the identities they are familiar with.
The administrator of Dicefreaks, who is African-American, at one point had a thread entitled something like 'Where Are All the Black People?' commenting on the lack of usage of the various skin tones found throughout the human species in fantasy games. I believe he stressed, and I would like to stress, the importance of not including stereotypical or cultural reflexes when dealing with another identity. If one was to make a dark-skinned culture, one should avoid making it an 'African' culture. The same can be said for any skin color, especially because one wouldn't normally think of it, for white people and European cultures.
Looking at the general make-up of fantasy gamers, I will make some fairly safe assumptions. The majority of gamers are white, educated, middle class, and male, ranging from around high school and college age to middle age. All other groups are smaller minorities than in the whole population. The vast majority of gamers do not create their own settings, so they are a minority of a minority. Thus, the problem of cultural and identity reflex becomes quite obvious: if a designer does fall into the trap of either of these reflexes, they are putting themselves, a subset of the larger population, into what should be a wholly different culture. The problems are greatly increased when dealing with a different race, which should have a different physiology and psychology than a human.
For now, I'm going to leave it at this.
Do you use multiple races, and if so, why did you choose to include them?
I include them, and they fit into a mythos that I'm trying to work out for my campaign world. They're not playable though; pcs have to at least be mainly of human origin.
Do races serve a function in your work, to support or highlight a particular theme?
Yes. They serve to emphasize two things: that pre-human civilizations existed, and as beings that embody a struggle between good and evil in the world. For example goblins in my setting are a genuinely evil race by their allegiances to demons and evil gods.
Do you get the sense that many people write in multiple races as a matter of habit, or just because it's often expected in the genre?
Yes. For reasons that limetom stated above it's hard to avoid it.
If so, do you think that's a problem?
I think it's a problem when the world in question is meant to demonstrate certain themes. For example in the Al-Qadim setting it often seemed silly to have an Arabian Nights setting with elves and dwarves in it. On the other hand the vaguely Tolkienesque settings work well with it.
What awesome things are made possible by the use of multiple races? What problems are caused?
I think the main thing that is sometimes fun with multiple races is that players can make up some exotic type character for the pure fun of it. Some people get together to game almost the way you'd play a video game; you don't want too much thought in it under those circumstances. For those gaming groups I think it is a lot of fun, I've been part of one or two and when you get together only now and then and what you really want is just to have a blast doing a little 'ultra violence' then why not?
On the other hand if what you want is a more intense roleplaying experience then you want something with a little more depth.
My personal thoughts:
Wensleydale has created a very interesting race, the Duer, that are truly exotic and unusual in that they sense the world totally differently from humans. I think that this is a good example of clever race building.
I would also add that certain D&D ideas are so strongly wedded to any kind of fantasy gaming that it's hard to remove them, just as its hard to remove the Star Trek/Star Wars ideas from Sci Fi.
QuoteWensleydale has created a very interesting race, the Duer, that are truly exotic and unusual in that they sense the world totally differently from humans. I think that this is a good example of clever race building.
Ooh. Thanks, Tybalt. I'm only vaguely sure, however, that they didn't fall into the Cultural Pitfalls (as I will henceforth know them) Limetom described. This may be because they are partially based off human cultures, in inspiration if not in fact. What about that, Limetom? Is basing 'racial' cultures (which the Duer don't really have apart from in a very wide sense because of their origins) off real, human cultures a good idea?
Quote from: limetomThe way to not fall into the trap of cultural reflex is taught in basic anthropology classes, and should be one of the tools in a designer's bag of tricks is to learn to distance oneself from their own culture. Go look at some of the cultures you or others have created and see if you can't identify elements common to both the fictional culture and your own culture. However, it's not to say you can't ever use aspects of your own culture, just use them sparingly and diffuse them through various cultures.
Even if you've taken a basic anthropology course this is still going to be hard. I should know, I'm in that situation.
