Quote from: thedungeondelver;302209As to individual players, I generally ask them why their halfling (or dwarf, or elf, and so forth) is totally atypical.  I don't want a short fantasy novel, mind, just some thought behind why they did it beyond "because halflings get infravision under ground and can move silently better" etc.

Yes, I think that this is extremely important to maintain a setting's coherence.

RPGPundit

From OOTS (paraphrased due to lazyness):

"He's a Drow! Surely an evil mage!"
"Nonsense. When the Drow became a playable race, they all turned into Chaotic Good rebels fighting against the bad name of their evil race"
"Didn't you just say they were all CG?"
"Whatever. Just go with it."

I'm a bit of a crusader for the flexibility of "bog-standard shire halflings".

The entire cast of type for halflings was dictated by Tolkien's portrayal of an essentially human community which lived in a bountiful area and hadn't faced a threat in generations.  It makes no sense that that they'd revert to that sort of provincial, lazy character under all circumstances.

It's like saying that a lazy western suburbanite represents exactly the type of behaviour a human adventurer would exhibit in an adventuring situation.

Quote from: RockViper;302258Because when playing in a standard fantasy campaign I expect to be able to play a fat food loving halfling thief. If we are playing RIFTS then yea bring on the cannibal halflings

I wasn't necessarily saying they'd be the norm or a player race, just that there's room in Greyhawk for cannibal halflings.  Just because there's one degenerate tribe doesn't mean the rest aren't fat and lazy like normal.  

In the excreble D&D4e game I was in a couple months ago I ran a Dwarf warrior who worshiped a human agricultural goddess.  We also had a sheep raping dragon born who worshiped a god of love.  It was the most brutal player revolt I've ever seen but the guy DMing just couldn't grok that we hated his game.

I can't even blame 4e.  Just a DM who thinks D&D is a first person shooter where he gets to cheat on his dice rolls and doesn't need to know the rules.

Quote from: Idinsinuation;302495I wasn't necessarily saying they'd be the norm or a player race, just that there's room in Greyhawk for cannibal halflings.  Just because there's one degenerate tribe doesn't mean the rest aren't fat and lazy like normal.  

Agreed

I would make the player come up with a really good backstory before allowing him to play this character.

Quote from: RockViper;302500Agreed

I would make the player come up with a really good backstory before allowing him to play this character.

Definitely if you're setting your campaign in a more typical area of the world.

Quote from: RPGPundit;302195So, when a setting portrays a demihuman race in this way, how do you think it has to be done to be a positive? Is it always better than just having elves be your standard forest-dwelling hippies-with-bows? Or can you end up making things worse by not making sense?

Demi-Humans are people. The average is different than humans which has a consequence on their culture which feeds back into the personalities of the people raised in that culture. But it is only a average and you will have a bell curve of types on multiple axis throughout the population.

For individual members of a race you will have a number of NPCs that will break type simply because that what happens with people.

What I don't like is changing the fundamentals of a race. In theory, sure, go ahead and make your Orc Pirates and Dwarven Nomads (Sovereign Stone). But I find that players tend to make too many assumption about the labels that are not true.

So if you want a  race that are short nomadic  mongols make up a new name rather than use a name with a bunch of baggage with it.

The same with your cold elves. There is nothing wrong in having a elf or group of elves that is based in the cold for some reason and maybe even like it up there. But why call a race that lives there naturally elves?

Is there any information I can assume about the Icevale Elves because they have the name elf. Or are they a unique race completely different than the traditional elves. If they are unique then they should get a new name as a race.

I've never much cared for fantasy dwarves... but a friend once talked me into playing one in her GURPS fantasy game so I played him as a foul-mouthed braggart with odious personal habits... and he couldn't hold his liquor worth a damn.
Always telling stories about this great dwarven city he came from... all the gold and riches and fabulous stonework... which turned out to be not much more than a played out mineshaft with a bar at the back of it.
He was actually lots of fun to play... but probably kind of annoying to the folks he was travelling with.

