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Mr. Mask
2013-09-20, 01:28 PM
When Race is mentioned in RPGs, it rarely means choosing between Norwegian and British, so much as it involves being the lizard man or the even scarier lizard man (or the boring human). These in most games, involve bonuses to stats which reflect playing as whatever goblin you chose, and penalties as well.

Does this strike you as odd? Why do we do it this way, and why is it so fun? How do you make it fun like that?


If we removed the bonuses and penalties for playing as a Xenomorph, and became a mechanic with an above-average charisma and, "Alchoholic" as one of their flaws... you don't really feel like a Xenomorph any more. Feeling like the creature you are playing as seems to be the essence of what makes this work.


One problem I have always noticed from this system, is balancing it. They lower the intelligence of ogres to try and balance them--but if you play as a barbarian and dump INT, their "drawback" does not matter to you at all. If, however, you wanted to play an ogre scholar... you may as well be tied in knots.

This is similar to how traits work in RPGs. If you have phobias to stuff you'll never encounter, then your phobia flaw isn't a flaw. If you have traits you never get to use, they aren't advantages.

But, while those can still work to further the depth of your character... I feel a bit less optimistic about the way race works in RPGs. Seems to enforce racial roles a bit too strongly, rather than bringing an interesting flavour to a variety of roleplaying options like I want it to be.


Perhaps I'm the only one who feels this way. What are your thoughts on races in RPGs, why you like or hate them, how you think they should or shouldn't be?

Grinner
2013-09-20, 01:37 PM
I'm going to chalk both races and traits to "good intentions, poor execution". The idea, I think, is to encourage a wide variety of characters and personalities for the sake of a rich and diverse game. In practice, players tend to see the mechanical effects first*, and when they're stuck between effectiveness and coherence, effectiveness usually wins.

The solution to this problem is to create mechanics which integrate the fluff into the crunch. Fortunately, that problem has already been solved.

Edit: I've realized that may have been rather unclear. To put it another way, the mechanics need to reward the player for following his concept, not picking the best numbers. FATE's method of doing so accomplishes this and also avoids the problem of character advancement, which provides the most room for system abuse.

*As game mechanics are most RPGs' equivalent of physics, and because people tend to optimize instinctively, this is only natural.

Mr. Mask
2013-09-20, 01:47 PM
When you say, "thankfully, it has already been solved," how do you mean? I'm afraid I'm in the dark.

kyoryu
2013-09-20, 01:47 PM
Perhaps I'm the only one who feels this way. What are your thoughts on races in RPGs, why you like or hate them, how you think they should or shouldn't be?

I think your point is that race in RPGs usually ends up as nothing more than a few stat bonuses/penalties, and maybe a few special abilities. And that doesn't lead to much distinctness in actual play.

I prefer the way Fate handles races - generally, you choose a racial Aspect which can then be compelled/invoked as appropriate. It de-emphasizes the usual "ogres are strong but not smart" bits and replaces them with things that have more character/story impact.

Grinner
2013-09-20, 01:50 PM
When you say, "thankfully, it has already been solved," how do you mean? I'm afraid I'm in the dark.

I edited in a clarification before I saw your response, and it appears I've been reverse-ninja'd as well.

JusticeZero
2013-09-20, 01:56 PM
It really is simply poor execution. It would work better to just have access to race specific flaws and perks and call it a day. I like making characters who are against type, and some of the penalties, added to the curving of the usual point buy systems, really cripples a lot of viable concepts. Particularly, some of the mental stat modifiers bring up the "nature vs nurture" debate, as well as the measurement issues inherent to the IQ debates. Fleems have -2 Int because they don't have a good vocabulary of sailing terms, as they are from the inland plains of Nebraska rather than us civilized pirate-folk.. This is an issue for internal relativism.

Frozen_Feet
2013-09-20, 03:10 PM
Non-human characters in RPGs work poorly mostly because the players are still human. This was spelled out in 1st ED AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, and the observation still holds. Over at TV tropes, this is known as "planet of hats"; non-human races end up being merely exaggerations of very human qualities and traits.

It takes a lot of skill, ability to distance you from your character, and purposedly placing limitations on yourself to achieve the feel of a non-human. I've achieved this maybe two, three times intentionally, and few times accidentally... but only because my (100% human) emotions and viewpoints are already so different from many reference groups that I appear alien to them.

(For example, over a written medium, I've been mistaken for a robot several times. Why? Because my writing, whether in Finnish or English, is too perfect. Yes, this sounds like I'm full of myself, but it's observable reality. People get weirded out by how I write.)

If you want non-humans to work well, you will need boatloads more mechanics than just static penalty to a stat or two, and you will need strict roleplaying guidelines for those characteristics that deviate far from the human base.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-09-20, 03:16 PM
I could see a game that does non-humans well. Something between Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine (using XP to promote acting in specific ways and engaging emotionally with the table in particular ways) and Apocalypse World's engine (giving characters a select list of ways to interact with the world).

The point being, if you really want to delve into it, the game system really needs to delve into it.

Grinner
2013-09-20, 03:17 PM
Non-human characters in RPGs work poorly mostly because the players are still human. This was spelled out in 1st ED AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, and the observation still holds. Over at TV tropes, this is known as "planet of hats"; non-human races end up being merely exaggerations of very human qualities and traits.

There's a couple very good articles on writing aliens. I think they apply quite aptly.


13 Aspects About Aliens You Shouldn't Ignore (http://www.veronicasicoe.com/blog/2012/04/13-aspects-about-aliens-you-shouldnt-ignore/)
How to Create a Scientifically Plausible Alien Life Form (http://io9.com/5784971/how-to-create-a-scientifically-plausible-alien-life-form)
Science Fiction Problems: How to Write Aliens (http://lanternhollowpress.com/2011/03/30/science-fiction-problems-how-to-write-aliens/)

JusticeZero
2013-09-20, 03:28 PM
That said, most races in RPGs explicitly are based on a common chassis; the base assumption is apparently more likely to be that some common root race is polymorphic - like dogs - and the different "races" are just wildly differing breeds of the same root species.

Frozen_Feet
2013-09-20, 03:38 PM
It just stresses the point, though: since players are humans, the most popular non-human character types can't stray too far from humanity, lest the players become unable to use their real-life experience and emotions to direct such characters.

Rakaydos
2013-09-20, 05:16 PM
It just stresses the point, though: since players are humans, the most popular non-human character types can't stray too far from humanity, lest the players become unable to use their real-life experience and emotions to direct such characters.

Unless the setting assumes Sentience is universal- that any sentient race is prone to the full range of "human" personality types- but the host forms, the physical characteristics of the species, vary a great deal. You get rid of all the "stereotype" races, and simply give racial abilities. (which means you have to decide what humans are good at, or get rid of human as a race)

Myriad song does this quite well- the brain eating plants who gain mobility and sentience and knowelege after consuming grey matter, as a racial trend, really just want to not be killed for being what they are. They didnt choose to be what they are, and they know EXACTLY how awful it feels to be eaten- because they still remember it. The dino folk arent naturally inclined to any one personality, but most associate the species with a nefarious group of mercenaries employed by the Evil Empire(tm). And Humans have better Vision (but no electro-sensitive "radio-sense" at all) and get more social skills than most of the other races.

Frozen_Feet
2013-09-20, 06:06 PM
Unless the setting assumes Sentience is universal- that any sentient race is prone to the full range of "human" personality types- but the host forms, the physical characteristics of the species, vary a great deal. You get rid of all the "stereotype" races, and simply give racial abilities. (which means you have to decide what humans are good at, or get rid of human as a race)

This doesn't necessarily work any better. It becomes "humans in rubber suits" instead of "planet of hats". Sure, the physical differences are there, but their implications or pragmatic effects are left unexplored or forgotten about.