Now I have to ask this question: Would it be worse to you if a designer simply made the culture up without any regard to how the elements in a real culture work? Because I think, unfortunately, that would be the result if we kept people to such a high standard. Not trying to chew you out for your opinion, just saying that we might want to try not jumping to the conclusion that people who take the easy way out don't have to.
Do you use multiple races, and if so, why did you choose to include them?Yes and no - Haveneast is populated by a vast majority of humans (though of different ethnicities, as will eventually be covered), and the other things that populate the world besides animals are few in number, far-spread, and quite powerful supernaturally, as well as being quite removed from human thought. Theoretically one could still play an elf or a dwarf or a goblin, but each of these would have their own problems for various reasons (elves and dwarves being one and the same and minor shape-changers, goblins being harmed by sunlight, etc.), and they generally wouldn't be allowed in games I run anyway. I chose to include these races with their fairly drastic changes because of a desire to use some real-world mythology while keeping things about fantasy that I liked.
Do races serve a function in your work, to support or highlight a particular theme?Oh yes - if anything there's an underlying theme to The Fairytale and the Nightmare that things like elves, dwarves, dragons, and giants are quite alien and bizarre, and sometimes nothing more than embodiments of evil that humans must battle to protect their world - ask me about the dvergar :). Humans in Haveneast are the world's greatest hope and at the same time the world's greatest fear, and the supernatural creatures that shadow them are what influence them to choose a side. The human race definitely takes the spotlight.
Do you get the sense that many people write in multiple races as a matter of habit, or just because it's often expected in the genre?I get the sense with some settings that their creators are adding in additional races almost out of fear of not getting enough attention if they don't have race x or sub-race y.
If so, do you think that's a problem?Yes and no. If a race can be brought into a setting and "survive" as a functional aspect, then that's fine. However, too many races becomes a problem regardless of how well they mesh, at least for me, due to a rooted belief that even under a lot of supernatural influence you wouldn't have a large caste of races evolve and continue to coexist in any one world. It seems to me that too many races causes too many problems and headaches of trying to remember specific blocks of details for each race, i.e. "centaurs in this world west of the mountains have a culture that vaguely resembles this real-world one, have a matriarchal society just like the -insert race of distant area-, but they are not fond of -insert other race- and have an alliance with -race-". Pretty soon you can be playing Guess Who, fantasy world-style.
What awesome things are made possible by the use of multiple races? What problems are caused?After what I've said you may or may not be surprised to learn I'm currently DMing a Forgotten Realms game with all of its fabulous sub-races. There is always with a variety of races to choose from the ability to play something that is even remotely "alien" or representative of an ideal, as has already been mentioned. Sometimes it's just cool to play a four-foot tall alcoholic axe-murderer that came from some sacred clan inside a mountain. But the problems remain of creating real cultures and justifying why there are all of these sub-races. Some settings can give a "reason" by using lots and lots of gods (but that can be another problem if they're not segregated into pantheons - definitely another topic worthy of a discussion thread), some can use magical catastrophes or plane-hopping, and hey, who knows - maybe on some other distant world a single race could get isolated into groups whose needs are so radically different for many millenniums that they
do each turn into something that some people would equate with the level of differences between fantasy races, we can't be sure.
QuoteThe administrator of Dicefreaks, who is African-American, at one point had a thread entitled something like 'Where Are All the Black People?' commenting on the lack of usage of the various skin tones found throughout the human species in fantasy games. I believe he stressed, and I would like to stress, the importance of not including stereotypical or cultural reflexes when dealing with another identity. If one was to make a dark-skinned culture, one should avoid making it an 'African' culture. The same can be said for any skin color, especially because one wouldn't normally think of it, for white people and European cultures.
