Quote from: Zalman;1118257This is how I treat PC races for sure. "Humanoid" is an interesting term, and I often wonder exactly where each person draws the line. In my mind, not everything with two arms and two legs needs to be culturally, psychologically, or even otherwise physically similar to humans in any way.

Oh absolutely, excellent point! For instance, the aggressive saltwater angler fish dudes in one of my own campaign worlds are extremely alien and don't mirror human societies much at all, so little in fact that the two can't even communicate with each other. As you can imagine this doesn't much help with peaceful relations... luckily they spend most of their time in the inky black depths.

Quote from: Zalman;1118257In my world, orcs, goblins, bugbears and the like are monstrous spawn born of evil souls that emerge from pits of black ooze. No "society" or other "ecology" required. I've never been comfortable with the idea that every monster has to conform to some real-world notion of reproductive evolution (but if you do go that way, then Kyle Aaron's analysis regarding R-selected species is awesome).

That's cool! It calls to my mind the way the uruk-hai are born in the LotR films. I totally agree that not every monster needs some sort of ecology, culture or form of evolution beyond what you've described, in fact in some cases I find it not only unnecessary but patently absurd such as with for example elementals or golems. Come to think of it I have something similar to your black ooze in my setting, although it usually corrupts existing creatures into evil mindless monstrosities rather than spawning them outright.

Quote from: Zalman;1118257In my world, orcs, goblins, bugbears and the like are monstrous spawn born of evil souls that emerge from pits of black ooze. No "society" or other "ecology" required. I've never been comfortable with the idea that every monster has to conform to some real-world notion of reproductive evolution (but if you do go that way, then Kyle Aaron's analysis regarding R-selected species is awesome).

This is something that definitely has an impact on how certain "humanoid" races can be portrayed in a setting. It makes sense for different races to have their own cultural development if you're treating them like something resembling a natural species with their own evolutionary development and minds capable of free will and personal hopes and desires. But if we're talking about artificially created beings or creatures born out of evil essences or strange magical substances then it becomes a question what those beings where created to accomplish and how much free thought their nature allows them.

If orcs in your world are magical creations made for conflict, like orcs in Middle Earth, then it makes more sense for those to be irredeemably evil or incapable of having anything but a destructive nature. But if they're born out of natural processes or are at least capable of free thought (even if artificially created) then things become more complicated.

Quote from: SHARK;1118152Greetings!

Whenever dealing with bands and tribes of monstrous humanoids, do you make any of them larger tribal societies which develop some kind of culture?

If and when such humanoid races develop a stable culture, a civilized culture of at least a town-based society, simple agriculture, a basic body of laws, and basic language, trade, and religious ritual, have such larger scale societies had an influence on the wider campaign world?

Imagine a large confederation of Bugbears that have small-scale agriculture, iron-age technology, a mixed barter/coin based economy, rural farm and herding communities, and a broad network of fortified towns and villages, with a growing tradition and system of trade with distant neighbors. The Bugbears are led by a newly-instituted hereditary kingship model of government. The Bugbears have recently embraced Confucianism as a social and political philosophy, and Daoism as the state religion. How different such a Bugbear society would look like, compared to other Bugbear communities!:D

Do you enjoy experimenting with humanoid societies, governments and religions? In my own campaigns, such experiments have led to some very dramatic and colourful changes and influences across entire continents.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Talislanta: The Savage Lands. Complete with tribe-mechanics, and mass-combat. 5e D&D rules which can be lifted and used in any 5e game. (or d6 or Tal classic if you're special).

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118264But if they're born out of natural processes or are at least capable of free thought (even if artificially created) then things become more complicated.

As I said about "humanizing" the opponents. Obviously we don't even want to even consider bringing a recognizable religion into the mix.

I believe that for a lot of people gaming is an outlet. It should be as guilt free as possible. In fact if we can visualize the opponents as "Pure EVIL" all the better.

However, there are some of us that like the "What If" side of things and that opens up possibilities that others may find uncomfortable.

Quote from: Greentongue;1118161You start "humanizing" the non-humans you make it much harder to kill them and take their stuff.
Have you noticed how few games have human opponents?

As you may know. The first step in war is dehumanizing your opponents.  The reverse of what you are talking about.

Unless, you just mean giving them a recognizable structure to tear down.