A fantasy example would be D&D Wizards in practice VS. D&D Wizards in D&D books VS. D&D Wizards in Tippyverse. They are all very different animals, due to average players, professional writers and theoretical optimization specialist having varying levels of skill in taking all the abilities to their logical conclusions.

So once again, it boils down to player skill. It's good to remember actually playing RPGs is fairly different from creative writing, and most players aren't budding sci-fi novelists anyway.

Rakaydos
2013-09-20, 06:11 PM
This doesn't necessarily work any better. It becomes "humans in rubber suits" instead of "planet of hats". Sure, the physical differences are there, but their implications or pragmatic effects are left unexplored or forgotten about.

That's going to happen regardless of what the seting says- setting up a steriotype just provokes more Drizzts to buck the steriotype, and focusing on physical, quantifiable differences gives a solid base for players to come up with their own interpretations of how someone with those abilities would act.

Grinner
2013-09-20, 06:13 PM
This doesn't necessarily work any better. It becomes "humans in rubber suits" instead of "planet of hats". Sure, the physical differences are there, but their implications or pragmatic effects are left unexplored or forgotten about.

A fantasy example would be D&D Wizards in practice VS. D&D Wizards in D&D books VS. D&D Wizards in Tippyverse. They are all very different animals, due to average players, professional writers and theoretical optimization specialist having varying levels of skill in taking all the abilities to their logical conclusions.

So once again, it boils down to player skill. It's good to remember actually playing RPGs is fairly different from creative writing, and most players aren't budding sci-fi novelists anyway.

A number of indie games demonstrate that it is not impossible to work fluff into a game's mechanics. It does boil down to skill, but if you provide the right guidance, that onus can be alleviated. The trick, I think, is to give the race a psychological profile more complex than "smashes things" or "nature lover".

Edit: If you will read the links I posted, you'll notice that one or two of them use the term "monoculture".

I think it's important to realize that we initially derive much of our personality from the social environment we grow up in, but games tend to equate races with cultures and, indirectly, outlooks. These monocultures result in these hats you mention.

jedipotter
2013-09-20, 09:42 PM
When Race is mentioned in RPGs, it rarely means choosing between Norwegian and British, so much as it involves being the lizard man or the even scarier lizard man (or the boring human). These in most games, involve bonuses to stats which reflect playing as whatever goblin you chose, and penalties as well.

Well, you only have two real options: Every race is exactly the same other then name or each race is different. RPG's, and all fiction for that matter, do the every race is different. Having each race different is more fun, intresting and dynamic.

And, yes, having each race different does make some concepts impossible. But that is the price to pay to not have every race just a bland name. If race A, B, C, D and E are all exactly the same....they why not just have race X for everyone.

Cerlis
2013-09-20, 09:55 PM
When Race is mentioned in RPGs, it rarely means choosing between Norwegian and British, so much as it involves being the lizard man or the even scarier lizard man (or the boring human). These in most games, involve bonuses to stats which reflect playing as whatever goblin you chose, and penalties as well.

Does this strike you as odd? Why do we do it this way, and why is it so fun? How do you make it fun like that?


If we removed the bonuses and penalties for playing as a Xenomorph, and became a mechanic with an above-average charisma and, "Alchoholic" as one of their flaws... you don't really feel like a Xenomorph any more. Feeling like the creature you are playing as seems to be the essence of what makes this work.


One problem I have always noticed from this system, is balancing it. They lower the intelligence of ogres to try and balance them--but if you play as a barbarian and dump INT, their "drawback" does not matter to you at all. If, however, you wanted to play an ogre scholar... you may as well be tied in knots.

This is similar to how traits work in RPGs. If you have phobias to stuff you'll never encounter, then your phobia flaw isn't a flaw. If you have traits you never get to use, they aren't advantages.

But, while those can still work to further the depth of your character... I feel a bit less optimistic about the way race works in RPGs. Seems to enforce racial roles a bit too strongly, rather than bringing an interesting flavour to a variety of roleplaying options like I want it to be.


Perhaps I'm the only one who feels this way. What are your thoughts on races in RPGs, why you like or hate them, how you think they should or shouldn't be?

I think the crux of the problem are the players not the game (which is a common problem in most games. Just research the topic of "dailies" and repeatable content in World of Warcraft)
Many of them are going to try to minimize disadvantages and take advantage of advantages.

This "problem" is made even "worse" whenever clever players are creative enough to make decisions like "well i want to be a kick ass fighter...what if i was an ogre.....Ooo If i do that i can have X and Y backstory...That will be fun!"

In fact i'm pretty decent about finding mechanically what I want in a character and then asking myself "Why would this be" and when i answer all those questions i end up with a complex interesting character.

This isnt an exact example as it actually concerns making a NON optimal character. But i have about 100 character ideas in my head, and if i ever played a Sorcerer or Beguiler i was planning on making him a Skarn Companion (Read:Firefly). They get a Str Racial bonus and natural attacks and i really liked the idea of having a caster who was Physically strong (if still ignorant about combat), who could carry a party member of lift them over a wall and when he punched you "hey, that actually hurt. Alot". As well as the fact that His Str plus natural weapons made him naturally dangerous as well as "exotic' within his own profession.

TheCountAlucard
2013-09-21, 01:02 AM
In, say, Shadowrun, trolls, elves, et cetera, are pretty much human, and most RPing differences will be down to things like upbringing, mindset, education, et cetera. A dwarf and an ork might have more in common if they're both Canadian auto mechanics than the same ork and an Aztlaner ork mage or street sam.

Rakaydos
2013-09-21, 01:26 AM
In, say, Shadowrun, trolls, elves, et cetera, are pretty much human, and most RPing differences will be down to things like upbringing, mindset, education, et cetera. A dwarf and an ork might have more in common if they're both Canadian auto mechanics than the same ork and an Aztlaner ork mage or street sam.

Exactly. Who you are is more important than WHAT you are.

Jay R
2013-09-21, 12:43 PM
Does this strike you as odd? Why do we do it this way, and why is it so fun? How do you make it fun like that?

Who cares? We observe that it is fun, so we continue to do it.

Oh, all right. I have no interest in races like tieflings that were basically invented for D&D. I like to play elves & dwarves & hobbits halflings, because it's like being part of Middle-Earth. So the races should be as close as possible to the way they appear in the stories.

Yes, their traits are related to a specific set of human traits, just as Rohan is based on Saxon culture. I don't care; these are what I wish to play.

D&D didn't invent these races, or the idea of adventuring in a medievaloid world with magic and monsters. It was written so people could play games of the scenarios they already loved.

That was nearly forty years ago, and I realize that many people today first found sword & sorcery adventure by playing D&D, so it's a very different experience for them. But my answer remains the same -


If we removed the bonuses and penalties for playing as a Xenomorph, and became a mechanic with an above-average charisma and, "Alchoholic" as one of their flaws... you don't really feel like a Xenomorph any more. Feeling like the creature you are playing as seems to be the essence of what makes this work.

Right. So we observe that the goal is to "feel like a Xenomorph".


One problem I have always noticed from this system, is balancing it. They lower the intelligence of ogres to try and balance them--but if you play as a barbarian and dump INT, their "drawback" does not matter to you at all.

Yup. The problem is people who take role-playing material and attempt to use it just for tactical gain. The closest thing to a solution is a competent GM. But no GM can make people play roles if all the really want to do is use their stats to win. As Oxybe said two weeks ago, "you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him pretend he's a magical fairy."


This is similar to how traits work in RPGs. If you have phobias to stuff you'll never encounter, then your phobia flaw isn't a flaw. If you have traits you never get to use, they aren't advantages.

If your phobia flaw never affects the game, then the real flaw is an unimaginative GM. I should design the encounters to use the PCs' flaws, for the same reason I should send a serious threat to the party.

I feel less need to design to the characters' abilities. It's their job to find a way to use the ability. Having said that, I don't want to make it impossible to use them. A first level with only Charm and Sleep spells shouldn't only face enemies who are immune to them. A cleric should occasionally get to face undead.