This for me is a much bigger problem than the multiple fantasy races thing - there is a major lack of colored peoples in settings, I find, though I think Forgotten Realms makes an attempt to solve that (even though most of the areas that include them haven't been covered in many supplements). If you've read Vilydunn you know I've done something about this with the Nusans and the Tulsi (the only actual "white" people are the Aust'ene, who would be a sort of Scandinavian/Slavic people who are isolated from the rest of the continent). Their culture looks at times like a cross between Ancient Greece and some stereotypical Far East material, but it's unique as well. I'm a white male, but I find it alarming that there is so much focus on new sub-races for fantasy creatures when different ethnic groups get shafted for representatives in settings.
Actually the biggest and most powerful nation in my game setting IS made up of people of colour; the Yasg Empire, whose dominant races look various types of Asian, Melanesian and Black. The 'barbarians' are the Celtic High Kingdom for the most part.
A few thoughts I've seen on this subject that intrigued me and led me to this idea.
1. In the novel Maia one of the main characters says, "Where I come from real people are black..."
2. In Charlotte Stone's The Four Wishes the main character Cheon falls in love with a black slave girl only to find that she is really a high caste woman of an ancient civilization that patronizingly regards Cheon as a northern barbarian. The former slave refuses to remain with her, since it would be an embarassment to her.
3. In Samuel R. Delaney's writings of his Neveryona setting (which I got some serious inspiration for Yasg from) the civilized humans are mostly various shades of brown, with fair skinned people being stereotyped as 'barbarians'.
Personally I don't think there's anything wrong with defaulting to 'medieval europe' which let's face it is the ancestry of the average gamer in the USA, Canada and Europe. It's only in the last ten years that I've begun meeting gamers from places like Bogota and Singapore online.
Wensleydale: At the end of the day we're simnply human; you can't help but take examples from things you understand. You almost have to stretch yourself. In my current game I often have to to demonstrate the lack of humanity of a dragon the pcs are travelling with--trying to see life through the eyes of a flying creature that considers the average biped food, is obsessed with treasure, is unnaturally long lived and is mainly solitary by nature requires a certain degree of exaggeration.
It is certainly true that I fall victim to the cultural and identity reflexes as much as anyone. I try to avoid creating cultures that are nothing but pure stereotype, and I try to incorporate elements of a wide variety of world cultures. But there's no getting around the fact that I'm not an expert in world history or cultural anthropology. So lots of cultural assumptions float in from my subconscious.
Still, even though I'm vaguely aware of these things, there is a countervailing weight. Most of the people that I would be playing with share my culture and assumptions. I try to confound these assumptions somewhat, but at the same time they provide a background of shared understanding, so I won't have to spend as much time explaining things to people.
For example, if I have a nation called Ngelebwali, I know that name will invoke a certain set of stereotypes. Central African, dark-skinned, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume," Tarzan, white man's burden, Rudyard Kipling, etc. There wouldn't be any point in giving the nation that name if I didn't mean to use those stereotypes as a jumping off point. Similarly if I used a Scandinavian, Indian, Chinese, elvish, dwarfish, or other recognizable name. So of course, I incorporate some of those elements into the culture I create.
Now, knowing that this will be very stereotyped, I may do some historical or anthropological library research. What were these people really like, especially in relation to the historical time period that I am wanting to invoke? What were their religions and myths? So I'll try to incorporate some more historical/mythical details to round out the picture.
Then, I'll choose one or two elements to deliberately twist or change, usually to bring it more in line with the fantastic cosmology of the world I am building, but also just to introduce some exoticism. Making things exotic by making them seem mostly familiar, in order to emphasize the one or two exotic elements that I want to play up.
In the case of Axa, I also tended to displace the cultures by putting them into climate zones that are greatly distinct from their historical backgrounds, or put them in contact with cultures that were historical distant or non-contemporaneous. So the African-sounding culture is placed in a temperate-to-cold climate, with deciduous and conifer forests, and lots of rugged coastlines. (For Americans, think New Jersey up through New England and Maine.) Greek-based culture in contact with early Assyrians.
