Our Warglblasters Are Different

[Ancient History]

Spinoff of Doom's comment.

Early fantasy roleplaying was built off fantasy fiction, which was in turn written back in the 20s and 30s and stuff when racism was socially acceptable and racialism was a thing that wouldn't get you shanked. Fantasy genetics were applied after the fact and gave us such fun and excitement as half-elves, half-orcs, half-dwarfs, dwelfs, half-dragons, half-demons, etc., and if you get into all the sub-races and shit you could be half-moon-elf or half-drow or half-svirfneblin. If, Ghost forbid, your ancestors were weird, there are even ways you could count as quarter-elf or half-half-orc and half-half-elf in some supplements. At the bottom of the genetic pile, representing the ultimate horrors of miscegenation, are the mongrelmen.

Well, consider this: what about a game where all the PCs (and most of the NPCs) are mongrelmen? Because our understanding of genetics is more advanced now, and we know that human "races" are pretty much bullshit, that a species represents a spectrum of individuals with a similar genetic code, and that passing genes between species is possible in many ways. So in a fantasy world where you have humans that will fuck anything, and are in any way capable of producing viable offspring with some other (closely related) species, there will be no "pure" anything - if that term even had any real meaning - and every player would select the character's inherited traits from an available pool.

What happens, then, when the imaginary category of fantasy "race" disappears? PCs will have to chose which fantasy culture and possibly ethnicity they belong to instead, based on things like where they grew up, what language they speak, what pantheon they light fires to, that sort of thing. No more dwarfs, just minerclan hammerbearers that can g'rock their k'kok correctly.

Thoughts?

[angelfromanotherpin]

There was a LeGuin pastiche about a world that had gone so far into genetic modification that any person's pregnancy could produce a baby, a litter of pets, or crops; and no one could even guess which before the ultrasound. So you have a person who's expressing human/cat/peacock/corn/fern but who knows what recessive, so their kids with a human/goat/stonefish/grape could plausibly come out poison ivy/bear.

[shadzar]

PCs will have to chose which fantasy culture and possibly ethnicity they belong to instead, based on things like where they grew up, what language they speak, what pantheon they light fires to, that sort of thing.

I think Lago is one of those favored to make humans be something inhuman. this would be exactly what i suggested to do and how to do that.

when you make a game or world... just because the GAME has humans as a baseline.. you can have whatever on your planet as the default race, even if the only race, and name them whatever and give them whatever abilities like see in the dark and it doesnt matter.

James didnt call them humans, but Na'vi for his planet of Pandora. would we have accepted them if he did call them humans? call them Pandorians, call us Earthlings. but like humans Earthlings has a meaning.

say your mongrel man planet doesnt call them mongrelmen. call them what you will have them be the most populace and it will work.

the problem only comes when people get hung up on the name "human" for something that clearly isnt, or hung up on the need for the Tolkien races.

the only question would be: how do you make the cultures/societies different in a way that you can tell what one picked and another picked without them playing exactly the same?

Desert Mongrels dont eat meat because they never had and it got into their religion?

Mountain Mongrels dont eat vegetation because a bear in the woods....?

but other than flavor, how do you make them wanted choices in a game?

Mountain Mongrels can detect slope or grade like dwarves of old?

Desert Mongrels can track better since they did so with little to go by in their regions?

Mountain Mongrel are stronger from moving rocks all their lives?

[Maxus]

It's an interesting idea.

I've seen -something- like it, in this line of urban fantasy novels I bummed off my sister. It's fairy-centric (Faerie, if you want to be that way). The narrator/heroine is a changeling (here defined as "Part human, part fairy"). It goes on a lot about how fairy genetics, such as they are, are unpredictable. Changelings get second-citizen status because any magic they have is weaker, usually, and get viewed with suspicion because every now and then one shows up who's better with it than the strongest fae.

And how there's a lot of interbreeding among the fae, so you can run into some wild combinations of features. And while heritage has a lot to say about what your magic will be good at, it isn't the be-all, end-all.

It brings up how the culture is having to deal with this, and there's some old myth that crossbreeds go crazy. Anyway, feudal groups don't organize by "racial" lines much any more because it's been rendered pretty much meaningless. You basically pick whoever you can live with, or whoever did something nice for you.

Heh. The Heroine's big thing is she can taste something's blood and get its recent memories and do other tricks with it. Her mom (the fairy half of her heritage), was apparently even better. So good at it, that she couldn't eat maple syrup on her pancakes because it tasted like trees screaming.