But, while those can still work to further the depth of your character... I feel a bit less optimistic about the way race works in RPGs. Seems to enforce racial roles a bit too strongly, rather than bringing an interesting flavour to a variety of roleplaying options like I want it to be.

That depends on the player. I'm currently playing an elf raised in a human orphanage. He didn't know why he had pointed ears, or even hear the word "elf", until third level. Since then, he has made a point of learning to speak elvish, trying to find out about elves from others, etc. But he learned no animosity with dwarves, and after he became an Earl, signed a very profitable agreement with the Dwarf King.


Perhaps I'm the only one who feels this way. What are your thoughts on races in RPGs, why you like or hate them, how you think they should or shouldn't be?

They are necessary to simulate the kinds of worlds that have non-human races in them. Ideally they should stay rare and mysterious to most humans.

But my experience shows that how well players role-play with them is based entirely on how well the players role-play in general. People who play excellent human PCs tend to play excellent dwarves. People whose elven PCs have no flavor also play humans like a pile of stats. An unimaginative player will not suddenly become imaginative when the character sheet says "elf" at the top.

JusticeZero
2013-09-21, 01:01 PM
The problem is people who take role-playing material and attempt to use it just for tactical gain.
That said, while I have no problem playing a non-optimal race choice for a character, I cringe at an actively sub-optimal one. Dwarf wizard? Sure, I can do that. The Dwarf bits don't help me be a better wizard, but they're nifty and I can play with the story. Half-orc wizard? Having to eat a penalty to int that makes me have to struggle and make major sacrifices to get up to a 16 Int? *whimper* That's a big jump down, given the mechanics I have to work with.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-09-21, 01:58 PM
I'm also a fan of designing mechanics so that gaming the system requires you to engage with the story and play your character well...

BWR
2013-09-21, 04:17 PM
For the most part it doesn't bother me that races are basically humans with or without some minor aspect, at least in cliche fantasy settings or something like Star Wars. For the most part they aren't supposed to be more alien than any real world culture, for all that they have minor physical and physiological differences. Their function in the setting is more story determined than anything else. Look at Tolkien's writings. The races aren't really all that different from each other, and their race in many ways determines how they work in the story. Forehead of the week works fine in things like Star Wars and Star Trek where the alienness is local color more than anything else.

If the point of the aliens is to be, well, alien, then for Zarquon's sake, put some effort into designing them and use your brain in trying to think of how they work. The problem is that as humans it is rather difficult to think outside the human box. You can make some educated guesses about some things but a truly alien mindset is alien. You can go the Lovecraft route and try to emphasize the differences by implication and understatement, but the more you try to describe and explain, the harder it gets to invent convincing alienness.

Amphetryon
2013-09-21, 04:43 PM
When Race is mentioned in RPGs, it rarely means choosing between Norwegian and British, so much as it involves being the lizard man or the even scarier lizard man (or the boring human). These in most games, involve bonuses to stats which reflect playing as whatever goblin you chose, and penalties as well.

Does this strike you as odd? Why do we do it this way, and why is it so fun? How do you make it fun like that?


If we removed the bonuses and penalties for playing as a Xenomorph, and became a mechanic with an above-average charisma and, "Alchoholic" as one of their flaws... you don't really feel like a Xenomorph any more. Feeling like the creature you are playing as seems to be the essence of what makes this work.


One problem I have always noticed from this system, is balancing it. They lower the intelligence of ogres to try and balance them--but if you play as a barbarian and dump INT, their "drawback" does not matter to you at all. If, however, you wanted to play an ogre scholar... you may as well be tied in knots.

This is similar to how traits work in RPGs. If you have phobias to stuff you'll never encounter, then your phobia flaw isn't a flaw. If you have traits you never get to use, they aren't advantages.

But, while those can still work to further the depth of your character... I feel a bit less optimistic about the way race works in RPGs. Seems to enforce racial roles a bit too strongly, rather than bringing an interesting flavour to a variety of roleplaying options like I want it to be.


Perhaps I'm the only one who feels this way. What are your thoughts on races in RPGs, why you like or hate them, how you think they should or shouldn't be?
If, in your opinion, this is a problem, how would you go about fixing it? Remember that your fix has to account for the thoroughly Human mindset of every Player of your proposed fix, and that any proposal that includes either advantages or disadvantages will, apparently, be likely to fall victim to these same issues, while a system without any such advantages or disadvantages will not necessarily provide ANY way of legitimately distinguishing Race during play in an RPG.

Mr. Mask
2013-09-22, 02:25 AM
Amphetryon: Well, I like Cerlis' example. He had a sorcerer, who wasn't a bad sorcerer. At the same time, the type of race he was playing gave him a reasonable punch. I'm assuming he was still far behind the pure-melee builds, and probably not as good as the really focused sorcerers--but that still sounds like a really useful and interesting build.

jedipotter
2013-09-22, 07:53 AM
Amphetryon: Well, I like Cerlis' example. He had a sorcerer, who wasn't a bad sorcerer. At the same time, the type of race he was playing gave him a reasonable punch. I'm assuming he was still far behind the pure-melee builds, and probably not as good as the really focused sorcerers--but that still sounds like a really useful and interesting build.

There are two views here, the optimized rule character and the role playing character. If your the rule one, you only care about each ''+1'' you can squeeze out of the rules. The role one does not care about the rules at all and just makes a character.

You don't really get middle ground. You either optimize, or you don't. You either must have mechanical rule things for your character...or you don't.

Take the ''know it all type character''. The role player type just makes any (repeat any) character. So they might make a tank fighter. Then just have him be an annoying know it all, but without a single game rule thing to support that. The rule character, on the other hand, must have ''+2'' to history cheacks or whatever.

Haarkla
2013-09-22, 08:16 AM
They lower the intelligence of ogres to try and balance them--but if you play as a barbarian and dump INT, their "drawback" does not matter to you at all. If, however, you wanted to play an ogre scholar... you may as well be tied in knots.

... I feel a bit less optimistic about the way race works in RPGs. Seems to enforce racial roles a bit too strongly, rather than bringing an interesting flavour to a variety of roleplaying options like I want it to be.

I disagree that the way race works in RPGs enforces racial roles too strongly.

In a mixed team it makes sense for everybody to play to their strengths, for example, on average halflings are going to be better burglars, dwarves warriors, elves bowmen/wizards, ect, so in a cosmopolitan setting it makes sense for them to develop those skills.

In most rpg systems creating an atypical race/class combination (i.e half-orc wizard) is likely to be sub-optimal rather than crippling. Which makes sense as enables say orcish wizards to exist and be useful, but the best wizards are, for instance, elves.

I am against the modern politically correct view that no race can be bad at anything. In my fantasy universe, different non-human races are fundamentally different and good at different things.

It would work better to just have access to race specific flaws and perks and call it a day. I like making characters who are against type,
I disagree. If there is no specific mechanical reason that, say halflings make bad warriors, then why are halfling warriors atypical?

Talyn
2013-09-22, 08:31 AM
For the most part it doesn't bother me that races are basically humans with or without some minor aspect, at least in cliche fantasy settings or something like Star Wars. For the most part they aren't supposed to be more alien than any real world culture, for all that they have minor physical and physiological differences. Their function in the setting is more story determined than anything else. Look at Tolkien's writings. The races aren't really all that different from each other, and their race in many ways determines how they work in the story. Forehead of the week works fine in things like Star Wars and Star Trek where the alienness is local color more than anything else.



The Tolkien example is not exactly accurate - humans and Numenoreans (who would be sufficiently different stat-wise from ordinary humans to qualify as a difference race in D&D terms) and hobbits have basically the same psychology and differences between them break down on more of a cultural level. Elves and dwarves, however, are alien - but you don't really notice that much, because they don't get as much "screen time" as the men and hobbits, and because the ones that make it to main character status (Gimli and Legolas) are oddballs within their own culture, which was part of the reason why they were chosen to be part of the Fellowship.

