Quote from: Joethelawyer;341675Tolkien wasn't the primary stylistic influence for Gygax though.  He stole hobbits and rangers, certainly.  But the pulp influences listed in the back of the DMG were a lot stronger than Tolkien in terms of style of game and other classes.  I think a lot of people were in the same position as me, when it came to reading the books in that appendix, in that Tolkien was the only author available at the library.  I couldn't find any of the other ones. And since the authors of the 80's onwards followed Tolkien's pattern, and TSR went from adventure gaming to storytelling gaming with second edition, people think that elves were meant to be more powerful than humans in 1e AD&D.  Gygax wanted a human-centric world, where demihumans were considered lesser races.  Hence the arbitrary level and class limits.

I understand your stance, and their is certainly plenty of evidence to lend it validity- however, I think where it falls apart for me is that there seems to be an underlying assumption that EGG's built the rules in a consistent manner.I don't think he did. I think he came up with a lot of stuff on the fly, and I think the dem human stuff is, perhaps, the most outstanding example of that.  Look at the way elves are handled in 0e, for example- and then let me know what its supposed to mean.

Gamers dumped level limits long before WotC.   It all came down to "I want to play a Race X and I don't want him to stop leveling"

It was probably the most common house-rule in AD&D.  

Nothing political about it.

In a recently-uncovered fanzine article from 1975, Gygax talks a bit about some of the design decisions in D&D, and one of the interesting things he mentions is that the actual game-purpose of including demi-humans was to give more options to players with bad ability score rolls -- the various racial abilities compensate for the low stats, and the level limits aren't such a hardship because such a mediocre character wasn't likely to make it to high levels as a human anyway. Puts an interesting new perspective on it. (Of course, since AFAIK Gygax never repeated this claim anywhere else, it could well be that he just made this rationale up on the spot when writing this article and quickly forgot about it thereafter...)

Level limits were frankly bullshit. Most AD&D games tapped out at around 9th level and it didn't prevent those who reached the cap from accruing advancement in other ways (territory, wishes, magic items, etc).

My only issue with demi-human level limts as written is that they don't really reinforce the stereotype of each race. If I were to run 1e AD&D again, I would break it down thus:

• Dwarves are unlimited in fighter instead of thief
• Elves are unlimited in magic-user instead of thief
• Gnomes are unlimited in illusionist instead of thief
• Half-elves remain unlimited in druid (subject to the maximum highest level for the class) and thief
• Halflings remain unlimited in thief
• Half-orcs remain unlimited in assassin (subject to the maximum highest level for the class)

We never had a demi-human 'max out' in our games because almost every demi-human was multi-classed and was still gaining levels alongside the humans throughout the game. Single-class demi-humans were extremely rare in our group.

Quote from: noisms;341633Yeah, but seeing as how most RPG designers don't live in the 1920s or 30s I'm not sure why it's relevant.

I was talking about the contemporary Left, who believe in the exact opposite of eugenics. And by contemporary I mean since around the time D&D 3e came out to now.

I'm not sure who this "contemporary left" is, but scientism and utilitarian ethics remain well and alive in sociology. In any case, the reason not to believe in meaningful racial differences is that, on the whole, there aren't any. Races, as a scientific concept, are strictly 19th century concept mostly discredited amonst scentists apart from James Watson.

Quote from: Aos;341679Generally, once someone cites wikipedia, I quit the field.

Useful to know.

Quote from: pawsplay;341706I'm not sure who this "contemporary left" is, but scientism and utilitarian ethics remain well and alive in sociology. In any case, the reason not to believe in meaningful racial differences is that, on the whole, there aren't any. Races, as a scientific concept, are strictly 19th century concept mostly discredited amonst scentists apart from James Watson.

Certain sub-populations do exhibit adaptations not shared by the general population, which every sociology text I've seen claims do not exist within the human species, but which have been born out in repeated testing. Eskimo phenotype tolerance to wet hands in sub-0°F weather (frostbite taking more than an hour rather than 5-10 minutes). Negroid phenotype tolerance to  heat.

Many scientists willfully ignore the studies because it's socially unacceptable to differentiate phenotypical sub-subspecies divergences in humans because most correlate to an ethnic minority.

(Note that Ethnic Eskimo as opposed to phenotypic Eskimo is not actually identical; Ethnic Eskimo include a great many partially Russian-Caucasian individuals, and those individuals as a clade are not the ones the US Army tested in the 1950's; partially caucasian Eskimos were specifically excluded from the study, even when legally considered pure eskimo. The control group was caucasian volunteer soldiers.)

I'm in the school of "It seems fairly asinine that an Elf is going to top out on magic WAY before a human will" and so on.

If nothing else, then they should have at least switched multiclass and dual-class distinctions.

I.e....Elathar the Elven Wizard hits level 12 (arbitrary number out of my head, I don't recall the actual limits) as a Magic User...he decides he's QUITE bored...so he decides to become a Thief for 8 levels...now he's QUITE bored...TO THE PRIESTHOOD!

And anytime he falls back on the old teachings, he doesn't get any XP for the encounter or whatever the penalty was for that.