[ModelCitizen]

There was a LeGuin pastiche about a world that had gone so far into genetic modification that any person's pregnancy could produce a baby, a litter of pets, or crops; and no one could even guess which before the ultrasound. So you have a person who's expressing human/cat/peacock/corn/fern but who knows what recessive, so their kids with a human/goat/stonefish/grape could plausibly come out poison ivy/bear.

I hate whoever in that world decided to make stonefish and poisonivybears pass through human vaginas. Although if you were doing a sci-fi / fantasy cross genre thing that's a decent excuse to have tieflings and bird-men and ghillie dhu and shit.

[Neurosis]

Spinoff of Doom's comment.

Early fantasy roleplaying was built off fantasy fiction, which was in turn written back in the 20s and 30s and stuff when racism was socially acceptable and racialism was a thing that wouldn't get you shanked. Fantasy genetics were applied after the fact and gave us such fun and excitement as half-elves, half-orcs, half-dwarfs, dwelfs, half-dragons, half-demons, etc., and if you get into all the sub-races and shit you could be half-moon-elf or half-drow or half-svirfneblin. If, Ghost forbid, your ancestors were weird, there are even ways you could count as quarter-elf or half-half-orc and half-half-elf in some supplements. At the bottom of the genetic pile, representing the ultimate horrors of miscegenation, are the mongrelmen.

Well, consider this: what about a game where all the PCs (and most of the NPCs) are mongrelmen? Because our understanding of genetics is more advanced now, and we know that human "races" are pretty much bullshit, that a species represents a spectrum of individuals with a similar genetic code, and that passing genes between species is possible in many ways. So in a fantasy world where you have humans that will fuck anything, and are in any way capable of producing viable offspring with some other (closely related) species, there will be no "pure" anything - if that term even had any real meaning - and every player would select the character's inherited traits from an available pool.

What happens, then, when the imaginary category of fantasy "race" disappears? PCs will have to chose which fantasy culture and possibly ethnicity they belong to instead, based on things like where they grew up, what language they speak, what pantheon they light fires to, that sort of thing. No more dwarfs, just minerclan hammerbearers that can g'rock their k'kok correctly.

Thoughts?

I once wrote a full writeup for a very atypical D&D setting where humans were essentially the mongrelmen, the result of rampant crossbreeding between elves, dwarves, and the other "purebreed" races. (In this setting, every race had been genetically engineered as task-specific slaves by the Ilithids, and the resultant "crossbreed" humans were actually more similar to changelings/doppelgangers than anything else.)

This post reminded me of this setting (which I literally almost never used for anything) a LOT.

[nockermensch]

One immediate issue is the shallowness of fantasy "races". When a player says: "I'm making a dwarf!" everybody understands that he's actually making a guy from a mining village of about 200 short gruff norsemen, because all the "typical dwarven characters" have the variety that in our Earth you'd expect from a mono-cultural, genetically related, single hamlet. It's like all dwarf characters, ever, all came from the Asterix village.

That's shitty, of course. Every time a DM says "in my campaign, the dwarves will be turkish!" (thinking that he's being so creative) we as a species get a bit dumber and meaner. But this is the lazy way, so it's not as if this is in any danger of disappearing.

That all being said, cynically, what's the actual difference between "I'm making a dwarf" and "I'm making a minerclan hammerbearer"? (Other than the later sounding like something out of WoW) Is the problem with the word "race" itself? I mean, if men fuck elves fuck orcs fuck dwarves and everybody produces offspring, then obviously we have a single species, or maybe at worse a cluster of closely related species from a single genus. This is obvious and it's what we know as modern humans. But are people inside your world enlightened enough to know this?

Because besides the lazy work, I think another problem about fantasy "races" is our current squeamishness around a behavior humanity indulged since ever, and by this I mean stereotyping and dehumanizing the "others". It's like you can't even start enjoying a kind of cultural identity without telling deprecating shit about your neighbors, from "moabites and ammonites are all inbreed" to "frenchmen are frogs". People from yesteryear considered the others as being from inferior, degraded races. We, modern enlightened people, consider the others as being from inferior, degraded countries/religions/internet boards.

So, what actually matters in the end is, what game mechanics are we talking about here? Because for the fluff, the race box in your character sheet is pretty much dead anyway.

[Parthenon]

Heh. The Heroine's big thing is she can taste something's blood and get its recent memories and do other tricks with it. Her mom (the fairy half of her heritage), was apparently even better. So good at it, that she couldn't eat maple syrup on her pancakes because it tasted like trees screaming.

You ever seen the comic book "Chew"?

The main character is a detective who can get all the experiences of whatever he's eaten from taste. Right at the beginning he finds a crime by eating at a restaurant where the chef is a serial killer who accidentally cuts himself and bleeds into the soup.