Dwarves, to Tolkien, were clannish in the extreme - every dwarf could, in theory, trace his entire family history back to one of the first seven dwarves created at the dawn of time. Family was literally everything to them, to an extent that a human would have a hard time understanding their motivation for doing something. Dwarves were also proud and greedy, and physically tough in direct proportion to how proud and greedy they were (notice how, in the Hobbit, the dwarves go from basically punching bags to unstoppable badasses once they get their hands on Smaug's treasure) - but it's not individual pride. It's pride and greed for their clan. When the dwarves went "mad with greed" (Tolkien's exact description) while literally wading through a vast room full of treasure, none of them pocketed any for themselves - because they were all kin! Dain, Thorin's cousin and King of the Iron Hills, literally grabbed every male dwarf within a day's ride and marched them through a hostile wilderness into the teeth of a much, MUCH larger army on zero notice, just because Thorin asked him to and because one of the "family holds" was under attack.

Elves, on the other hand, differ from humans in an entirely different way. Elves literally are magic - not the fireball-chucking kind, but the subtle magic that lets them shape the world around them. They are NOT all peaceful, tree-hugging hippies - that's basically just the Rivendell elves, who are secluded in a hidden and nigh-invincible fortress under the protection of a couple of elf demigods. The Wood Elves of the Greenwood (Legolas' people) are the most "human," just a fallible to greed and drunkenness and stiff-necked pride, but even they see the world entirely different from a human perspective. For them, life is basically is one big long party, where even their boring everyday tasks are done with song and a spirit of competition - even going to war was approached like the big sports game, with fight songs and grim smiles. Sure it's serious, and people will die, but life requires song.

Lothlorien elves (Galadriel et al), on the other hand, are basically the avatars of grief. A human in their condition would be considered terminally depressed, where they are literally incapable of NOT dwelling on the loss of those who came before and the inevitability of death (or at least leaving the world). Since, when elves die, their spirit returns to the Undying Lands, the retreat of the Highborn to the undying lands is basically a ritualistic mass suicide which is PERFECTLY NORMAL and a desirable thing. The ones who remain are the oddballs who haven't committed ritual suicide and have decided to die fighting instead. And yet, they as a society are perfectly functional - they grow food (with magic), make swords and arrows and wage war (with magic), sculpt and weave and sing and make love and do everything else that a society needs to be called a society.

Lots of people who think Tolkien's races were just humans with funny ears - including a lot of fantasy writers who tried to emulate him. But dwarves and elves are NOT humans, and Tolkien writes about how a lot of the heartache and bloodshed in Middle Earth comes from members of one race not understanding that other races see the world in a fundamentally different way.

jedipotter
2013-09-22, 09:24 AM
II am against the modern politically correct view that no race can be bad at anything. In my fantasy universe, different non-human races are fundamentally different and good at different things.


Even in the real world, not everyone can do everything. You can just be anything anything.

For the real world example: just look at animals. Turttles are not fast. Period. You can not make a fast moving turttle character. Great white sharks must keep moving to breathe, so they can't ''stay still and hide'' very well for a stealth character. A horse can not climb a tree.

Mr. Mask
2013-09-22, 10:24 AM
jedi: There have been times I wanted to play a certain kind of character... but the idea was shut off by myself or my gaming group because they were not optimal. Me feelings are much like Justice Zero's.

Horses climbing trees reminds me of something... http://goo.gl/5YmGdQ. My comparative knowledge between horse and goat isn't deep enough, to know what one lacks to accomplish the other's feats.

The example of the Xenomorph mechanic stands to agree with your feelings... I also don't want that sort of senselessness.


Haarkla: In DnD specifically, they actually had a, "Preferred Class" for each race, where if you multi-classed between it and other classes you would get a mechanical advantage, if I recall?

I dislike 4th Edition's attempt to balance all races, by giving every race two +2 bonuses to two stats. That was equally lazy.


Talyn: A master builder made a foundation, in good land which was lovely to the eye. Others saw his work, and praised him. Then, wanting to be part of that praise, others built atop the foundation. Soon, it became crowded, as any and many came to build there. Some disliked the crowded buildings which towered over them right and left, and so moved away from the foundation, building on the sand. Over time, the lovely countryside was overshadowed by a large, ugly city, made of many ramshackle buildings collapsing upon themselves, hiding the few which were made with skill. Looking at this, the new generation said, "Look at what the master builder has done!"

jedipotter
2013-09-22, 10:42 AM
jedi: There have been times I wanted to play a certain kind of character... but the idea was shut off by myself or my gaming group because they were not optimal. Me feelings are much like Justice Zero's.

So you'd want a sub race, of every race, that covered all types? Red elves are fast, blue elves are smart, green elves are wise and so on? So you'd have like 15-20 sub races for each race?

That just goes to making race pointless. When yellow elves are 400 pounts of pure beef cake fighter, purple elves are good at magic and white elves are sneaky, is there really any point in calling them ''elves''?

If every race is just ''everything'', then race is pontless. "Yea, i'm a Yellow elf that is exactly like every other strong guy race...but I have pointed ears."

Mr. Mask
2013-09-22, 10:58 AM
......Beg your pardon? You lost me.

Frozen_Feet
2013-09-22, 11:11 AM
Exactly. Who you are is more important than WHAT you are.

This implies who you are can be meaningfully distinquished from what you are. This usually isn't the case. I can only be who I am because I'm a human. I could not be who I am if I was some species of deep-sea crab.

What you are is only eclipsed by who you are when your comparison point has more similarities to you than differences.

jedipotter
2013-09-22, 12:00 PM
......Beg your pardon? You lost me.

If you were to make one type of each race, one strong one, one smart one, one fast one, you would quickly just end up with all races are identical and are just names. So you can say your an elf, orc or troll, but your exactly the same as everyone else.

So you take a 'standard elf' tall, slim, dextrous, good at magic and archery. Well you want to be a big tank fighter elf. So you shorten the elf and make him stocky. Loose the dexterity and make him strong. Loose the magic and bow and add in a horned helm and a battle axe. Well, ok, now you have a 'dwarf', that you are just pointlessly calling an 'elf'.


Think of humans. Say you wanted to do a 'plane crash' story with a bunch of people. So character one will be a guy from Texas. Now you could make character one ''just a guy exaclty like every other guy in the world, except he says he is from Texas'' or you can do it the right way: The guy from Texas will be a mondern day cowboy. Ok, now chaacter two will be a cool surfer dude. Again you can make him ''just a guy exaclty like every other guy in the world'' or you can make him a SoCal surfer dude.

Rakaydos
2013-09-22, 12:21 PM
This implies who you are can be meaningfully distinquished from what you are. This usually isn't the case. I can only be who I am because I'm a human. I could not be who I am if I was some species of deep-sea crab.

What you are is only eclipsed by who you are when your comparison point has more similarities to you than differences.

A hyperintelligent deep sea crab with a top hat, monocle, and maxxed knowleges is a perfectly valid archetype.

Just because a character has physical traits that define it, by making all (playable) races intellectually and emotionally equivalent in sentience, you can at lest justify the "Rubber suits" trope that players are going to follow anyway.

Consider the League of Legends characters Chogath, Anivia, and Skarner- nowhere near humanoid, but understandable and in their own ways reasonable.

Frozen_Feet
2013-09-22, 12:40 PM
A hyperintelligent deep sea crab with a top hat, monocle, and maxxed knowleges is a perfectly valid archetype.

... I'm not aware of any form of fiction where that kind of character is an archetype. :smalltongue: Semantical, I know, but still.


Just because a character has physical traits that define it, by making all (playable) races intellectually and emotionally equivalent in sentience, you can at lest justify the "Rubber suits" trope that players are going to follow anyway.