Quote from: pawsplay;341706I'm not sure who this "contemporary left" is, but scientism and utilitarian ethics remain well and alive in sociology. In any case, the reason not to believe in meaningful racial differences is that, on the whole, there aren't any. Races, as a scientific concept, are strictly 19th century concept mostly discredited amonst scentists apart from James Watson.

Why are you trying to have an argument with me about this? I wasn't making any kind of point about the veracity of theories about racial difference. My statement was that Left-leaning people these days tend to deny racial differences, most RPG designers tend to be Left-leaning, and that is bound to have some, albeit small, impact on the matter.

Whether you or I believe in this or that is neither here nor there.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;341719I'm in the school of "It seems fairly asinine that an Elf is going to top out on magic WAY before a human will" and so on.

If nothing else, then they should have at least switched multiclass and dual-class distinctions.

I.e....Elathar the Elven Wizard hits level 12 (arbitrary number out of my head, I don't recall the actual limits) as a Magic User...he decides he's QUITE bored...so he decides to become a Thief for 8 levels...now he's QUITE bored...TO THE PRIESTHOOD!

And anytime he falls back on the old teachings, he doesn't get any XP for the encounter or whatever the penalty was for that.

The real irony is that OED&D "multiclassing" for elves became AD&D dual-classing for Humans in AD&D... and new multiclassing was used for demihumans.

Me, I preferred the "blended class" approach of BXCMI... especially with the Hollow World option of magic learned later in life for warrior-elves.

I always assumed the level limits were a very crude tool to apply game balance.
Be an elf get these extra abilities but you can't level past 8th. Be a Dwarf and you get these extra abilities abut .. etc.

The racial benefits are huge especially in early editions where a +1 was a real advantage and the whole detect traps , imunity to sleep and charm detect sloping passages etc etc ...

The obvious fix would an xp penalty. Elves get 50% of XP earned. It provides the "balance" and it is explicable in terms of psychology, creatures that live thousands of years take longer to change and adapt. With the old XP level progression where you need double xp to go up each level it would only mean that the elf was a level less than the Human most of the time and that seems a reasonable trade for the special abiliites and bonuses.

I really don't think that any one thinks D&D is plagued by any sort of PC (Political Correctness not PCs obviously) zealots who suggest that giving an elf a level cap is somehow insulting to elves....

Quote from: pawsplay;341706I'm not sure who this "contemporary left" is, but scientism and utilitarian ethics remain well and alive in sociology. In any case, the reason not to believe in meaningful racial differences is that, on the whole, there aren't any. Races, as a scientific concept, are strictly 19th century concept mostly discredited amonst scentists apart from James Watson.

Quote from: noisms;341721Why are you trying to have an argument with me about this?

Seriously, on any number of topics, I am probably batting .500 on agree/disagree with noisms, but I agree and disagree on the topic at hand.

Pawsplay:  No one fucking cares.  Shut the fuck up and get back to race and class as presented in AD&D (or whatever older edition) and shut your fucking gob about eugenics, crazy scientists or what the hell ever you are on about.  

In AD&D, there is a mechanical difference between races on a number of levels.  Take it from there.

Quote from: aramis;341723The real irony is that OED&D "multiclassing" for elves became AD&D dual-classing for Humans in AD&D... and new multiclassing was used for demihumans.

Me, I preferred the "blended class" approach of BXCMI... especially with the Hollow World option of magic learned later in life for warrior-elves.

So elves basically had what I mentioned, then?  Sounds like they got it right the first time, IMHO.

Refresh my memory...what was the "blended class" approach?

Quote from: noisms;341721Why are you trying to have an argument with me about this? I wasn't making any kind of point about the veracity of theories about racial difference. My statement was that Left-leaning people these days tend to deny racial differences, most RPG designers tend to be Left-leaning, and that is bound to have some, albeit small, impact on the matter.

Whether you or I believe in this or that is neither here nor there.

I disagree with premise

A) left-leaning people tend to deny racial differences

because it is general and misleading, since educated people in general tend to deny racial differences and premise

B) RPG designers tend to be left-leaning

because it lacks both definition and evidence.

If you wish to declare there is a correlation between between being an RPG designer and being left-leaning by some operational definition, and between being left-leaning and de-emphasizing racial differences, then you still cannot say RPG designer predicts racial differences, because we can safely assume that  RPG designers do not have the same characteristics as the general public, and hence whether they are left-leaning or not may be affected by different factors.

On the other hand, it is a known fact that people with education tend to de-emphasize racial differences, and there is a known probable causality: scientific and academic research has generally concluded that "racial differences" are rarely significant, and rarely meaningful when they are significant. In fact, the mainstream opinion is that a "race" is primarily a social construct that coincides to some degree with geography and ancestry, but is generally a stand-in for "color."

So if a game designer were to include "racial differences" within humans that did not posit some kind of cultural basis, they would be arguing upstream against the prevailing opinion of educated, rational people with knowledge of the subject. Which they are, of course, free to do. The racialists might even be right, but I wouldn't count on it.