If I remember correctly the only thing he doesn't get the memories of is beets. Theres a big conspiracy thing and the FDA has a huge amount banned including chickens, and some other stuff. I got bored reading it.

[Username17]

Actually having "Background Points" like in Ars Magica or various White Wolf games would cover this fairly well. You just need to make sure you don't end up providing certain backgrounds that are defacto races by dint of using up all your background points.

-Username17

[K]

Personally, I'm over the Bad-touched races. Fantasy genetics and racism is so 1970s.

[hogarth]

What happens, then, when the imaginary category of fantasy "race" disappears? PCs will have to chose which fantasy culture and possibly ethnicity they belong to instead, based on things like where they grew up, what language they speak, what pantheon they light fires to, that sort of thing. No more dwarfs, just minerclan hammerbearers that can g'rock their k'kok correctly.

Isn't this essentially the same as a game where you can only play different flavours of human (of which there are quite a few such games)?

[nockermensch]

What happens, then, when the imaginary category of fantasy "race" disappears? PCs will have to chose which fantasy culture and possibly ethnicity they belong to instead, based on things like where they grew up, what language they speak, what pantheon they light fires to, that sort of thing. No more dwarfs, just minerclan hammerbearers that can g'rock their k'kok correctly.

Isn't this essentially the same as a game where you can only play different flavours of human (of which there are quite a few such games)?

Next game I'm making a Swiss, because I want the +4 racial^Hnational bonus on clockworking and chocolate making; and the starting free masterwork rifle.

[K]

What happens, then, when the imaginary category of fantasy "race" disappears? PCs will have to chose which fantasy culture and possibly ethnicity they belong to instead, based on things like where they grew up, what language they speak, what pantheon they light fires to, that sort of thing. No more dwarfs, just minerclan hammerbearers that can g'rock their k'kok correctly.

Isn't this essentially the same as a game where you can only play different flavours of human (of which there are quite a few such games)?

Next game I'm making a Swiss, because I want the +4 racial^Hnational bonus on clockworking and chocolate making; and the starting free masterwork rifle.

Yeh, I don't think we need to pretend that stereotypes are real any more.

I mean, give elves low-light vision and be done with it. The point where you start giving certain cultures bonuses based on the stereotype is the same point where you say that stereotypes are real AND the point where you say that someone is substandard for not picking a certain race for a certain class.

Orc Sorcerers should be a thing.

[Prak]

Er... Elves get proficiency with bows, longswords and rapiers because they're trained in their use in their home villages. The books even say that if a character didn't grow up in their racial culture, they shouldn't get cultural features, such as the elven proficiencies, and possibly get those of another race. So if a human is brought up by dwarves, I'd argue he loses the bonus feat, but gets the dwarven bonuses against goblins and stonecunning.

[Username17]

I mean, give elves low-light vision and be done with it.

That's the crux of the matter. Certain people want to play cat girls, and they want low light vision because they are playing cat girls. And because low light vision is not a big fucking deal, you cave on that. But then other people want something of equal or greater value to fucking low light vision, and since you gave the cat girl the fucking low light vision, you have to accede to that request as well.

This is why a set of background points is probably the best solution. If someone wants to spend their background points on being racially superior and being able to see in the dark and shit, they should be able to do that. On the flip side, if someone wants to spend their background points on something else that they presumably got from cultural upbringing or previous adventures. You have to come up with some sort of point-buy for these low-end abilities, but you pretty much have to do that anyway.

About the only thing that should have any sort of restriction on it are social abilities. That is, if someone wants to be treated like a member of a Kuo-Toan Merchant Clan, they should actually be a Kuo-Toan Merchant Clan member. I find it really immersion breaking when someone wants to play a giant spiny lizard man and get treated like an ordinary gnomish paladin or something. Not because it's unbalanced, but because it fucking derails the exposition to have to doublethink everything like that.

-Username17

[nockermensch]

Er... Elves get proficiency with bows, longswords and rapiers because they're trained in their use in their home villages.

Yes, this happens, because in D&D, "Elf" is a country (the home village). You get to play as a guy from there.

Here, I'll create another Race:

Roman - Romans are a fierce and warlike humanoid race. They look like humans, but have wavy or curly hair, from a usually dark color.

