Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1100262Heck, aren't Gloranthan elves plants?

Plants still have DNA.

On the other hand, Elementals?

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1100261Let's toss another monkey wrench into the conversation. Are fantasy "races" evolved or created? There's no reason to think that Elves or Dwarves or Trolls even have DNA.

I've come to prefer D&D as more post-apocalyptic than quasi-medieval. As such, my demi-humans are genetically manipulated human variants rather than magical creatures.  

Elves are descended from a personal servant / companion species created to live in close proximity to the great ancients.  Thus a selection for beauty, grace and long life. As the ancients had already learned to extend their own lifespans they didn't want their servants dying out after they had just been trained properly.  Dwarves likewise were engineered for hard labor and halflings for light labor and agriculture.  Dwarven longevity is a side effect of their extreme endurance.  No one cared how long halflings lived.  Pure strain humans are the descendants of the underclass / outlying regions that were left to their own devices after the great techno-magical revolution.  Paradoxically this means that more of them survived the great cataclysm.  Most demi-human settlements were wiped out during the great magical boogaloo.

Halflings are short lived enough and were on the outskirts of the ancient society to begin with, so they have no cultural records of the ancient times, aside from the same kind of general "war in heaven" myths that the humans have.  The dwarves have mythologized their origin, turning the ancients into gods and their appointed labor into some kind of divine mandate, but in broad strokes have the story more or less right.  The elves almost certainly have records preserving the truth, but they keep that to their damn selves.  Humans, aside from a few wizards, have no history going back beyond a few generations.

In theory all demi-humans and humans are genetically compatible.  In practice this rarely occurs for a variety of reasons, some cultural and some medical.  Humans being the base species, all successful interbreeding will return to human true within a couple of generations.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1100262Heck, aren't Gloranthan elves plants?

Yes, and dwarves (Mostali) are mineral life forms.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1099795"media that does not wish for a fascist audience."

Whether you want an audience or not doesn't necessarily mean you won't get it. I've seen everyone from hippies to neopagan Nazis latch on to Tolkien. (The infamous Varg has recently been posting as 'Gandalf the White' on Twitter and claiming that Tolkien was Christian in name only and 'really pagan in blood and heart.')

I can't come up with an onomatopoeia for "incoherent rage" but that really makes me sputter.  Mr. Catholic himself a secret pagan?  The fuck?

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;1100275I can't come up with an onomatopoeia for "incoherent rage" but that really makes me sputter.  Mr. Catholic himself a secret pagan?  The fuck?

  If it makes you feel better, he got a lot of pushback and deleted the initial claim, although he hasn't stopped making it.

Quote from: Brendan;1100265I've come to prefer D&D as more post-apocalyptic than quasi-medieval. As such, my demi-humans are genetically manipulated human variants rather than magical creatures.

I'm doing something similar in my current campaign.  I've never liked half races, because it is a half-assed plan.  Either races are descended/created/something that allow them to breed, in which case explore the complications.  Or they are separate species that cannot, in which case play up the differences.  

Though in my current campaign, I've done a little of both.  Elves, dwarves, and humans are separate species, and cannot interbreed.  The other (playable) races are varieties of those three.

In another design that has never quite got to the playable stage, I'm set up my own fantastical equivalent of genetics, with humans as the "mongrels" that exist when you mix a little of this, a little of that, and several doses of the other things.

And the thread on this topic, over at Paizo forums, gets shut down because too many people were wrongthinking.

https://archive.fo/Y9662

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1100401And the thread on this topic, over at Paizo forums, gets shut down because too many people were wrongthinking.

https://archive.fo/Y9662

Summarizing If somebody says it's racist then it is and any attempt to have a rational discussion will get you permabanned.

This seems almost cut-and-paste boiler plate for these types of discussions on social media today:

QuoteAs a form of entertainment, media (including ttRPGs), influences and shapes how we collectively perceive the world around us. If you are not interested in discussing a topic, such as addressing racism in RPGs, you do not need to come into the thread and debate the necessity of the topic. Treating the topic of racism in RPGs as a joke, being dismissive of concerns, or stating that something is not racist because you do not see it, are all types of responses that continue a cycle of systemic racism and are not the types of comments that we are interested in hosting on our forums.

So... racism/sexism is so structural and pervasive that it's everywhere, and the people raising the alarms about racism/sexism in anything are always right. And people challenging them or wanting their hobbies free of politics are wrong, because everything is political and everything is problematic.

Ergo, the only way you're allowed to respond to these issues is to agree with the radical social constructivists, or shut the fuck up.

That, folks, is how public dialogue comes to be controlled by small numbers of zealots.

Quote from: Haffrung;1100408This seems almost cut-and-paste boiler plate for these types of discussions on social media today:



So... racism/sexism is so structural and pervasive that it's everywhere, and the people raising the alarms about racism/sexism in anything are always right. And people challenging them or wanting their hobbies free of politics are wrong, because everything is political and everything is problematic.

Ergo, the only way you're allowed to respond to these issues is to agree with the radical social constructivists, or shut the fuck up.

That, folks, is how public dialogue comes to be controlled by small numbers of zealots.

This sounds like something a bigoted white nationalist would say. Racist.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1100402Summarizing If somebody says it's racist then it is and any attempt to have a rational discussion will get you permabanned.

You literally can not be racist in Golarion anymore because now they only have Ancestries.

To be fair, J.R.R Tolkein is probably closer to real classical pagan virtues than Varg.

I don't like half-races either, but I like "blooded" so I have elf-blood and orc-blood humans who are born to human parents, but for some magical reason, they show characteristics of inhuman races. Often its their birthplace, aka if you are born during a battle with orcs or upon land drenched in their blood, you might be orc-blooded (or goblin-cursed, etc). Same with being born near elven woods could mean you are elf-blooded (or fae touched, etc).

Quote from: Shasarak;1100264Plants still have DNA.

And their DNA forces them to crave Brawndo!

Quote from: Haffrung;1100408That, folks, is how public dialogue comes to be controlled by small numbers of zealots.

If anyone belongs to the Paizo forums, perhaps you should PM any posters full of scum and villainy who might be a good fit for Mos Eisley.

Might be a breath of fresh air for them.

Quote from: Shasarak;1100428You literally can not be racist in Golarion anymore because now they only have Ancestries.

You literally can not be Not Racist on their forums if someone accuses you of it.

Quote from: Paizo Thought PoliceEveryone is raised with and steeped in a wide variety of assumptions about the world around them. Sometimes these assumptions can be racist without the people who hold the assumptions aware that they are based in racist tropes or stereotypes, and when someone says that something is or seems racist, they are not necessarily making a value judgment on the person who said it, or saying that the person is a racist. When someone says "that's racist," or "I feel like that might be racist," we are not interested in responses that are argumentative, dismissive, self-centric, mocking, or derisive. Those types of responses do not make our community feel safe and welcoming.