There we agree. But I'm not sure if it requires a justification. The other option is to just suspend disbelief and accept humans are bad at playing non-humans.

Can't comment on LoL, never having played it.

Ailurus
2013-09-22, 02:18 PM
A hyperintelligent deep sea crab with a top hat, monocle, and maxxed knowleges is a perfectly valid archetype.

Just because a character has physical traits that define it, by making all (playable) races intellectually and emotionally equivalent in sentience, you can at lest justify the "Rubber suits" trope that players are going to follow anyway.


Well, yes and no. I agree that said deep sea crab would be a perfectly valid archetype. But, at the same time, why (or more significantly, how) would the crab possibly think/act/etc. anything like, say, a top-hat-and-monocle-wearing Englishman with maxxed out knowledge skills who happened to have a pair of claws somehow?

Now, true, I concede that most players will rubber-suit it (or, at best, maybe getting him acting like a smart version of Dr. Zoidberg) but from a world-building PoV a race of deep sea crabs should have fundamental differences in just about every thought process than land-dwelling races. Heck, just the fact that said crab (if anything like actual deep sea crabs) sees in a weird form of ultraviolet rather than regular vision would color (no pun intended) his view of the world.

Jay R
2013-09-22, 02:40 PM
The other option is to just suspend disbelief and accept humans are bad at playing non-humans.

I've played alongside elf, dwarf, and hobbit PCs that seemed consistent with Tolkien, with an elf that seemed consistent with Pini, and a centaur that felt properly Narnian.

It's not impossible for intelligent, well-read players with good imagination to follow a literary archetype.

Amphetryon
2013-09-22, 05:17 PM
Amphetryon: Well, I like Cerlis' example. He had a sorcerer, who wasn't a bad sorcerer. At the same time, the type of race he was playing gave him a reasonable punch. I'm assuming he was still far behind the pure-melee builds, and probably not as good as the really focused sorcerers--but that still sounds like a really useful and interesting build.

You lost me. There's nothing particularly atypical about a Sorcerer who melees (it's a Gish staple, for one thing), and the "strong Sorcerer" archetype appears, to me, to reinforce the Racial role of the "melee-focused Skarn" rather tidily. My read on your initial post was that reinforcing those Racial roles was something you wished to avoid, while also not punishing a Player for using an unusual Race/Class concept.

Scow2
2013-09-22, 06:13 PM
I think the biggest problem with races in RPGs is people try differentiating them by looking at how different real-world cultures can be, even though we're all the same race. We're using definitions of humanism and personality from the 18th and 19th centuries.

To truly differentiate and make races matter, you can't start with "Human, but with X difference". You should start with something alien/animal and different, and then slightly humanize it.

I hate that the term is "race" in RPGs, instead of "Species", because Race has too much equality implied.

TheCountAlucard
2013-09-22, 06:58 PM
But if it's a matter of species, then why can, say, orks and humans breed? And in some games, it really is more akin to nationality or ethnicity than being a different species. Again, I feel I must call up Shadowrun's metatypes as an example.

Scow2
2013-09-22, 08:52 PM
But if it's a matter of species, then why can, say, orks and humans breed?Because originally, Orcs were just that perverse - they could take 'pure' humans, and force them to make something monstrous. It's essentially a way to make them more evil and vile in a way modern audiences don't want to even consider.

In newer incarnations, Orcs are the most human-like of the 'monstrous' races, and also frequently most-often redeemed. (In Eberron, they're the ancestral guardians of nature, while Elves rampage across the land in conquest-bent hordes :smalltongue:)

JusticeZero
2013-09-23, 12:02 AM
Usually these days, whenever someone brings up anything having to do with orcs and halforcs, they want to have the impoverished background and the scary and intimidating presence inherent to <insert whatever minority everyone hates in your neighborhood here>.

Frozen_Feet
2013-09-23, 01:01 AM
But if it's a matter of species, then why can, say, orks and humans breed?

The real reason is, of course, that fantasy writers are not biologists. :smalltongue: They don't set to write out science fiction, so expecting any sort of scientific fidelity is hoping a bit much.

As a side note, there are many far-off species that can get viable offspring - lions and tigers, for example. There are also ring species, where X and Y can breed, and Y and Z can breed, but X and Z absolutely can not. The concept and demarcation of species is a far more complicated thing than is usually acknowledged in fiction, or casual discussion for that matter.

hamishspence
2013-09-23, 01:25 AM
Lions and tigers are physically extremely close (it's very hard for any but an expert to tell the difference between a lion skeleton and a tiger skeleton).

They produce viable, but usually sterile, offspring.

Probably more dramatic is the bottlenose dolphin/false killer whale pairing (far more physically different- considered different genera rather than just different species)- nonetheless, have been known to produce wholphin offspring, which are sometimes fertile offspring.

Mr. Mask
2013-09-23, 02:17 AM
Amphetryon: He didn't describe his Skarn as a Gish, he described them as a sorcerer who could, when needed, hit hard. The way I understood it, the melee ability is a sub-role which they're good at. The racial role for a Skarn would be a Monk or some other melee class which best utilizes its natural attacks and strength. The way the race is set up, however, it seems to work well as most classes, so far as I can tell. Unlike the ogre, who is a ton more effective as a melee build than as any spellcaster.

Frozen_Feet
2013-09-23, 03:49 AM
Lions and tigers are physically extremely close (it's very hard for any but an expert to tell the difference between a lion skeleton and a tiger skeleton).

How come? Tigers tend to be much larger than lions. Just the size difference should usually tip you off.

Nevermind that you usually don't look at just their skeletons. Both physically and behaviorally, tigers and lions are extremely distinctive of one another.


They produce viable, but usually sterile, offspring.

Either tigons or ligers tend to be fertile, actually. Don't remember which, though.

Lorsa
2013-09-23, 04:38 AM
I've played alongside elf, dwarf, and hobbit PCs that seemed consistent with Tolkien, with an elf that seemed consistent with Pini, and a centaur that felt properly Narnian.

It's not impossible for intelligent, well-read players with good imagination to follow a literary archetype.

Because if it was impossible, then those literary archetypes would impossibly exist as it is assumed the writers themselves are also human.

hamishspence
2013-09-23, 06:22 AM
How come? Tigers tend to be much larger than lions. Just the size difference should usually tip you off.

There are several subspecies- some on average larger, some not. Lions tend to be a little longer in the leg, proportionally, than tigers.

I'm trying to look at it from the point of view of a paleontologist- behaviour is tricky to extrapolate from fossils.

Either tigons or ligers tend to be fertile, actually. Don't remember which, though.
Female tigons, at least, have been recorded as having produced offspring- but this may be the exception rather than the rule:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigon_(hybrid)

Wikipedia suggests (in the Tiger article) that female ligers are also "often fertile" (with males usually being sterile) but apparently there's only one well known liger-lion hybrid currently in existence- a cub called Kiara.

JusticeZero
2013-09-23, 11:55 AM
I'm more inclined to just discard terrestrial biology, honestly. Just keep things generally consistent.

Amphetryon
2013-09-23, 12:41 PM
Amphetryon: He didn't describe his Skarn as a Gish, he described them as a sorcerer who could, when needed, hit hard. The way I understood it, the melee ability is a sub-role which they're good at. The racial role for a Skarn would be a Monk or some other melee class which best utilizes its natural attacks and strength. The way the race is set up, however, it seems to work well as most classes, so far as I can tell. Unlike the ogre, who is a ton more effective as a melee build than as any spellcaster.

A Sorcerer who can, when needed, hit hard is - perhaps - not synonymous with a Gish, but the difference is close enough that you'd be hard-pressed to see the difference in actual play without peeking at the Character sheet. So, again, a Sorcerer who utilizes STR and Natural Attacks sounds exactly like something they designed the Skarn to be good at, which makes a Character built to those specifications sound quite a lot like the very thing your original post objects to.

