Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 12, 2022, 09:20:04 PM
I am planning to write something on how the "elves" people play are really some kind of half-elves - not the immortal fey of legend, but humanoid with pointy ears that live maybe 200 years.

Same goes for other races, maybe even more so.

Elves are very different in varying portrayals of them. In Tolkien, they are immortal human-sized supermen. In other sources, they are tiny folk who help shoemakers and similar.

I suppose this comes down to AD&D, which set the standard about how races are portrayed. I think a lot of the portrayal is driven by the "pick race, pick class" mechanic that all races are equal and balanced, and support different classes. For example, AD&D1 had -1 Strength for halflings, which seems physically quite ridiculous for being half the size.

When I ran Middle Earth games using the Action System, for example, just being an elf was a high cost in addition to everything else. These days I might be tempted to do something like the Cinematic Unisystem, where being an elf is parallel to being a Slayer in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 11, 2022, 08:21:00 AM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 10, 2022, 08:33:14 AM
I've always preferred humancentric games. But I'll allow Elves, Dwarfs, and Halflings in its WFRP or OSR.

Absolutely NO tieflings or bipedal flowery unicorns or any of that nu D&D namby-pamby krud.

If I wanted to play Tolkein, I'd find a Middle Earth RPG designed to specifically embody its themes.

The insistence that all settings must be Tolkeinalikes is, to me, a sign of creative bankruptcy... aping the master's works like a cargo cult who understands only the shapes and not its meanings.

Give me a setting where humans from the surface world and dragonborn from the hollow earth once fought a war so terrible that the human nobles turned to infernalism and became the first tieflings as part of bargain to end it... which the demons did by shattering the world; obliterating the human and dragonborn empires alike and unleashing terrible demonic monsters upon the world and leaving the survivors; humans, dragonborn and tieflings; to rebuild civilization in a world now filled with ruins and monsters.

No elves, no dwarves, no halflings, no orcs... but a solid setting for all manner of adventures with the adaptable humans, magical tieflings (descendants of fallen noble houses) and mighty dragonborn as PCs whose people are forced to work together if they hope to survive... and where scouring the ruins of civilization for lost treasures while risking deadly demonic monsters is one of the most risky but effective means of aiding civilization.

But I'm sure Tolkein-ripoff #573 has just as much to offer that we haven't seen on the other 572.

Cargo cult, that´s brilliant! 

Quote from: ShieldWife on September 12, 2022, 05:02:50 PM
I'm alright with player characters with demonic ancestry, but they should be called cambions instead of tieflings.

I'm also partial to teufling (pronounced something like "toyf-ling"). It literally means devilspawn.

Quote from: jhkim on September 12, 2022, 07:58:58 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 12, 2022, 09:42:54 AM
The issue I personally have with the race proliferation is that traditionally the game has operated on a scheme where you can tell good and evil races on sight by their appearance.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 12, 2022, 09:42:54 AM
You can't just mix up contrasting conventions from Star Trek and Middle-Earth and expect the world to still make sense, because Tolkien's and Roddenberry's worlds were created with dramatically different intentions. In Middle-Earth, it's okay to kill orcs on sight because they're all evil. In Star Trek, it's wrong to shoot first because you can never be sure the other ship are bad guys and even known bad guys like the Borg might straight up ignore you if you're inconspicuous.

As I read Tolkien, he explicitly denies this "kill on sight" principle. Seeing an evil creature like Gollum doesn't mean that it's OK to kill it on sight. There are trends, but benevolent-seeming figures like Saruman can still be dangerous, and evil-seeming figures can be important to save.

Within D&D, it has been similar. The 1978 Player's Handbook introduced half-orc PCs with no alignment restrictions, and the game soon also introduced evil elves (drow) as a common adversary and also a PC class (in Unearthed Arcana).

I agree that there are conventions one should follow or not, but it's not just a choice between pulp fantasy and Star Trek. A lot of campaigns will have something in between.

Ok, fair enough. In my experience I got the impression that D&D typically operates on a "judge a book by its cover" aside from the occasional subversion, but I will readily accept that the experiences of others imparted different impressions.

Quote from: ForgottenF on September 12, 2022, 09:16:13 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 12, 2022, 09:42:54 AM
The issue I personally have with the race proliferation is that traditionally the game has operated on a scheme where you can tell good and evil races on sight by their appearance. The good races look like humans in the cheapest Star Trek makeup. The evil races look like contestants on Face Off. When you muddy this then it becomes difficult to imagine how people in the game world keep their kill-on-sight lists straight. How do you know that those orcs, drow, or dragon-snails are actually evil without asking them? It exposes the artificially of the game world by having players rely on the DM telling them which targets they can kill without bothering to pay attention to appearance.