Yes, it sometimes does make it harder to kill them and take their stuff. Actually, humans are frequently the foes of our human player-characters, perhaps the most frequent. The reason Goblins, Hobgoblins and Trolls are the enemy is their religion and their culture. A Troll on a Vow Hunt, can only kill and eat speaking prey, doesn't have to be dehumanized.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118264This is something that definitely has an impact on how certain "humanoid" races can be portrayed in a setting. It makes sense for different races to have their own cultural development if you're treating them like something resembling a natural species with their own evolutionary development and minds capable of free will and personal hopes and desires. But if we're talking about artificially created beings or creatures born out of evil essences or strange magical substances then it becomes a question what those beings where created to accomplish and how much free thought their nature allows them.

If orcs in your world are magical creations made for conflict, like orcs in Middle Earth, then it makes more sense for those to be irredeemably evil or incapable of having anything but a destructive nature. But if they're born out of natural processes or are at least capable of free thought (even if artificially created) then things become more complicated.

Orcs in my campaigns are created to serve a would-be Dark Lord when one pops up, which is rare. Those that survive the Dark Lord's demise are still impossible to put up with and are eventually killed off, until the next Dark Lord. Goblins and Hobgoblins are tribal and the tribes that worship the Spider Goddess Charlotte (she also goes by other names) are hostile to all other sapient life. The tribes that worship Vishilaq, the Tiger Goddess, are a bit subtler in their evil but you can generally  count on them to be hostile. There are examples of tribes that people can get along with but they are rare.

Quote from: ElBorak;1118210Oh really, well I happen to think that Greek, Roman and Norse religion is a lot of fun in game, you might have heard of Zeus, Jupiter and Odin. Of course those were ancient pagan polytheistic religions. But our world has hundreds, if not thousands of pagan religions that are very gamable.

Okay, you ignorant boomer fuck, how about this: how would you like it if I used Christianity in my D&D setting and made them out to be the villains all the time, treating your deity (presuming you are, of course, Christian) like the asshole that atheists often portray him as, then telling you to suck it up because it's just elf games?

Now you wouldn't like that very much, I imagine, primarily because you get pissy with people and accuse them of being some variety of leftist when they say something you don't like, which strikes me as "boomer conservative chic."

So how about we not include anything resembling real-world religions, hmm? And don't give me the whole "oh these are ancient heathen religions no one cares," because guess what, jackass: I fall into the Asatru camp. This shit fucking matters way more than what you think is good fun for stupid elf games, and I'd appreciate it if you treated it with some degree of respect.

This is why we stay well away from things even beginning to look like they're real world religions, modern or ancient. I'm sorry you have all the imagination of a fucking gopher, build your own fucking fantasy religion(s). Shit, I'll even allow thinly-veiled expies. Using the real world as inspiration for your own stuff is a given, as well: it's the only model we have for culture, so I don't see a problem with using it as inspiration or as a model. But straight-up ripping religions out of reality and including them in fantasy games? Fucking absolutely goddamn retarded, full stop.

No real-world politics, no real-world religion. This isn't fucking rocket science.

None of this applies, obviously, if you're doing a historical thing. Those are weird and not my cup of tea, but since real-world religions are part of real-world history, they are going to come up. I avoid them precisely because of this problem, but if you can do it and not be a dick about it, then you do you, I guess.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1118289Okay, you ignorant boomer fuck, how about this: how would you like it if I used Christianity in my D&D setting and made them out to be the villains all the time, treating your deity (presuming you are, of course, Christian) like the asshole that atheists often portray him as, then telling you to suck it up because it's just elf games?

I would say, of course having you even met a Catholic?  Evil to the bone.

Here's how I handle beastmen in ACKS. I have used barbarian horticultural cultures as the baseline, but I am explicit that they are cannibalistic chaotic-worshipping hybrids who genetically lack any capacity for compassion, kindness, or love whatsoever. Their sexual relations are just rape by the strong beastmen of the most fertile women, and their child-rearing is just child abuse until the strong ones grow up. Every beastman is a full-blown innate psychopath and cannot be redeemed. An adventurer in ACKS needn't worry about the lives of kobold children anymore than Ripley worries about the lives of facehuggers in ALIENS - killing them all is morally good and benefits humanity.

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The monstrous humanoids known as beastmen were created by the Zaharans in the centuries before the Empyrean War. Through magical research, they combined humans and humanoids with beast stock in repeated cross-strains. Their creations included bugbears (hobgoblins and bears), gnolls (gnomes and trolls), kobolds (lizardmen and dogs), goblins (gnolls and dwarves), hobgoblins (men and goblins), ogres (men and gorillas), orcs (men and boars), and trolls (ogres and hydras).