Black Jester
2013-09-23, 12:43 PM
Now, if you really want to avoid non-human sentient species to be some kind of humans, but with a few stat bonuses here and there and a rubber forehead, what happens if you remove actual humans from the setting?
There are all kinds of humanoids - the usual mix - but no humans, or humans which only existed once as some sort of extinct predecessor species but have long gone since.
I think with a constellation like this, it might be easier to treat every humanoid species more like a standalone culture instead as just a deviation of a central theme.

Mr. Mask
2013-09-23, 01:34 PM
Amphetryon: If they made the Skarn with the intention it would work well, whether with wizardry or weapons: wonderful.

The Skarn appears to have all the factors I want a race's design to have. Playing as it, you aren't restricted from a variety of builds and classes for the sake of optimization, and the features which make the race unique and interesting seem to implement themselves nicely into whatever you decide to play as (albeit, maybe the Skarn isn't an extremely creative example [can't say for sure, since I know little about the race], but still).

Amphetryon
2013-09-23, 04:05 PM
Amphetryon: He didn't describe his Skarn as a Gish, he described them as a sorcerer who could, when needed, hit hard. The way I understood it, the melee ability is a sub-role which they're good at. The racial role for a Skarn would be a Monk or some other melee class which best utilizes its natural attacks and strength. The way the race is set up, however, it seems to work well as most classes, so far as I can tell. Unlike the ogre, who is a ton more effective as a melee build than as any spellcaster.

This represents a substantial shift in your original position, or a substantial communication problem on your original position on one of our parts. As I understood, and reiterated, your original position, you wanted to see Races that both: 1)were mechanically distinct (so that the didn't all look the same with different "hats"), and 2) didn't encourage specific archetypes for Character creation (so that Players weren't penalized mechanically, or incentivized, for choosing to combine a particular Race and Class). Skarn, with built-in Natural Attacks, as well as specific Attribute bonuses/penalties, don't make the cut given the previous sentence; I'm not aware of any Race in D&D (or another RPG that incorporates Race in Character Creation) that manages to fulfill both of those criteria, for that matter.

Mr. Mask
2013-09-23, 04:27 PM
Those are the criteria. Doesn't the Skarn fit in with that? From what I can tell, they seem to work fine with most builds.

Amphetryon
2013-09-23, 04:58 PM
Those are the criteria. Doesn't the Skarn fit in with that? From what I can tell, they seem to work fine with most builds.

Any Race with a penalty or bonus to any Attribute would automatically favor particular concepts, while punishing others; a Skarn Ray Specialist Sorcerer would be actively punished by the stats, as I understand your take on things, while a Skarn Sorcerer who took advantage of his STR bonus and/or Natural Weapons would be falling into one of the "encouraged" archetypes by emphasizing those things the Race is naturally good at. The Races that lack indicators of what they might be good at (with no bonuses/penalties to any Stats, and no special abilities like a Natural Weapon) fails the second criteria, by falling into the "Human with a different hat" category. I can think of no Races that do not fall into one or the other category, as I indicated before.

Mr. Mask
2013-09-23, 05:03 PM
They'd be a slightly less good ray-specialist, who'd be able to whack someone quite nicely when forced into melee. This is not like the example of the ogre wizard, who is simply far better off with a melee build.

Amphetryon
2013-09-23, 05:11 PM
They'd be a slightly less good ray-specialist, who'd be able to whack someone quite nicely when forced into melee. This is not like the example of the ogre wizard, who is simply far better off with a melee build.

Depends entirely on which stat scores were generated, and how they were assigned, as well as the type of Wizard considered; get an 18 and stick it in INT, and your Ogre is generally just fine, if less "optimal" than a higher INT Race. Again, those that would emphasize melee spells and Gishing it up would do just fine, while those trying to stay back and rely on SoL or Ray spells would struggle. The only difference here is penalties to mental stats, rather than physical ones in the Skarn's case.

If your argument is that physical stats and mental stats are weighted differently in games - particularly D&D - that's an entirely different argument than originally posited.

Mr. Mask
2013-09-24, 01:02 AM
Put that same 18 into Strength, and you have a goliath with 28 strength, as opposed to a wizard with 14 INT. (Although... I guess with DnD, even a bad wizard is better than a great barbarian.) 14 INT could be acceptable for a wizard, if not for the level adjustment. Admittedly, level adjustments are pretty poorly thought out and balanced regardless... but level seems to be far more important for wizards than for fighters and barbarians.

Luckmann
2013-09-24, 04:07 AM
I never liked the way it's always "races" in (primarily) fantasy contexts, because what they often mean is species. This is of course muddled by the fact that there's all kinds of potential crossbreeding that really makes no sense in context at all, which is another personal pet-peeve of mine.

But enough about that. I like the concept of races and the implied modifiers that comes with such a system.

I think that much of the problem comes with the distribution of stats. Most players (in my own, highly personal experience - mileage may vary) do away with the inherent randomness of dice rolling characters precisely because they want to be able to define parameters of their characters ahead of time.

You roll poorly on your Dexterity, for example, you're going to have a really hard time realizing that concept you had going in your head for a stealthy rogue. Even with free application of rolls on whatever attribute you want, you're not going to be able to do the Spellthief you always wanted, if the dice-gods are against you; you simply don't get two good rolls to get both nice Intelligence and Dexterity.

If you roll for dice, it becomes a question of averages. So, Ogres have -2 Intelligence. This, much like real-life races, doesn't mean that "all ogres are stupid". It simply means that, on average, ogres are more stupid than some other species' average.

-2 Intelligence on average isn't a lot. But -2 Intelligence as a hard cap difference between 18 and 20 is.

I'm not saying that you should always roll for stats, or that the system of races and species is inherently good or bad, or that point-buy is terrible; I personally prefer statblocks, even though I know this is open for "abuse".

We're kinda flawed that way, as humans, I mean. We try to get an edge, it's more or less in our bones, and I think that given the chance, we'll start to optimize. Maybe not entirely, it may not be the end goal, but we all want to be good at what we do, and it is seldom that someone wants to realize a concept that is suck at everything.

So we look at those stats, and we don't see the averages, we see the hard caps, because naturally uneasy and nervous, we don't want to leave it up to chance. So we go with point-buy or statlines, and we stare at the stats, and we try to make the best out of what we were given, realize our concept, and try not to suck as much as possible at what we want to do with it.

And in the end, I have no clue what to do about it. On one hand, it makes perfect sense and I really do like it, concept-wise. On the other hand, I fully realize that this makes it hard to make those characters that I may want to make myself, such as the Orc that actually is smarter than the average and excels at magic, or the Hive Sibellus scumlord that isn't covered in oil and mud.

Just my two cents. :smallconfused:

Amphetryon
2013-09-24, 06:18 AM
Put that same 18 into Strength, and you have a goliath with 28 strength, as opposed to a wizard with 14 INT. (Although... I guess with DnD, even a bad wizard is better than a great barbarian.) 14 INT could be acceptable for a wizard, if not for the level adjustment. Admittedly, level adjustments are pretty poorly thought out and balanced regardless... but level seems to be far more important for wizards than for fighters and barbarians.

I'm not sure how this runs contrary to my argument, in any way. The 14 will still work "just fine," but other choices will be better. Your initial post wished to do away with any creation method where certain Race options were superior, AND where all options looked the same. I maintain that those goals are incompatible with any Character creation system I've ever seen that actually incorporates Race.

Mr. Mask
2013-09-24, 08:57 AM
I maintain that those goals are incompatible with any Character creation system I've ever seen that actually incorporates Race. That's the crux of it.

Frozen_Feet
2013-09-24, 09:17 AM
That's because it's a logical impossibility. It's impossible for two options to be meaningfully different from each other AND equally viable in every situation. The best you can hope for "equal but different" is a situation where every advantage is balanced by commensurate disadvantage. So character options will superior in some ways and inferior in others, so that taken as a whole they will perform equally well - just differently.