You can't just mix up contrasting conventions from Star Trek and Middle-Earth and expect the world to still make sense, because Tolkien's and Roddenberry's worlds were created with dramatically different intentions. In Middle-Earth, it's okay to kill orcs on sight because they're all evil. In Star Trek, it's wrong to shoot first because you can never be sure the other ship are bad guys and even known bad guys like the Borg might straight up ignore you if you're inconspicuous.

That's a point, but I wonder how many people are running games in which that concern ever arises. After all, murderhobos are as traditional to the hobby as evil orcs are. Even playing with grognards, and specifically telling them that my campaign rewards heroism, I'm hard-pressed to get even one character in my party that won't kill pretty much anyone if they think they can get away with it. From what I've seen of the nu-schoolers, it seems like the whole Game of Thrones grey morality thing has so proliferated pop culture that they just expect good and evil amongst every faction.

EDIT: That's probably a bit unfair to my PCs. I wouldn't strictly call them murder hobos, but I do get an overabundance of cynical mercenary types.

FURTHER EDIT: it's probably more accurate to say that nu school players don't think I'm terms of good and evil at all.

I've noticed something along these lines in all the also-ran tv shows. They try to ape GOT's sex and violence without understanding what made it great in the first place.

I don't really agree with the whole "no good, no evil." Sometimes individual people or ideological causes are just plain evil. That doesn't mean there's no room for nuance, but things are more nuanced than "every side has legitimate grievances that justify their actions." Sometimes people are so mistaken that they end up enabling unjustified horrific evil causes, without even realizing what they're doing is horrifically evil. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions", and that's the really important message especially now.

Quote from: Angry Goblin on September 13, 2022, 04:08:39 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 11, 2022, 08:21:00 AM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 10, 2022, 08:33:14 AM
I've always preferred humancentric games. But I'll allow Elves, Dwarfs, and Halflings in its WFRP or OSR.

Absolutely NO tieflings or bipedal flowery unicorns or any of that nu D&D namby-pamby krud.

If I wanted to play Tolkein, I'd find a Middle Earth RPG designed to specifically embody its themes.

The insistence that all settings must be Tolkeinalikes is, to me, a sign of creative bankruptcy... aping the master's works like a cargo cult who understands only the shapes and not its meanings.

Give me a setting where humans from the surface world and dragonborn from the hollow earth once fought a war so terrible that the human nobles turned to infernalism and became the first tieflings as part of bargain to end it... which the demons did by shattering the world; obliterating the human and dragonborn empires alike and unleashing terrible demonic monsters upon the world and leaving the survivors; humans, dragonborn and tieflings; to rebuild civilization in a world now filled with ruins and monsters.

No elves, no dwarves, no halflings, no orcs... but a solid setting for all manner of adventures with the adaptable humans, magical tieflings (descendants of fallen noble houses) and mighty dragonborn as PCs whose people are forced to work together if they hope to survive... and where scouring the ruins of civilization for lost treasures while risking deadly demonic monsters is one of the most risky but effective means of aiding civilization.

But I'm sure Tolkein-ripoff #573 has just as much to offer that we haven't seen on the other 572.

Cargo cult, that´s brilliant! 

Yeah, cargo culting has been a huge problem in the fantasy genre since Tolkienesque fantasy became its own subgenre that everyone apes. E.g. The idea of fading elves made sense in Tolkien because of how the cosmology was designed, but it doesn't make sense in any of the clones because their cosmologies don't operate on the logic that the world is perpetually declining.

Quote from: jhkim on September 12, 2022, 09:40:08 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 12, 2022, 09:20:04 PM
I am planning to write something on how the "elves" people play are really some kind of half-elves - not the immortal fey of legend, but humanoid with pointy ears that live maybe 200 years.

Same goes for other races, maybe even more so.

Elves are very different in varying portrayals of them. In Tolkien, they are immortal human-sized supermen. In other sources, they are tiny folk who help shoemakers and similar.

I suppose this comes down to AD&D, which set the standard about how races are portrayed. I think a lot of the portrayal is driven by the "pick race, pick class" mechanic that all races are equal and balanced, and support different classes. For example, AD&D1 had -1 Strength for halflings, which seems physically quite ridiculous for being half the size.