Beastmen were created to be soldiers for the Zaharan army – ruthless and blood-thirsty, but susceptible to control by a powerful leader. In the absence of an external authority (such as a Zaharan sorcerer-king), beastmen organize themselves into bands of loosely-related gangs ruled by a chieftain. Endemic warfare between nearby bands is constant, until eventually one of the chieftains succeeds in unifying the bands into a clan under his rule.

Isolated bands usually have no permanent home, living a nomadic existence that follows seasonably available wild plants and game. Nomadic beastmen dwell in tents made from animal hides sewn together or woven hair wrapped around wooden poles. These tents are usually small, but can be as large as thirty feet in diameter. Less fortunate nomads may just take shelter where they can find it. Nomadic beastmen survive by hunting wildlife, gathering wild forage, and raiding civilized settlements. Roving bands are often composed of only males, their females having been lost to stronger rivals.

Established clans tend to permanently or semi-permanently dwell in ruins, caves, captured strongholds, or villages. Beastmen in villages generally live in roundhouses constructed of whatever materials are at hand. In wet, wooded climates, roundhouses with timber or wattle-and-daub walls and thatched roofs will dominate. In other terrain, the walls are constructed of mudbrick or stone, mortared with sand, soil, and dung, while the roof covering is of woven hair or animal-hide, sewn to short spars.  Stone-lined pits are dug for iron forges, kilns, food storage, and waste. Sometimes the buildings are gathered to  form a ring fort or hill-fort, surrounded by ditches, moats, earthen ramparts or piled stone walls.

When settled, beastmen clans practice horticulture, cultivating small plots of mixed crops using hand tools. Beastmen care nothing for crop rotation or soil sustainability, and will simply burn or cut away a clearing, then farm it until the soil is exhausted. It is not uncommon to find large tracts of exhausted scrub around beastmen settlements. In arid terrain, they may herd goats, sheep, cows, pigs, and other livestock that can graze on the scant vegetation. Beastmen tribes that have captured many prisoners in raids may have slave laborers working farms, but these are usually short-lived; beastmen do not breed or care for their slaves, and simply eat those that die.

Family relations are brutal; beastmen males are considerably larger than the females, whom they dominate. Both sexes lack the capacity for compassion, kindness, or love. High-status males maintain large harems, within which the females compete for provision and protection. Low-status males have no chance to mate at all, except by gaining status through violence or subterfuge. As a result, beastmen males typically spend much of their time fighting, hunting, and raiding. More than half die from wounds sustained in such activities before middle age. Females are left with responsibility for domestic labor such as farming, foraging, cooking, and camping. Beastmen care little for their prepubescent children, feeding them scraps and often exiling them to the edges of the camp fires. Many whelps die of exposure or under-nourishment, leaving just the toughest and most cunning to survive to adulthood.

Beastman females can craft blankets, clothing, furniture, tools, and shelter from the woven hair of sheep and goats, or the leather, bone, sinew, and hide of animals. Metal-working is the province of males, and is typically limited to working wrought iron in pit-furnaces. Knowledge of weapon- and armor-smithing is rare, with only a handful of smiths in a tribe. Knowledge is handed down orally within families.

There are no shops or standards of exchange in beastman settlements, but beastmen nevertheless prize wealth as a means to display their power, status, and valor in battle. A beastman with holdings of animals, food, mates, treasure, equipment, slaves, troops, gold, and weapons is inevitably a mighty and respected warrior within his band – for if he were he not tough enough to guard what he owns, he would soon lose it. The moment a beastman shows weakness, he soon finds himself stripped of all possessions.
To acquire better weapons, armor, and treasure, beastmen raid border settlements and trade with Kemesh and the Ivory Kingdoms. Beastmen mercenaries frequently serve in Kemeshi armies, bringing home weapons of steel, slaves, and treasure. Through raiding and trading, this loot spreads throughout the beastmen clans. Beastmen mercenaries may also bring knowledge of siege craft, engineering, and tactics to their tribe, and a tribe led by such a veteran can be very dangerous.    

Beastmen warriors like to adorn themselves with war-paint, tattoos, and boy jewelry. They often wear their horn shorn to a single lock, in a great mane, or in a mohawk. They fight with slings, javelins, spears, bows, swords, morning stars, flails, and axes, and generally wear light armor, such as hide, leather, or scale. Champions and chieftains are, of course, better-equipped. Raids may be accompanied by blowing horns and war-pipes or beating drums. On the battlefield, their formations are irregular, relying on numbers, shock, and ferocity (hobgoblins are the sole exception, being as disciplined as Auran troops).

