[Rant] Originality for the sake of Originality

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

in som cases people might be forgetting the fact that cliches and story staples exist because they touch something in the common consciousness.

In fact, that may be part of the problem: the people trying to create things that are too original may in fact not be able to touch the common consciousness in the same way as many other people, or at all.  At least, that's my problem.  There are some elements which are just repeated so many times that I want to experience something different (or scream).  Sometimes I can't understand them: "Humans are adaptable?  :wtf:  Go pick up a newspaper, you'll see what humans are really like."  Elves, dwarves, orcs, halflings, gnomes, all get repeated over and over again, so you decide to make a completley new race because you just need something new.  And sometimes clichés are offensive: shadows are associate with evil, demons are evil, good is good, dragons are arrogant.  You may not find those offensive, but I do.  If I decide to change them so that they no longer fit the common conciousness then I will take my chances with the players I draw.  If I decide to make everything up and ignore the common conciousness than what of it?

I think we have gotten off-topic.  The original post was in defense of how using clichéd elements did not mean setting were not original.

[Kindling]

Or you could do as I have done, and account for it through history. If all your elves trace their roots to a primordial culture, and spread and fragment from there as the centuries wore on, it's easy to conceive of far-flung modern cultures that share common traits-- such as language, a basic and general style of clothing, an affinity for swordplay, et cetera-- despite their differences. That's how real cultures actually work.

You have a point, but to some extent this makes me think this - It depends whether you want the flavour to facilitate the rules or the rules to facilitate the flavour.
Personally I prefer the latter. I mean, sure, if I WANT all Elven cultures to esteem the arts of swordplay and archery anyway, that's cool. But if I don't, then I'd sooner change the rules than the cultures of my world - cultures that (hopefully) make it unique.

[SDragon]

Who said that you can't have different elven cultures in your setting? All you have to do is explore different facets of the elves as portrayed in myth and fantasy.

For Urbis, I've got "Elves as Rulers of the Faerie Court", "Elves living on Isolated Islands in the West", "Elves as Stealers of Human Children", and a few honorable mentions of "Elves lording it over Everyone Else".

These are all truly distinct cultures and nations - and yet all are truly elvish.

Do they all have same racial bonuses? Are they all longbowmen? Do they speak same language? Same armour? Can you get same magical items from all cultures? Do all elven cultures manufacture elven boots or armour? If so why? Shouldn't they have different preferences based on the area they live in?

If player makes elven rogue/wizard/whatnot character, how is he able to tell what culture that elf is from? Shouldn't you tweak around the stats and bonuses to reflect the seperation, ie create new races?

Basically I agree with you, there is no need for race of two-headed cat-people, Gato-Ettin or whatever, but what core has wrong is simple assumption that single race would stay the same whereever it lives. This is really bad with elves and dwarves, whose culture is pretty much tied to their race.

Pulling elves out of their woods and putting them into saddle of a some war pony and declaring them nomands while still making them feel close relatives of those few you choose to leave into forrest, now that is a challenge that makes a good setting.

your argument has a couple major weak points, and hopefully you wont mind if i point them out:

first, theres languages. language is a very strong element of any culture, and in the real world, you can get a rough estimate of how far apart two cultures are by looking at how far apart their languages are. since most settings- and even moreso with DMs- dont go into linguistics very much (proper nouns aside), how does the stat block decide that your northern elves use the suffix -amin for the word "my", whereas the jungle elves use the prefix moyla-? do the jungle elves need a -2 INT just for this change?
at extreme most, the only stat block differences between the two elven cultures, so far, would be a new language; personally, its not too hard to say that although theyre two disticntly seperate languages, theyre close enough that any PC that can speak elven would recognize jungle elven.
if you can do this with an element thats so strongly cultural, why cant you do it with all cultural elements?


your second biggest flaw is this: gnomes make boots. gnomes, not elves.
elves make cookies and toys.

[Túrin]

@ Jürgen Hubert: While many interesting discussions can be had in areas tightly related to the point you discussed, I think I can safely state that we all agree with the point you were trying to make: originality should have a function to be interesting, rather than just being original for originality's sake. Now that we agree on that, which was the original purpose of this thread, we can safely continue discussing the merits of race stats vs. race flavour vs. racial cultures and other details. Or to speak with our luminous friend, Mr Crayon:
I am amused at the way we bicker about small details, when our core philosophies seem to be so similar.

;) Túrin