I'm not sure that it makes a lot of sense to try and create a culture completely de novo unless all the players are cultural anthropologists. Us normal gamers like the stereotypes because they provide a shorthand to ground our understanding of the culture - a theme that we are familiar enough with that the variations on it will make sense.
Do you use multiple races, and if so, why did you choose to include them?
I use multiple races for two reasons. Firstly, I was jumping the bandwagon with the multiple races ideology. Like many of you have said, it's simply one of the accepted conventions of most fantasy gaming that isn't historical. You HAVE to have other races. Secondly, it's becuase I wanted to be easily compatible with 3.5 D&D, although it seems they're shuffling the races for 4.0, so...
Do races serve a function in your work, to support or highlight a particular theme?
They do now.
Do you get the sense that many people write in multiple races as a matter of habit, or just because it's often expected in the genre?
yes, and yes. I think that they also fall into the traps that certain races are certain ways, or have certain cultures. Elves are tree-huggers, dwarves are drunken scotsmen, etc.
If so, do you think that's a problem?
It depends on what you want. If you want true creativity, those multitude of races have to be unique and break something, else you're just following the cliche.
What awesome things are made possible by the use of multiple races? What problems are caused?
I think races open up a whole window of exploring the true concept of otherness. There is no such thing as a complete other, especially in fantasy settings. You need to communicate them to your audience, and even by saying 'they can't be communicated' communicates something of their nature, which aids us in understanding.
Races give you a beautiful way to explore certain aspects of the human psyche. For instance, take our responses to bloodshed, reverse them, and strip away inhibition and reason. You get Orcs, maybe some dwarves, or Reavers. The fun part comes in where you can dissect these beings and their culture, figuring out why and how it would tick. If your culture has no inhibitions in regards to bloodshed, their moral code most likely has nothing about murder, their law code is most likely extremely strict, etcetera.
I think the pitfall most people fall into when creating races as 'true other,' is that all they do is remove aspects of humanity, and allow the race to continue to exist without filling in that gap. Elves, as was stated above in one example, that don't feel love. Alright. That's odd, but what are the repucussions? Why do elven mothers care for their young? Is it instinct, logic, self-preservation? Is there any sort of sympathy whatsoever? I also think that the opposite aspect is not taken enough; where one adds aspects that most humans lack. For example, most people feel comfortable in a place that's familiar. What if a particular race extended that to something other than place? objects, other people, or similar?
just my two cents.
Quote from: Luminous Crayon('¦The most dramatic "other" in the Jade Stage are the elves, and it's not because of the green blood. It's because they feel no love, empathy, or affection, rendering them mentally and emotionally separate from everyone else.)
Wait, emotionless humanoids with pointy ears? You mean Vulcans? ;)
And Vulcans have green blood, too.
Try as you might, you can't get away from your own culture.
I don't know about this whole "they don't have emotion X" thing. I don't know why it is, but it seems to be the one detail that can break my suspension of disbelief. Quite possibly it just reminds me of so many cliché "cold blooded reptile-people, with cold-blooded meaning evil" or "an entire species of outsiders who have no empathy whatsoever". Vulcan-like people I can deal with, since Vulcans just strike me as having all the standard human emotions they just keep them in a part of their mind where they can deal with them more effectively.
Do you use multiple races, and if so, why did you choose to include them?
Heck yes. It makes the world more fantastic if you have deep ancestral homes and high towers. Mysterious forests and secretive peoples. What's more interesting... a walled golfing community or a city built among the branches of a giant walking tree?
Do races serve a function in your work, to support or highlight a particular theme?
Support and highlight to be sure. Dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, half-orcs and half-elves all have different motivations and desires than humans. I use this to create a living world full of fantasy ideas. Well, at least try to.
Do you get the sense that many people write in multiple races as a matter of habit, or just because it's often expected in the genre?
