Quote from: rawma;934343If you want PCs and NPCs to have luxury items like racial tolerance, and you don't think it's possible in a resource scarce society, then maybe you should have a different game world that is not a resource scarce society. There are plenty of examples of various degrees in SF: Iain Banks' Culture, Vernor Vinge's Beyond, Farmer's Riverworld, the Federation of Planets come quickly to mind. Fantasy is even more likely to have such; no limit to what magic and gods can provide resource-wise (let alone enforce an otherwise unrealistic social order), and racial identity in a world with reincarnation might not even make sense to the inhabitants. And I've played in various games in which monetary rewards were moot; most often they were mission based with some patron providing for material needs, with the objective being successful missions, not profit.

Ah, ok.

My setting is already a resource scarse one and that to me is more interesting than the usual panoply of races. I think having the playable races being much more similar to each other than the non playable ones will help. Either way, I'm not bummed out by not having different races - yet. Well see.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;934042It would explain why such diverse peoples can get along, since they have the same psychology, basic needs and interfertility.

Or, to riff on that, what if the only way to have children was via coupling with a member of a different race? "chaos mutation" (and one should really look for something thats isn't a direct Warhammer rip-off) leaves demihumans infertile, or for some general reason infertility is rampant, and its only be combining the gene pools of two different demihumans that the genes are strong enough to enable procreation.

Just one note since people are talking about history and racial/tribal/ethnic conflict vs religious conflicts. Viewing historical religious conflict´s in a kind of a "Theological Identity OnlyTM" is not very historical but abstract and very much a western post-modern detached way of seeing it (sounding like a bit of a jack-ass cultural relativist here. But wait! There is is more!). It can be very appealing to fantasize today when dreaming about Multiculti-topia that race relations where much more "tolerant" in a different age, and so delude one self by arguing "you know in the middle ages people did not care about race/ethnicity/tribal heritage so why should we today?" when trying to make an implicit modern day identity-political comment. And thus putting the "icky" parts of history down the memory hole for the sake of an argument.

For example regarding muslim invasions of Europe and european the crusades in return: cristianity vs islam were only one (main factor) layer on the conflict. But they did fight the muhammedans (or christians) as much as they also fought "saracens" ( brown and comes from the middle-east/north-Africa = saracen) vs "franks" ( white/european = franks in the eyes of the muslims). Skipping the geopolitical aspects for now. My main point is that you can´t always regard religion vs race/nation/region/etnicity/tribe as two very different things because in most cases even universalist religions also becomes part of such an identity.

Just like the conflicts of Northen Ireland with catholic´s vs protestant´s has not very much to do with the actual thesis of Martin Luther anymore (compared to the political implications) or christianity becoming a part of "the white mans burden" during the age of colonialism.

This could of course also be relevant in fanstasy rpg worlds if one strives for that a kind of "realist" approach to collective conflicts of different peoples.

Yes, it is useful to think of layers of identity as acetate transparencies to overlay each other. That way you get a delightfully more complex, and dynamic, mix of potential encounters (which don't always have to be violent or poor). One of the reasons I liked Birthright's deconstruction of power into 5 major aspects: military, law, faith, trade, mana. Overlapping domains press boundaries and interests into each other, which in turn brainstorms encounters.

Or you could go with the simple solution that there are pockets of co-operation and everywhere else there isnt.

Or something like Thunder Rift where theres very much not co-operation untill some external threat unifies everyone. And once that threat is gone they go right back at it against eachother.

Thunder Rift though shows a good reason why you want to try to co-operate in a fantasy setting. The environment is so hostile that in-fighting only weakens you. Leaving you open to attacks from external threats. And probably is the reason why so many fantasy settings are so sparsely populated. One of the mainstays of some fantasy settings is that goblinoids and especially dragons would take over IF they werent so busy fighting eachother. Council of Wyrms shows what happens when dragons do cooperate.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;934367Or, to riff on that, what if the only way to have children was via coupling with a member of a different race? "chaos mutation" (and one should really look for something thats isn't a direct Warhammer rip-off) leaves demihumans infertile, or for some general reason infertility is rampant, and its only be combining the gene pools of two different demihumans that the genes are strong enough to enable procreation.

Warhammer ripsoff Elric of Melniboné.

There's also the assumption here that all races are going to be in competition for the same resources, which is in no way necessarily true. Assuming we're not talking about an industrialized world where one race - presumably humans - are exploding in population, there's no reason to assume an elven conclave somewhere deep in a forest is in anyway in competition with a human village somewhere on the coast, anymore than in the middle ages a village in Logres could realistically be said to be in competition for resources with a hamlet in Scotland.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;934497Warhammer ripsoff Elric of Melniboné.

Warhammer ripped off everyone, but then took it and made it their own. I'm just saying at this point there some things people cant get away with taking without just being "more of the same again".

Quote from: Ashakyre;934172However you splice it, it's an interesting pattern of history would be fun, somehow, to bring to the table, whichever fantasy race it applied to.

I bet the designers of Dragon Age agreed;).

Quote from: Teodrik;934411Just one note since people are talking about history and racial/tribal/ethnic conflict vs religious conflicts. Viewing historical religious conflict´s in a kind of a "Theological Identity OnlyTM" is not very historical but abstract and very much a western post-modern detached way of seeing it (sounding like a bit of a jack-ass cultural relativist here. But wait! There is is more!). It can be very appealing to fantasize today when dreaming about Multiculti-topia that race relations where much more "tolerant" in a different age, and so delude one self by arguing "you know in the middle ages people did not care about race/ethnicity/tribal heritage so why should we today?" when trying to make an implicit modern day identity-political comment. And thus putting the "icky" parts of history down the memory hole for the sake of an argument.

For example regarding muslim invasions of Europe and european the crusades in return: cristianity vs islam were only one (main factor) layer on the conflict. But they did fight the muhammedans (or christians) as much as they also fought "saracens" ( brown and comes from the middle-east/north-Africa = saracen) vs "franks" ( white/european = franks in the eyes of the muslims). Skipping the geopolitical aspects for now. My main point is that you can´t always regard religion vs race/nation/region/etnicity/tribe as two very different things because in most cases even universalist religions also becomes part of such an identity.

Just like the conflicts of Northen Ireland with catholic´s vs protestant´s has not very much to do with the actual thesis of Martin Luther anymore (compared to the political implications) or christianity becoming a part of "the white mans burden" during the age of colonialism.

This could of course also be relevant in fanstasy rpg worlds if one strives for that a kind of "realist" approach to collective conflicts of different peoples.

I find it's easier to think of it as "if you're the wrong religion, it's not enough to be of the right ethnicity".
OTOH, there is a Saracen knight in Le Morte d'Arthur, and tales of knights behaving honourably towards captured Muslim warriors, so class might well have been more important even than religion.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;934507Warhammer ripped off everyone, but then took it and made it their own. I'm just saying at this point there some things people cant get away with taking without just being "more of the same again".

Chaos mutation is a direct copy of the Broo from Runquest and the beasts of chaos from earlier editions of D&D. It's not unique to Warhammer and is a setting fixture in Exalted, Mazes & Minotaurs and every other setting with a chaos faction. What else are you going to call mutations and monsters created by the forces of chaos? Wyld mutations and wyld mutants? Eldritch mutations and mutants? If it is identical to a duck, it is a duck. It neatly explains the presence of so many monsters if mad wizards become overused.