+2 Constitution, -2 Wisdom. Romans are a sturdy, stout race, but while as smart as humans, they'd rather borrow another race's pantheon other than worship their own; and aren't known by being perceptive.
Medium: As Medium creatures, romans have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size.
Roman base land speed is 30 feet.
Normal vision: Romans can see in the dark as well as humans (that's it, not very well).
Urbane: Rome, their city, holds more than 1 million people, a mind boggling number for most other races. Romans have a +2 racial bonus on Gather Information and urban Survival checks.
Cosmopolitan Learning: Growing up in an imperial center in contact with all races, romans are exposed to a wide lot of arcane and strange knowledge. Romans pick two any skills from the skill list and treat them as class skills. They also get two free skill ranks per level (x4 at first level, as normal).
Weapon Familiarity: Romans begin play knowing how to use the short sword, the short spear and the large shield.
+1 racial bonus on attack rolls against barbarians.
Automatic Languages: Common and Latin. Bonus Languages: Greek, Egyptian, Celtic, Scythian and Goblin.
Favored Class: Fighter. A multiclass roman's fighter class does not count when determining whether he takes an experience point penalty for multiclassing

[JonSetanta]

There was a LeGuin pastiche about a world that had gone so far into genetic modification that any person's pregnancy could produce a baby, a litter of pets, or crops; and no one could even guess which before the ultrasound. So you have a person who's expressing human/cat/peacock/corn/fern but who knows what recessive, so their kids with a human/goat/stonefish/grape could plausibly come out poison ivy/bear.

That's creepy and I'd love to read it.

[angelfromanotherpin]

That's creepy and I'd love to read it.

It's from the Changing Planes collection. I think it's the first one (after the intro).

[JonSetanta]

It's from the Changing Planes collection. I think it's the first one (after the intro).

http://www.ursulakleguin.com/ChangingPlanes.html

"Porridge on Islac"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changing_Planes

Thanks, but I found it while you were posting! Took a while skimming Google search for "LeGuin short story genetic engineering"

Given a little more time I could find a digital copy of the book, but my favorite book sharing site anonib.com has become nothing but a porn haven, making things more complicated. Still, I snagged the entire Terry Pratchett and Brian Lumley (Necroscope) series from there a few years ago....

[Ted the Flayer]

Given a little more time I could find a digital copy of the book, but my favorite book sharing site anonib.com has become nothing but a porn haven, making things more complicated.

Anonib.com had other things but porn on it at one point? I had no idea, I feel like I missed out now.

[K]

I mean, give elves low-light vision and be done with it.

That's the crux of the matter. Certain people want to play cat girls, and they want low light vision because they are playing cat girls. And because low light vision is not a big fucking deal, you cave on that. But then other people want something of equal or greater value to fucking low light vision, and since you gave the cat girl the fucking low light vision, you have to accede to that request as well.

This is why a set of background points is probably the best solution.

I'm not against background points in general, but I think it's a mistake to allow races to be created from a set of options.

I mean, you need to lock down the races or just give up on races altogether. You can't really have an option where being raised by elves gives you low-light vision and you get to pass as human whenever you want because you can't tell stories about that (or not very good stories, at least).

Ideally, you'd just give every race a bunch of meaningless bonuses. Human's might have a resistance to necromancy and disease and the ability to spot people in a crowd as compensation for elves getting low-light vision and resistance to enchantment and sleep.

The thing you can't do is give is stat bonuses or abilities that make one race the default race for a class. I mean, the instant you have a +2 Dex/-2 Con race, people are going to ask you why you aren't a Rogue instead of a Fighter or a Wizards and that sucks.

[JonSetanta]

Anonib.com had other things but porn on it at one point? I had no idea, I feel like I missed out now.

Yes! At least up until about 2008 as far as my file archives say.

Those sections were plain, but there were RARs disguised as image files of the book covers you could download straight from the thread after you view it.
It was magical.
And then it was gone.

This was the link: http://www.anonib.com/bookchan/

[OgreBattle]

I like how Howard's Conan presents all these human cultures as distinct. Hyboria was populated by a lot of made up ethnicities like men with grey hair or black guys with straight hair and blue eyes.

I think it just comes down to the 'sincerity' of the presentation. Howard based it on the adventure novels of the time, so it did carry on that sense of the exotic unknown very well.

I dunno, something about how Dragonlance presents the races was very unsettling for me.

[erik]

I still like the races I picked out in the other thread

I agree with K, attribute mods just make races tied to classes.
You can give them tags with some special abilities or minor modifiers and it is still not required that any particular race orient towards a particular class.

Goblins [small]
Bugbears [large]
Machine People [construct]
Vampires [undead]
Sahuagin [aquatic, natural weapons]
Formians [extra arms]
Illithid [telepath]
Humans [adaptable]

[wotmaniac]

I dunno, something about how Dragonlance presents the races was very unsettling for me.

How about the fact that most of them (if played true to the fluff) are necessarily party-disruptive. WTF? How did anyone think that shit like kender, tinker gnomes, and gully-dwarfs could actually make for functional play?