When I ran Middle Earth games using the Action System, for example, just being an elf was a high cost in addition to everything else. These days I might be tempted to do something like the Cinematic Unisystem, where being an elf is parallel to being a Slayer in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Yup, I agree - and in most systems, elves are not immortal, nor shoemakers, and not even (necessarily) magical. They are just humans with pointy ears.

I'm not saying that is good or bad - it is just how it is, and I think that people who can roleplay alien mindsets are rare. I'd love to try this, of course, but I'm okay with letting my player use elves as "costumes", or even an elven stereotype.

For example, I had a friend who resented my mage for burning some trees, by accident, with a fireball, while he never said a word about the sentient creatures my PC had blasted - I found that irritating, TBH.

OTOH, I had fun playing the religious nut stereotype with a Vengeance paladin, facing suicide missions with glee. "Our lives are relatively unimportant in the face of the destruction of this great evil". And disregard for your own life, for me, is almost as alien as the tree-hugging fellow. (Eventually my paladin died for refusing to leave an ally behind against an impossible foe. It was fun!)

One think I've noticed is that MECHANICAL differences make races matter more. For example, if a PC has to face some benefits/drawbacks every session for being big, or if the PC doesn't have to eat, sleep, etc., it reminds him of his origin more often.

Overall, I think it is too much of a burden for the GM to keep reminding the PCs, and I find that process tiresome. "So, as you enter this new town, you see people are looking at you sideways, as always, because you're a half-orc...".

In other words, if the player wants his race to matter, it is his job to make it relevant, and I won't police it.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 13, 2022, 11:03:27 AM
One think I've noticed is that MECHANICAL differences make races matter more. For example, if a PC has to face some benefits/drawbacks every session for being big, or if the PC doesn't have to eat, sleep, etc., it reminds him of his origin more often.

Overall, I think it is too much of a burden for the GM to keep reminding the PCs, and I find that process tiresome. "So, as you enter this new town, you see people are looking at you sideways, as always, because you're a half-orc...".

In other words, if the player wants his race to matter, it is his job to make it relevant, and I won't police it.

I think there's several sides to that same idea.  For example, should you allow a centaur race in the campaign?  Well, my first question is it going to matter?  If you are never going to have locations where a centaur finds it difficult to go, then maybe, maybe not.  The opposite is true, too.  If it's going to be a mega-dungeon campaign, where a centaur won't really work because of a lot of narrow, vertical spaces, then own it.  Ban the centaur because it won't work.  Of if you really want the centaur in, run a different campaign.

The sweet spot for me is mechanical differences that matter, but don't matter so much that they can't work in the campaign.  Matter too much, they never come up.  Gloss over them, they never come up.  GM doesn't want to fool with it, never comes up.  So I advocate for picking things that the GM doesn't mind dealing with, preferably because the nature of the thing puts it back on the player, but the situation that causes it to come up is something the GM is going to do anyway.  In the extreme case, going humans only is certainly one answer.

For example, I don't like "small" races if there is effectively zero trade-off with being small.  I do like it if there is meaningful encumbrance and a likely need to haul allies out of losing fights.  Being small means you are easier to haul to compensate for your lesser damage dealing and carrying capacity, but also less capable of doing the same for your allies.  I like it more when there is a fair amount of dungeon crawling in semi-realistic locations where the confines are cramped, maybe even occasionally too small for humans to navigate easily.  I don't need to monitor "being small" during a game.  I merely need to think about it a few minutes before setting up the campaign, and then run the game I decided to run instead of something else.  Conversely, if I'm thinking about dumbing down the differences in size to not matter, then why bother in the first place?

This also touches on the whole idiotic notion of just letting the players play whatever they want and "making it fit" into the campaign.  If it's a dodecagon peg in a round hole, maybe.  If it's a square peg in a round hole, absolutely not.  If it's round peg in a square hole, I could probably make it work, but I don't want that extra work.  So again, no.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 12, 2022, 09:20:04 PM
I am planning to write something on how the "elves" people play are really some kind of half-elves - not the immortal fey of legend, but humanoid with pointy ears that live maybe 200 years.

Same goes for other races, maybe even more so.

Oh yeah, I saw similar on another blog: http://lonelygm.blogspot.com/2013/03/changing-gamers-assumptions-about.html

QuoteIV. Dwarves are actually half-breeds. They're descendant form exiles, criminals and slaves who fled their overlords and reached the Brightlands (the surface). To survive under the blazing light and cold weather the dwarves united with the most populous surface race – humans. True Dwarves never left the depths and are still proud, stern and strong. They call themselves Duergar ("True Folk") and they won't suffer their mongrel cousins of the Brightlands.