In practice, for things like the Ogre Wizard, the physical score increases should have equal utility to lost spellcasting ability. As long as we talk D&D 3.5, that is not so.

Mr. Mask
2013-09-24, 09:36 AM
Precisely. If you play as an ogre wizard, it should be that your physical strength along with the utility of spells is a comparably good build to a pure-physical ogre.

GolemsVoice
2013-09-24, 09:45 AM
Hm, why should picking races always be a zero-sum-game? I mean, we have a race that's very strong, but has a penalty to the casting stat. Why should that race be equally effective when it does what it is GOOD in as when it does what it's BAD in?

Frozen_Feet
2013-09-24, 09:54 AM
More like it should encounter as many things it is good at as it is bad at, so taken as a whole, it is equal to a build with reversed priorities. Whether this is a desireable design goal is up in the air.

GolemsVoice
2013-09-24, 09:57 AM
Hm, what do you mean by "encounter"? If I'm very strong, I shouldn't always encounter things that can only be solved by magic, and vice versa?

Mr. Mask
2013-09-24, 09:59 AM
The main problem you could run into with this kind of design goal, is if you took away from the key element of race in games: Feeling like the thing you're playing as. The lazy way of accomplishing the design goal runs into this.

Segev
2013-09-24, 10:21 AM
In original D&D, characters who had a character class were human. Non-human characters actually had their race as their class: elves were their own class, and were basically fighter/wizards. Hobbits/halflings were a sort of thief (and I'm not entirely clear on how they differed from human ones, really). Dwarves wound up as a fighter/thief hybrid with a heavier emphasis on finding/disabling traps than on the stealing/mobility/backstabbing rules.

Paladium - which is, as far as I can tell, a very heavily modified 1st or 2nd ed. AD&D with extra stats and a different skill subsystem attached - has "O.C.C." and "R.C.C." as things: Occupational and Racial character classes. But you only have one of them; there's no multiclassing. If you're of a race that has a lot of special rules, you take the R.C.C. and that's what you are. Most characters are humans with O.C.C.s. I believe non-humans can take O.C.C.s; Paladium is not well-balanced (and at times is almost proud of this), and so being of a non-human race and taking an O.C.C. tends to be mechanically superior since you get a fair bit of the racial powers added to whatever O.C.C. class features you want. (There's a lot of "the GM should just say 'no' to characters who are abusing this" in the rules; philosophically, that bugs me for a number of reasons into which I will not go in this post. It's a longer essay/rant of its own.)

I've wondered, however, if the R.C.C. idea isn't a good core to start with. What if a D&D-esq class-and-levels system were innately Gestalt, but what you always Gestalted was your race up one side and your class up the other?

Borrowing D&D 3e conceits for a moment, every race would have 20 levels, just like every class does, and you'd raise your racial level alongside your class level.

Stepping away from 3e conceits, and looking more at Paladium and AD&D, if you stepped back to differing exp charts for different classes, you could do similarly for different races. A given character would have one exp total, and use it to determine his level in his race and his class. "Weaker" (or at least more granulated) races and classes would have faster progressions to make up for their lesser power; more hit dice/points and more generic level-based stat-ups would counterbalance lack in special powers.


But it would be a way to work on rebalancing things. Sure, an ogre barbarian would still be stronger than an ogre wizard, just as a gestalt psion//wilder is stronger than a gestalt druid//rogue. But at least there would be less "that race is just broken." Or, if there was, it would be no different than "that class is just broken."

Frozen_Feet
2013-09-24, 10:27 AM
Hm, what do you mean by "encounter"? If I'm very strong, I shouldn't always encounter things that can only be solved by magic, and vice versa?

Encounter as a verb. In this case, it means that after encounter problem X (that you are good at solving) you should encounter a commensurate problem Y (that you are bad at solving).

A rough example: Bob is good at running, but bad at solving puzzles, while Jill is slow but great at puzzle-solving. During an obstacle course, Bob of course gets to the puzzle first, but takes so long to solve it that Jill catches up with him and they finish at the same time.

Jay R
2013-09-24, 12:15 PM
In original D&D, characters who had a character class were human. Non-human characters actually had their race as their class: elves were their own class, and were basically fighter/wizards. Hobbits/halflings were a sort of thief (and I'm not entirely clear on how they differed from human ones, really). Dwarves wound up as a fighter/thief hybrid with a heavier emphasis on finding/disabling traps than on the stealing/mobility/backstabbing rules.

You're confusing Basic D&D with original D&D. You're talking about Basic D&D, which first appeared in 1977. Original D&D was a three-pamphlet game in a white box, begun three years earlier in 1974. The classes were Fighting-Man, Magic-User, and Cleric.

Men (humans) could be any of them. Dwarves could only opt for the fighting class. Elves could begin as either Fighting-Men or Magic-Users, and freely switch between games. They maxed out at 4th level Fighting-Man and 8th-level Magic-User. Hobbits were limited to the Fighting-Man class, up to 4th level.

Thieves were introduced in the first supplement (Greyhawk), which also introduced Paladins and half-elves, and opened up the limits a little. A separate class for Dwarven Fighters was introduced in The Dragon #3.

Humanoids as their own class was first introduced in Basic D&D a few years later. A lot of people confuse Basic D&D with the original product, which was simply Dungeons and Dragons.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-09-24, 12:37 PM
I never liked the way it's always "races" in (primarily) fantasy contexts, because what they often mean is species. This is of course muddled by the fact that there's all kinds of potential crossbreeding that really makes no sense in context at all, which is another personal pet-peeve of mine.
It mainly irks me because the notion of a race giving you significant abilities/debilities is rather...problematic. "Species" isn't exactly correct, either; my favorite compromise is the Burning* games' use of the phrase "stock". You might have a Mannish stock, an Orcish stock, a Dwarvish stock, etc. Sidesteps the big issues and the science issues, and remains a flavorful fantasy-tinged word.

Luckmann
2013-09-24, 01:14 PM
It mainly irks me because the notion of a race giving you significant abilities/debilities is rather...problematic. "Species" isn't exactly correct, either; my favorite compromise is the Burning* games' use of the phrase "stock". You might have a Mannish stock, an Orcish stock, a Dwarvish stock, etc. Sidesteps the big issues and the science issues, and remains a flavorful fantasy-tinged word.

Why would the notion of race giving you significant abilities or debilities be problematic? The problem I have with "race" is that more often than not, there's simply no relation between the "races", unless someone would argue that a Thri-Kreen is some kind of ancient Halfling offshoot.

"Species", however, works excellently, since it implies no relation. Or, at least, an incredibly distant one.

"Stock" would, to me, imply an even closer relation than race.

Segev
2013-09-24, 01:52 PM
You're confusing Basic D&D with original D&D. You're talking about Basic D&D, which first appeared in 1977. Original D&D was a three-pamphlet game in a white box, begun three years earlier in 1974. The classes were Fighting-Man, Magic-User, and Cleric.

Men (humans) could be any of them. Dwarves could only opt for the fighting class. Elves could begin as either Fighting-Men or Magic-Users, and freely switch between games. They maxed out at 4th level Fighting-Man and 8th-level Magic-User. Hobbits were limited to the Fighting-Man class, up to 4th level.

Thieves were introduced in the first supplement (Greyhawk), which also introduced Paladins and half-elves, and opened up the limits a little. A separate class for Dwarven Fighters was introduced in The Dragon #3.

Humanoids as their own class was first introduced in Basic D&D a few years later. A lot of people confuse Basic D&D with the original product, which was simply Dungeons and Dragons.
My main source is that I have the Hollow World setting, which uses decidedly pre-A D&D rules, and has elves as their own class, dwarves as a class, etc. It calls out some specific differences precisely because the elves lack magic in that setting.

