When it comes to playing nonhumans, the mainstream #dnd5e route is to just treat them all as if they were only humans in cosplay. That's the lamest possible choice, born from a rejection of mythic concepts.
#dnd #ttrpg #osr

Thats all well and good. But D&D elves, dwarves, halflings, etc, are demi-HUMANS. Not the classical fae. That is covered under the pixies, faeries and other sylvan creatures who, depending on the writer, are pretty weird and occasionally downright alien.

D&D though has gotten alot of variance and nuance with their various elves for example. Everything from pointy eared humans, to being human-like only on a superficial level. Forgotten Realms elves for example have some pretty non-human aspects. You could increase that and get some pretty unusal beings. But they wouldnt be demi-humans anymore.

Personally I prefer to leave the more alien aspects to the faeries, pixies and the like. More fun when the PCs have to navigate a realm that doesnt follow human rules or logic.

I liked this weird psychological mechanics for Elven Grief and Dwarven Greed in Burning Wheel. That sort of forced playing them in non exactly human way.

That's the way to do it, to incorporate certain "rules" for the behavior of "playable" non-humans, that don't make any apparent sense. Like it the medieval stories of elves, sometimes they are clearly alien and terrifying to those who encounter them, and sometimes they make themselves look like normal humans... but in their actions there's just always weird stuff they're doing or that happens around them. There are things they treat like absolute unbendable rules of reality, that we can't see as anything other than nonsensical behavior (like how Tamlane has the entire army of the Elven Queen after him, and yet when his mortal girlfriend throws her cloak over him they all have to give up and fuck off, even though he's right there, not invisible or anything, and the Elven Queen is still able to curse his girlfriend to die).
You could interpret those things as an absolutely unbreakable taboo, but what if they're not? What if they're the product of a perception of reality totally different from our own, where the "laws" that apply to them are as unbreakable as the consequences of running face-first into a brick wall would be for us?

And speaking of which, of course, there are a lot of things that we MUST do which the Elves don't have to, or can just do differently, but also sometimes to us it seems like they must do as well. 

The last thing I need at my table is some pretentious twat pretending that they're oh-so-inscrutable when trying to role-play something like an elf.

A lot of the weird fairy story stuff comes from the animist idea that elves and brownies are in some strange way mutations or distortions of spirits of the dead, heroes, monsters, and old gods have passed from the world yet in some form they persist and are suffering something akin to dementia where they believe crazy things and forget or misremember mortal things including consistency.

They have less signal and more noise in their make up.

The dead in Sumerian myth become bird like. The goddess Inana when she has laid down her armor and power entering the underworld is overcome by the poisons of Kur she sprouts feathers and her feet become clawed like those mortal souls in the dark and on Earth the animals no longer rut and the crops will not grow.

The dead in Japan if ancient enough have no face at all and do not hunger or speak because they forgot that. They just make clicking noises as they watch the living from the trees, childlike and curious but unable to comprehend.

A dead pharaoh's personality is preserved in the Ba which like Sumerian tradition resembles a bird with a human head on it and it needs a preserved body or a statue of its mortal form to remind itself of what it was just to remain in the mortal world, while its eternal twin travels a dangerous underworld seeking judgment by the gods to become immortal.

Faeries are twisted and bent into a crook so to speak by time and being severed from life. They have become untethered to matter and biology and are moved by different forces many that might not even be perceivable to a mortal such as quantity or geometry. They might not be able to cross running water or might become confused at a crossroad or a fork road or get stuck on bridges across water or be able to pass through wood or not stone. They might take no offense at the most grievous insult or treachery and fly into a rage over some bizarre trivial thing.

Elves probably need to be less weird than this but they should not just be handsome rich foreign people with nice stuff and long long lives who know things and exist as a super character. They are not a demigod from a can. But they might talk to trees or be more vulnerable to ghosts and spirits or something to set them apart from a movie star version of a human.

You might do the Moorcock think and make elves the people of chaos (or order in the chaos of Corum) while the humans are more transitional creatures who could blunder into the arms of either.

You might make elves the humans of a more primeval foresty world closer to the powers of life (positive egenrgy) who came here and perhaps see this world as colder and stonier and more shadowy.

You might make them humans who somehow were the products of some eugenics or better living through magic and alchemy and were left over when their civilization crumbled (sort of the Stephen Brust take) who look on normal humans as wilder and less "bred" than they are.

They might be humans hybridized with something else. Maybe they have tree sap in their blood or grew up in the light of divine trees planted by the old gods. Maybe the Elder things who designed all biology on Earth at some late point in their reign tweaked an ape so it would drink soup without slurping and use the right fork for dessert unlike those ungrateful disobedient shoggoths who stopped washing the space cars and tending the space gardens and moved out. Maybe elves got the way they were by drinking from a fountain that was pouring like an avalanche coming down the mountain.

Whatever.

QuoteThat's the way to do it, to incorporate certain "rules" for the behavior of "playable" non-humans, that don't make any apparent sense. Like it the medieval stories of elves, sometimes they are clearly alien and terrifying to those who encounter them, and sometimes they make themselves look like normal humans... but in their actions there's just always weird stuff they're doing or that happens around them. There are things they treat like absolute unbendable rules of reality, that we can't see as anything other than nonsensical behavior (like how Tamlane has the entire army of the Elven Queen after him, and yet when his mortal girlfriend throws her cloak over him they all have to give up and fuck off, even though he's right there, not invisible or anything, and the Elven Queen is still able to curse his girlfriend to die).
You could interpret those things as an absolutely unbreakable taboo, but what if they're not? What if they're the product of a perception of reality totally different from our own, where the "laws" that apply to them are as unbreakable as the consequences of running face-first into a brick wall would be for us?