V. What most people call elves are actually half-elf/half-human. True Elves are an outsider race of chaotic, care-free and amoral fey who accepted a pact with the gods to banish a common foe of old (demons, titans, pre-humanoid deities... the legends aren't clear). Half-elves are just humans with even less elven blood.

VI. Elves are actually a dream given flesh. That's why they can't sleep and must trance to rest. Some believe that the first elves were taken from the bright dreams of mankind (the first human tribes, who believed in the fair gods of the woods, glades and lakes); others think that they're taken from a god's last dream. Elves believe that their spirits dissolve into nothingness when they die, unless they can touch a human, halfling or dwarf's life (with wonder, love or dread) so that they can keep living in their dreams.

VII. Half-elves aren't a true race. Also called Elvenmarked, Elf-friends or Startouched, they're a special (and magic) status, bestowed upon those blessed by the elven kings (or deities) for great services and perilous quests. Most "half-elves" are humans only because they're everywhere at the present age.

I considered doing something similar in one of my settings. I'm partial to true elves being plant people or woodland fey similar to dryads and satyrs.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 13, 2022, 11:03:27 AM
One think I've noticed is that MECHANICAL differences make races matter more.

100% this, combined with 100% this:

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on September 13, 2022, 11:38:24 AM
Well, my first question is it going to matter?

If the differences between one race and another are primarily who-likes-who and who-hates-who, then I want to know (1) is that difference represented mechanically? (2) does it actually come up in play? (3) is it fun?

Personally, I find the whole "race matters because people are isolationist and bigoted" to be pretty boring in play, however true to life it may or may not be.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 13, 2022, 11:03:27 AM
One think I've noticed is that MECHANICAL differences make races matter more. For example, if a PC has to face some benefits/drawbacks every session for being big, or if the PC doesn't have to eat, sleep, etc., it reminds him of his origin more often.

Overall, I think it is too much of a burden for the GM to keep reminding the PCs, and I find that process tiresome. "So, as you enter this new town, you see people are looking at you sideways, as always, because you're a half-orc...".

In other words, if the player wants his race to matter, it is his job to make it relevant, and I won't police it.

A lot of this has to do with the expectations of play and is a topic that a GM needs to work out in Session Zero. If I describe the campaign world as one where <PCRace> is overwhelmingly bad, rapacious, and violent, then part of the roleplaying of the character is to purposefully act the part of an outsider viewed with suspicion or hostility. It's not solely the GM's responsibility to do this. Even within the context of traditional D&D voices, where players only describe their own actions, it's easy to describe your character furtively trying to attract undue attention to himself, or to brashly get in the face of NPCs, or anything in between.

The answer is no. There is never too many in TTRPGs as whole, as it's field containing countless GM, players, campaigns, settings all over the world, and far into the future.
Now... how many of them you want in your setting and your campaign - that my friend is up to you and your team.

Keep your weird races, but in my fantasy worlds I like nations to usually be racially homogenous.  If a Lion-man rides into a rat-man city, there may be a riot due to historical rivalry between them.  And yes, I'm playing up cats vs mice, but is as good as any reason you got. 

I think this is more interesting and certainly realistic.  Melting pot cultures should be the rare exception.

Otherwise traveling to far away, "exotic" lands is nothing of the kind if they're all just as jumbled up a melting pot as your homeland. 

It also gives a GM some leverage to add to lore.  IE you visit a Dwarven culture out beyond the known borders, only to find they're religious fanatics who spend all of their free time carving entire mountains into artwork that rival the sphinx of Egypt and Mount Rushmore of South Dakota.  Or visit leopard beast men who build their cities in treehouses of their jungle, prefer to use blow guns over bows, and absolutely HATE halflings for some reason.

What purpose do most TTRPG races serve? Most of them are basically just there to provide a different physical character aesthetic.

Dwarves: Tough, stubborn. Craftsmen.
Elf: Graceful, otherworldly. Magical/druidic.
Halfling: Tolkien had them so, guess we have to?
Human: Baseline.
Dragonborn: Strong, proud.
Gnome: ? ? ?
Orc: Strong, savage, anti-hero.
Half-Elf: Human with special bloodline.
Half-Orc: Human with special bloodline.
Tiefling: Human with special bloodline.

Quote from: Zelen on October 16, 2022, 07:24:44 PM
What purpose do most TTRPG races serve? Most of them are basically just there to provide a different physical character aesthetic.