For me, the problem isn't so much deviating from "traditional" portrayals of the races, what I hate is when all demihuman cultures in a given world are portrayed as the same. Why would dwarves from the northern mountains be anything like dwarves from the southern hills? They would have different languages, values, and mannerisms because they are different people. They wouldn't even have to be separated by that great a distance, and could even maintain friendly contact with each other, and still diverge culturally.

Quote from: Sigmund;302566what I hate is when all demihuman cultures in a given world are portrayed as the same. Why would dwarves from the northern mountains be anything like dwarves from the southern hills? They would have different languages, values, and mannerisms because they are different people. They wouldn't even have to be separated by that great a distance, and could even maintain friendly contact with each other, and still diverge culturally.

For me, they'll have the same language because a feature of dwarves is an extremely slow rate of cultural change.  In my games the average dwarf talks, thinks and acts much as his ancestor did 5000 years ago, which includes feeling threatened by the constantly-changing and adaptable humans swarming all over the place.

The last game of D&D I ran two of my players made a brothers. Halfling, barbarian, circus strongmen that acted like they were the toughest dudes on the block. Pushing more capable people out of the way to perform "feats of strength". They were a riot, and a fun change.

Quote from: Sigmund;302566For me, the problem isn't so much deviating from "traditional" portrayals of the races, what I hate is when all demihuman cultures in a given world are portrayed as the same. Why would dwarves from the northern mountains be anything like dwarves from the southern hills? They would have different languages, values, and mannerisms because they are different people. They wouldn't even have to be separated by that great a distance, and could even maintain friendly contact with each other, and still diverge culturally.

Quote from: Hairfoot;302689For me, they'll have the same language because a feature of dwarves is an extremely slow rate of cultural change.  In my games the average dwarf talks, thinks and acts much as his ancestor did 5000 years ago, which includes feeling threatened by the constantly-changing and adaptable humans swarming all over the place.

I agree more with Sigmund here, though Hairfoot gives a sensible explanation. After all, they're supposed to be physiologically different from us. The importance of this change cannot be stressed enough.

Quote from: Hairfoot;302689For me, they'll have the same language because a feature of dwarves is an extremely slow rate of cultural change.  In my games the average dwarf talks, thinks and acts much as his ancestor did 5000 years ago, which includes feeling threatened by the constantly-changing and adaptable humans swarming all over the place.

I am not meaning to take away from your preference at all, but for me this still wouldn't prevent dwarves from diverging culturally. Even if the language changed slightly, due to different living conditions, building materials, food sources, art supplies, past-times, etc.. they would diverge culturally. Elves might be even closer to your idea depending on how long they live in a different campaign, but no matter the race or it's longevity, it seems to me one group living in one area would diverge from another group of folks living in another are, even if only slightly, just because of their surroundings. I do get what your saying though about dwarves clinging to their history, so if that were the design of the dwarves in a campaign I were to play in I would only expect the dwarves to differ superficially..

Quote from: Sigmund;302738I am not meaning to take away from your preference at all, but for me this still wouldn't prevent dwarves from diverging culturally. Even if the language changed slightly, due to different living conditions, building materials, food sources, art supplies, past-times, etc.. they would diverge culturally. Elves might be even closer to your idea depending on how long they live in a different campaign, but no matter the race or it's longevity, it seems to me one group living in one area would diverge from another group of folks living in another are, even if only slightly, just because of their surroundings. I do get what your saying though about dwarves clinging to their history, so if that were the design of the dwarves in a campaign I were to play in I would only expect the dwarves to differ superficially..

Language probably isn't the best example.  Dialects would definitely appear, but for languages of old races I tend to think of them as analogous to modern Chinese: people from opposite ends of the country might not be able to communicate verbally, but they can pick up the same newspaper or 1000-year-old parchment and read it perfectly.

In any case, I don't think it's un-fantasy-realistic to portray elder races as more similar despite difference than human communities would be.