I think it's a general laziness. This has been alluded to in this thread but I'll say it this way. What is the biggest bad guy group in the real world in the last few centuries? Nazis. When Indiana Jones is trying to prevent them from getting their hands on the Ark of the Covenant, the filmmakers don't have to explain why they are the bad guys. If I need a stubborn, gruff, take-no-cr@p dude with a not so secret heart of gold, you know I'm gonna get a dwarf for the role. I don't have to explain it in context. Let's face it, in the heat of riffing when your players take one of their inevitable wild tangents, it sure is nice to fall back onto familiar tropes and genre conventions.
If so, do you think that's a problem?
Only when the stereotypes become the goal. If as a DM, you can expand upon the type and create something new with it, even if it's just a nudge. An honor bound society with real clan loyalties... throw in an ancestral weapon and switch out the scottish accent for one much further east and voila! Still familiar but with an interesting twist. Not a huge change but one step from expected.
What awesome things are made possible by the use of multiple races? What problems are caused?
Problems first. If a DM doesn't have a firm grasp of sociology in some general sense then they all just become short and cranky, thin and spoony, small and thiefy or whatever versions of humans. I understand why many don't tackle this issue as it means having to completely understand a different mindset and be able to extrapolate past and future as well as current shades of that mindset for each race. Putting all that together in a world is a daunting task indeed, so who can be blamed for wanting to just use the conventions to play a game.
The awesome things possible.... The big one for me is nothing short of the creation of a living world full of all the things we love about playing these games.
Do you use multiple races, and if so, why did you choose to include them?
Definitely. It just makes the setting epic times the number of races instantly.
(I haven't read through everybody else's replies yet, but will soon...so I might add to or change this.)
Do you use multiple races, and if so, why did you choose to include them?
Yes. With Ifpherion, I wanted to combine aspects of different genres, namely SF and D&D-esque Fantasy, and having multiple evolutionary branches of Humanity living on the same world seemed to express, at some level, a commonality found in both genres - the Albiz, limber and sharp-sighted, evolved from plains-dwelling Human settlers, and the Ducters, short, quick and dextrous, evolved from a consistent working class. Of course, I also included non-Human origin species, as well as the Dragons, who are very different than any other Dragons I've read.
Do races serve a function in your work, to support or highlight a particular theme?
No, not really. At least, not when it comes to Ifpherion. In fact, the only thing in particular I wanted to show a lot when it comes to the races is that they can be as diverse as Humans (in fact, Humans are a minority in this setting).
Do you get the sense that many people write in multiple races as a matter of habit, or just because it's often expected in the genre? If so, do you think that's a problem?
Hmm. I think that the same common races are used because they've been used before, and thus are more interesting for the authors. I mean, hobbits - dwarves/halflings/etc. - are a common type, so there's a good chance readers know what that race is, and the author is free to explore personality and other expressions.
However, I'm not a fan of personality being defined by race. I do want to see the occasional cowardly or forest-loving dwarf, or an intelligent, urbane orc.
I also would like to see more fantasy works that use more very obviously non-humanoid species. Though, I recognize that that might be not as light or as fast a read. So far, Ifpherion has one quadrupedal insect-like species, a non-corporeal species, and a small, three-legged race of robots.
Do you use multiple races, and if so, why did you choose to include them?
Yes, because I think it allows for more variety in characters. Humans can be a diverse lot, but in the end they all tend to just act like humans. With the addition of other races, the range of societies the campaign can include is increased
Do races serve a function in your work, to support or highlight a particular theme?
Not particularly.
Do you get the sense that many people write in multiple races as a matter of habit, or just because it's often expected in the genre?
Yes. Whenever I hear of a fantasy setting, I can ussualy be safe in assuming that it includes the standard elves, dwarves, and goblins.
If so, do you think that's a problem?