And speaking of which, of course, there are a lot of things that we MUST do which the Elves don't have to, or can just do differently, but also sometimes to us it seems like they must do as well.

Now of course D&D traditional demihumans suffers from obvious clash between Tolkienian and Andersonian perspectives.
And demihumans in Tolkien books are way way more humans - I mean halflings are pygmy humans per se, elves are considered by Tolkien to be one species with men, and even dwarves are quite close. (Which also cames from desire to fit traditional CeltoGermanic fey beings into more Christian like metaphysical option).

Sure Anglo-Saxon faerie are wicked, mysterious, inhuman creatures. Basically NPC material.
Alas that's not the case with Gimli or Legolas. Or even powerful Noldor of 1st Age (sure Elves are different in some important regards - but they are also kin to men).

I mean Grief mechanics for Elves from Wheel I mentioned - differs them from humans, but it's something taken from Tolkien, and is something quite possible to understand.

QuoteElves probably need to be less weird than this but they should not just be handsome rich foreign people with nice stuff and long long lives who know things and exist as a super character. They are not a demigod from a can. But they might talk to trees or be more vulnerable to ghosts and spirits or something to set them apart from a movie star version of a human.

Additional poll of psychic damage elf gets from seeing terrible things. Needs long rest and purification to be remedied. If they dropped to 0 - elf dies from grief.

I've been yapping about this since the days of yore when THAC0s ran across the primeval world. There's no good solution. Many players have zero interest in non-human PCs being anything other than some stat & ability bonuses, and lots of these retards chaff when the DM has NPCs treat their PCs based on their race.

The best solution I've got as DM is to be upfront to players that NON-HUMAN means NOT FUCKING HUMAN and back that up in actual play with how you play NPCs and how various races interact in YOUR world so the players get the point.

Session zero, blah, blah, blah. You know the drill. Set expectations and lead by example.

BTW, I've found more pointy-eared cosplayers who actually get MORE into character than the lard asses tossing dice at the Cheeto table. Especially those who are doing LARPS.

I say make them different in whatever way you choose so long as it makes them feel different.  This is why I like demi-humans having various special abilities like secret door detection, immunity to ghouls, or magic, or whatever.  It is also a prime reason why I continue to restrict class options for demi-humans.  They have other advantages, including the ability to multi-class, that I don't grant to humans.  Allowing humans to max out in any class helps balance that out.  For the most part, my elves, halflings, and dwarves are largely Tolkien derived anyhow.  But I've dropped in some stuff from other sources.

Overall, as in many things, I like the Castles & Crusades versions of demi-humans.  They tweak the AD&D demi-humans just a bit and alter their class options in interesting ways.  For example, gnomes all get innate minor illusory magic.  As a half-elf, your abilities vary whether you favor your human or elven parent. Most demi-humans can be bards, which makes sense, given that these races usually have singers, loremasters, etc.  And they allow hafling rangers and half-orc monks.  I know most games nowadays simply due away with class/race restrictions, but for me it's another element that encourages roleplaying.

If non-humans aren't going to be particularly non-human, I'd just as soon just have humans. There's an old Swedish game called Khelataar where the setting is an island colonized by the main group of people, the Khelataarians, around 800 years ago after they fled their homeland. These are the baseline humans. Then there's the indigenous people who were almost wiped out by a plague before the Khelataarians even got there and then split into three groups. One group went into the mountains, one group went into the deep forest and one group went into the swampy wetlands of a river delta. The mountain people are good smiths, use hammers and grow their beards out. The forest people live in tree huts and are good hunters and otherwise tree-hugging hippies. The swamp people make strong booze, use blowguns and travel around in canoes. So, there you've got ersatz dwarves, elves and okay the swamp people aren't really a substitute for anything. But now they're all human, just with different cultures, and you can play one as simply a mountain-dwelling smith human or a forest-dwelling hunter human.

Omega makes a good point though. Are they nonhuman, or are they 'demihuman'?

Honestly, if I wanted to play something with a distinctly nonhuman mentality I'd go fishing in the deep end of the pond. I got a LOT of mileage out of warforged, for example. Nothing like a bar scene where the warforged wizard is watching the party eat a meal, and comments, 'Fascinating. You put it in one end and it comes out the other.'

I ran a very long campaign (was amazing) of the One Ring and all of the non-human races feel very different - the mechanics enforce it. Can't recommend it highly enough.

Quote from: PencilBoy99 on December 29, 2021, 10:32:09 AM
I ran a very long campaign (was amazing) of the One Ring and all of the non-human races feel very different - the mechanics enforce it. Can't recommend it highly enough.

How do they enforce it

Mechanically. For example if you're a Hobbit, you get a lot of Hope (it's a currency you can spend to do specific things), and it's very easy to recover it. If you're an Elf you start with less and it's harder for you to recover. Along with other mechanics it ends up producing a very lord of the rings experience - Elves re powerful but aloof, but kind of done with the world and it's sorrows. Each of the races has a completely different set of talent-like things / cultural inheritances. The things on your character sheet as an Elf will be completely different than Dwarf even if you're both combatants, and you'll fight differently also. I'ts baked intot he rules.

Quote from: PencilBoy99 on December 29, 2021, 03:57:28 PM
Mechanically. For example if you're a Hobbit, you get a lot of Hope (it's a currency you can spend to do specific things), and it's very easy to recover it. If you're an Elf you start with less and it's harder for you to recover. Along with other mechanics it ends up producing a very lord of the rings experience - Elves re powerful but aloof, but kind of done with the world and it's sorrows. Each of the races has a completely different set of talent-like things / cultural inheritances. The things on your character sheet as an Elf will be completely different than Dwarf even if you're both combatants, and you'll fight differently also. I'ts baked intot he rules.

I like the sound of that, especially as it might be adapted to an old school clone with 'race as class'