Beastmen worship the chthonic gods, with religious traditions passed on orally by shamans and witch-doctors. Bel, the Slaughterprince, is their favored god, but the full pantheon is recognized and called on when appropriate.  After battle, they practice ceremonial cannibalism, believing that by eating the flesh of the slain they devour their souls and gain their strength. As is common within chthonic tradition, they preserve and bury their own dead, often with slaves, arms, armor, and treasure for great chieftains. Indeed, those who have studied the black lore of Zahar recognize beastman religion as a debased version of the Zaharan's own practices.

The beastman languages are actually a variety of vulgar dialects descended from the ancient Zaharan language. Scholars who have studied these dialects have discovered that their grammars and vocabularies have devolved along similar lines into pidgin-like simplicity, but their pronunciations have become quite varied due to the mutated lips, tongues, and vocal chords of the beastmen who speak them. Beastman dialects are rarely written, but if necessary they can be adequately represented with Zaharan glyphs.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1118289This is why we stay well away from things even beginning to look like they're real world religions, modern or ancient.

I hope you never discover Yrth. You'll have an aneurysm.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;1118294Yrth

It's a stupid, bad idea.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1118289Okay, you ignorant boomer fuck, how about this: how would you like it if I used Christianity in my D&D setting and made them out to be the villains all the time, treating your deity (presuming you are, of course, Christian) like the asshole that atheists often portray him as, then telling you to suck it up because it's just elf games?

I don't think I follow your point here. Plenty of movies, films, and TV shows use Christianity. And not just historically; for instance, Miles Cameron's Red Knight series uses Christianity in an explicitly fantasy setting. Is there something in particular about RPGs that you believe makes it unacceptable to do the same? What if all the players in the game are OK with it?

Personally, I think all religions share very similar gods and morality because human beings are very similar. Whether we're similar because we were made in God's image, or because we have a Jungian collective unconscious, or because we evolved to have similar spiritual needs filled by faux gods - it doesn't matter. The myths and gods are repeating patterns. History illustrates this for us; the gods are often known under numerous names in different languages, and the ancients tended to assume that similar gods with different names were just different words for the same god. Zeus was Ammon... Ishtar was Inanna... etc.

For that reason I don't see much difference between, say, using Christianity directly or using "the Magisterium" or "the Sept" or other ersatz Christianity. It's just a new label on the same thing. In both cases, if the GM fills the Church with pedophiliac torture-loving inquisitors, I can easily take offense as a Christian, and I can just as easily say that what's being portrayed isn't real Christianity. Likewise, if Zeus, Jupiter, and Ammon were all seen as the same god, then if I call my sky-thunderer-patriarch Imran, am I actually creating a new god, or am I just assigning a new label to the same god?

Trying to use logic ... has that ever worked?

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ACKS does look like an interesting system. I have some of the stuff but finding people to play is always a challenge.

Quote from: amacris;1118297I don't think I follow your point here. ... I think all religions share very similar gods and morality because human beings are very similar.

The point is that people tend to take their religions seriously, and fictionalized portrayals are going to irritate someone (this is not a matter of "if," but "when"). Elf games in particular are susceptible to this because it's a very participatory thing; if a movie or book is portraying your religion in a way you don't like, you put it down. If your buddy the DM is portraying your religion in a way that's disrespectful, it's significantly worse because you know the person in question doing the thing (whereas the author of a book or director of a movie is most likely not in your monkeysphere so it has less impact).

This is further amplified by the fact that deities in D&D are typically a lot more active than we see in the real world. It just... it's a mess.

Unless you're doing a real-world modern or historical thing - and maybe there are some other weird cases, as well - there's not really a good reason to wholesale import real-world religions in a D&D game. There's just not.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1118289Okay, you ignorant boomer fuck, how about this: how would you like it if I used Christianity in my D&D setting and made them out to be the villains all the time, treating your deity (presuming you are, of course, Christian) like the asshole that atheists often portray him as, then telling you to suck it up because it's just elf games?

That pretty much describes the basis of my homebrew setting for Lamentations of the Flame Princess (currently in hiatus). Adding in all the nonsense with relics, saints and miracles... and a version of Jehovah that bears a good resemblance to old uncaring Azathoth.

As for non-humans... I tend to default to humans for my monstrous needs... unless I need something particularly weird and alien. Like, I have goblins in my Lamentations setting, but they're born from human abortions and their 'culture' is a mockery of human values. They're not an organized tribe... more like a spiritual plague.
Never used orcs/kobolds/bugbears much... Skaven are a temptation though, again as a sort of subterranean antipode of mankind.