Dwarves: Tough, stubborn. Craftsmen.
Elf: Graceful, otherworldly. Magical/druidic.
Halfling: Tolkien had them so, guess we have to?
Human: Baseline.
Dragonborn: Strong, proud.
Gnome: ? ? ?
Orc: Strong, savage, anti-hero.
Half-Elf: Human with special bloodline.
Half-Orc: Human with special bloodline.
Tiefling: Human with special bloodline.

Gnomes get no respect, it seems.  That's pretty common.  I think that the whole "Garden Gnome" aesthetic has ruined them in popular culture, and many seem to think that--if they were blue--they'd be Smurfs.  And perhaps individual experience that people who play them sometimes don't take their character seriously, making them TOO playful and perhaps talking in an irritating baby-girl voice with a laugh that makes the other characters want to break something.

Me?  I like them.  Call me weird.  Yes, they're kind of like Dwarves, except whereas Dwarves are stereotypically gruff beer-drinkers, Gnomes are full of child-like wonder and enthusiasm for tinkering.  They're different from Hobbits Halflings who seem more oriented to good food, drink, and comfort than tinkering and discovery.

Maybe a sufficiently varied race of Halflings or Dwarves with many different cultures could fill that niche...and that's the real thing about fantasy races in general.  Are they merely distillations and/or exaggerations of human cultures?  Like, would you rather play an Orc or, say, a stereotypical Mongol warrior?  Are Dwarves just miners with bad Scottish accents?  Are elves just British hippies?

Of course, the Woke just pee in their pants, automatically assuming that of we equate Orc culture with some exaggeration of Mongol culture in the 12th-13th century, that it's culture stereotyping, cultural appropriation, a micro-aggression, hateful, and probably contributes to global warming.  But they'll say that about anything.

There's no objective, correct answer to the question. It depends on the campaign, the players, et cetera.

However, my preference is for the vast majority of the PCs to be human, and for demi-humans to be viewed more like monsters. I wouldn't rule out another race (or even a monster) as a PC, but I want that to be unusual, at best, and "rare" as a rule. Just my opinion, of course. This is the approach that works best for my game and my preferences. I consider a lot of "official" playable races to be a downside, in that it lends weight and inertia to the idea that any of those options should be available -- and that's not necessarily what I want in my game.

Quote from: Osman Gazi on October 17, 2022, 03:42:21 PM

Quote from: Zelen on October 16, 2022, 07:24:44 PM
What purpose do most TTRPG races serve? Most of them are basically just there to provide a different physical character aesthetic.

Dwarves: Tough, stubborn. Craftsmen.
Elf: Graceful, otherworldly. Magical/druidic.
Halfling: Tolkien had them so, guess we have to?
Human: Baseline.
Dragonborn: Strong, proud.
Gnome: ? ? ?
Orc: Strong, savage, anti-hero.
Half-Elf: Human with special bloodline.
Half-Orc: Human with special bloodline.
Tiefling: Human with special bloodline.

Gnomes get no respect, it seems.  That's pretty common.  I think that the whole "Garden Gnome" aesthetic has ruined them in popular culture, and many seem to think that--if they were blue--they'd be Smurfs.  And perhaps individual experience that people who play them sometimes don't take their character seriously, making them TOO playful and perhaps talking in an irritating baby-girl voice with a laugh that makes the other characters want to break something.

Me?  I like them.  Call me weird.  Yes, they're kind of like Dwarves, except whereas Dwarves are stereotypically gruff beer-drinkers, Gnomes are full of child-like wonder and enthusiasm for tinkering.  They're different from Hobbits Halflings who seem more oriented to good food, drink, and comfort than tinkering and discovery.

Maybe a sufficiently varied race of Halflings or Dwarves with many different cultures could fill that niche...and that's the real thing about fantasy races in general.  Are they merely distillations and/or exaggerations of human cultures?  Like, would you rather play an Orc or, say, a stereotypical Mongol warrior?  Are Dwarves just miners with bad Scottish accents?  Are elves just British hippies?

Of course, the Woke just pee in their pants, automatically assuming that of we equate Orc culture with some exaggeration of Mongol culture in the 12th-13th century, that it's culture stereotyping, cultural appropriation, a micro-aggression, hateful, and probably contributes to global warming.  But they'll say that about anything.

I just don't think they have a strong archetype in the generic fantasy pantheon. Some specific settings like Dragonlance have good takes on them, I just don't see a consistent, unified idea of what they represent. The core concept seems to be to take the smallness of Halflings/Hobbits and the quirky, unlikely-hero aspects of Halflings/Hobbits, and amplify them to annoying levels. That can work fine if your game embraces goofy, zanyness, but does that belong in Ravenloft, Dark Sun, etc? For me the answer is no.