Only in the fact that eventually the standards get boring. If people are good about creating their own original races, there is no problem (In my setting, there are two of these: a race of aquatic shapeshifting treasure hunters and what can be best described as "photosynthetic halflings")
What awesome things are made possible by the use of multiple races? What problems are caused?
Besides the basic wider range of possible cultures, nothing comes to mind at the moment. But I don't see anything that it could hurt either.
Do you use multiple races, and if so, why did you choose to include them?
For Urbis, I did - because it is traditional for D&D gaming. That decision was more than laziness - it was a fully conscious design choice, since I wanted to use and play around with most of the established tropes of fantasy and fantasy gaming (and D&D in particular.
Do races serve a function in your work, to support or highlight a particular theme?
Well, first and foremost the more established races represent all the themes that they have been associated with in fantasy fiction over the decades - it's self-referential, yes, but I am not ashamed to admit it. ;)
Apart from that:
- Elves: The elves of Avareen and Tuvareen represent some of the darker kinds of fairy tales. The elves of Narevoreen allow me to explore what happens if a deeply conservative society is suddenly forced to modernize with a vengeance - just like Japan did during the Meji Restoration. Other elven cultures (Verdant Coast, Ranya) allow me to hint at events of the distant past, as well as exploring the "Elves Are Better" trope.
- Dwarves: Gol Grungor represents the "stifling conservative" extreme for dwarven culture - so conservative that it has spawned its own "boat people" who just can't take it any more. Gol Algor represents the "tinkerers and inventors" stereotype. Gol Murak represents the "besieged by enemies, under threat of extinction" stories.
- Halflings: In Urbis, they mostly represent the pastoral, communal image of the race. No wonder I turned them into the local euqivalent of the Swiss...
- Gnomes: They represent the "well-established minority" - a group of beings living within the larger human society who have found their own niches. And yes, there are a few parallels to Jews...
- Dragonborn: They represent the gypsies and wanderers - a race cast out from their homeland without finding a new place of their own. I've also thrown in a few parallels to pre-1933 Zionism...
- Tieflings: They represent outcasts and "black sheep" - people who are cast out from society just because of an accident of birth.
- Hobgoblins: I wanted to show how a "monstrous humanoid race" which is predominantly evil still find a measure of acceptance from human society.
Do you get the sense that many people write in multiple races as a matter of habit, or just because it's often expected in the genre?
Possibly out of habit, but as long as they are made interesting nonetheless there doesn't have to be anything wrong with it.
What awesome things are made possible by the use of multiple races? What problems are caused?
Racism. Lots and lots of racism and prejudice. Not really "awesome" as such, but we shouldn't forget that adventures thrives on conflict, and racism provides lots of conflict.
Besides, who's really going to be morally bothered if the PCs slaughter their way through a bunch of racists?
Quote from: SlapzillaWhat's more interesting... a walled golfing community or a city built among the branches of a giant walking tree?
There's nothing to say that humans (or equivalent only-sentient-race from your setting) couldn't build a city among the branches of a giant walking tree.
[blockquote=JH]- Gnomes: They represent the "well-established minority" - a group of beings living within the larger human society who have found their own niches. And yes, there are a few parallels to Jews...[/blockquote]
Why do I find myself laughing at that and at the same time being disturbed???
Quote from: LordVreeg[blockquote=JH]- Gnomes: They represent the "well-established minority" - a group of beings living within the larger human society who have found their own niches. And yes, there are a few parallels to Jews...[/blockquote]
Why do I find myself laughing at that and at the same time being disturbed???
Because that's
precisely the effect I was hoping for - thanks for confirming that it works.
BTW, here's is a vignette from the "Races" chapter of the playtest document:
Quote"Trust not the gnome. Do not listen to his witty banter. What he lacks in stature he more than makes up in malice for humankind. Do not take his money, for then he will cast you into debt and force you to sell your own children into slavery..."
- Anti-gnomish pamphlet, signed by "Veritas"
How's that for "disturbing"? ;)