TuggyNE
2013-09-24, 07:34 PM
I've wondered, however, if the R.C.C. idea isn't a good core to start with. What if a D&D-esq class-and-levels system were innately Gestalt, but what you always Gestalted was your race up one side and your class up the other?

That is, in fact, much like Oracle_Hunter's Gold and Glory clone is shaping up to use.

GolemsVoice
2013-09-25, 03:41 AM
Why would the notion of race giving you significant abilities or debilities be problematic? The problem I have with "race" is that more often than not, there's simply no relation between the "races", unless someone would argue that a Thri-Kreen is some kind of ancient Halfling offshoot.

I don't see the problem either, apart from some incorrect usage of the word. Yes, the word race has uncomfortable real-world conotations, but here, race denots the difference between somebody who is a four-armed insect and somebody whose head is floating a few centimetres above his neck. I think being a man-sized bug SHOULD give you different abilities than being a man-sized man.

Rhynn
2013-09-25, 05:29 AM
I'm more inclined to just discard terrestrial biology, honestly. Just keep things generally consistent.

Yeah, I don't quite understand what genetics and taxonomy have to do with creatures usually created from nothing by gods.


Now, if you really want to avoid non-human sentient species to be some kind of humans, but with a few stat bonuses here and there and a rubber forehead, what happens if you remove actual humans from the setting?
There are all kinds of humanoids - the usual mix - but no humans, or humans which only existed once as some sort of extinct predecessor species but have long gone since.
I think with a constellation like this, it might be easier to treat every humanoid species more like a standalone culture instead as just a deviation of a central theme.

Talislanta does that (and doesn't even cotton to your usual fantasy species), but for me, the world just feels mostly unapproachable.


That's because it's a logical impossibility. It's impossible for two options to be meaningfully different from each other AND equally viable in every situation. The best you can hope for "equal but different" is a situation where every advantage is balanced by commensurate disadvantage. So character options will superior in some ways and inferior in others, so that taken as a whole they will perform equally well - just differently.

RuneQuest runs with this. Non-human races are frequently plain better than humans; trolls, for instance, are as smart, charismatic, dextrous and magically powerful as humans, but are also bigger and stronger and have armor-skin and a deadly bite. Mistress race trolls are even better.

There's no pretension to "balance" - it's the GM's job to handle the campaign and the world. Good luck playing a troll in, say, a traditional Sartar Heortling campaign. Good luck even being allowed to. (And even in an old-school Pavic campaign, they're going to face a lot of problems humans won't have.)

But these problems aren't a function of the race. A Kralorelan will also have big problems in a Sartar Heortling campaign, as will a Dara Happan...


My main source is that I have the Hollow World setting, which uses decidedly pre-A D&D rules, and has elves as their own class, dwarves as a class, etc. It calls out some specific differences precisely because the elves lack magic in that setting.

Hollow World is BECMI (it's a Mystara sub-setting). Everything Jay R said was accurate. BECMI or "Mentzer Basic" is the third iteration of Basic D&D, following Holmes' first and Moldvay's second Basic (usually called B/X collectively). Holmes' Basic D&D was an attempt to re-organize Original D&D to... well, make more sense, but it also simplified some things and dropped others entirely.

hamishspence
2013-09-25, 06:09 AM
Holmes' Basic D&D was an attempt to re-organize Original D&D to... well, make more sense, but it also simplified some things and dropped others entirely.

I remember it having 5 alignments rather than 9 or 3.

Segev
2013-09-25, 07:27 AM
Hollow World is BECMI (it's a Mystara sub-setting). Everything Jay R said was accurate. BECMI or "Mentzer Basic" is the third iteration of Basic D&D, following Holmes' first and Moldvay's second Basic (usually called B/X collectively). Holmes' Basic D&D was an attempt to re-organize Original D&D to... well, make more sense, but it also simplified some things and dropped others entirely.Ah! Good to know. First I'd heard of "Mentzer Basic."


I remember it having 5 alignments rather than 9 or 3.

At least if Hollow World is accurate to it, it has 3: Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic. And Lawful really is LG, and Chaotic really is CE. SOMETIMES, there are Chaotic entities that are CN-with-only-slightly-evil-tendencies, but the way things have alignments assigned, even those we 3e players would call "LE" get labeled "Chaotic," and conversely for beings we'd call "CG" being labeled "Lawful."

Rhynn
2013-09-25, 08:02 AM
Ah! Good to know. First I'd heard of "Mentzer Basic."

"Basic D&D" comes in three flavors. The first two are mostly identical: Eric J. Holmes' D&D Basic Set is from 1977 and has the blue-and-white cover; Tom Moldvay's revision is from 1981 and has the red Errol Otus cover, and was followed by Dave Cook's Expert Set (hence this edition is called "B/X"); Frank Mentzer's Basic Set is a very different beast, has the red Larry Elmore covers, and was followed by three great expansions (Expert, Companion, Master) and one horrible one (Immortals), in total is called BECMI, and was re-published all together as the D&D Rules Cyclopedia.

All of these had Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling as classes, with slightly more elaborated mechanics than just summarizing the class options they had in OD&D. AD&D 1E (1977) and the various Basic editions were different takes on the OD&D rules, and clarified and expanded on them in different ways. While they're fairly easy to use together, neither follows from the other, but both come from common roots.

D&D edition history is a little complex...


I remember it having 5 alignments rather than 9 or 3.

Nope. OD&D and all versions of Basic have Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic as the alignments (cf. Men & Magic page 9 and Moldvay Basic Set page B11). AD&D 1E adds the Good-Neutral-Evil axis. D&D 4E is the one with 5 alignments IIRC: Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, and Chaotic Evil. (I think it's a pity that the original alignment system degenerated that badly. It's one of the more interesting aspects of old D&D to me, and obviously to many OSR people, given how much it's played up in OSR products like DCC and ACKS.)


At least if Hollow World is accurate to it, it has 3: Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic. And Lawful really is LG, and Chaotic really is CE. SOMETIMES, there are Chaotic entities that are CN-with-only-slightly-evil-tendencies, but the way things have alignments assigned, even those we 3e players would call "LE" get labeled "Chaotic," and conversely for beings we'd call "CG" being labeled "Lawful."

That is the unfortunately simplistic Basic D&D approach, which rather misses the mark and falls short of the original inspirations (Poul Anderson, and maybe Michael Moorcock a little).

Segev
2013-09-25, 08:58 AM
Honestly, I had thought AD&D post-dated Hollow World's "Basic" rules. Hence, I thought the introduction of the Good/Evil axis was precisely because they were realizing that they were missing the mark on what "Lawful" and "Chaotic" really meant, and wanted to divorce the morality aspect of alignment from it.

Rhynn
2013-09-25, 09:44 AM
Honestly, I had thought AD&D post-dated Hollow World's "Basic" rules. Hence, I thought the introduction of the Good/Evil axis was precisely because they were realizing that they were missing the mark on what "Lawful" and "Chaotic" really meant, and wanted to divorce the morality aspect of alignment from it.

Yeah, it's a common point of confusion. AD&D 1E (Gygax) and Basic D&D (Holmes) were actually published the same year. AD&D is several years older than any published Mystara material, as far as I'm aware; the Grand Duchy of Karameikos first shows up in the Expert Rules for B/X (1981).

hamishspence
2013-09-25, 09:48 AM
Nope. OD&D and all versions of Basic have Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic as the alignments (cf. Men & Magic page 9 and Moldvay Basic Set page B11). AD&D 1E adds the Good-Neutral-Evil axis. D&D 4E is the one with 5 alignments IIRC: Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, and Chaotic Evil.

I've got a 1979 copy, labelled Eric Holmes Basic D&D, that clearly shows 5 alignments (LG, CG, N, LE, CE).

The diagram looks a bit like a four-lobed propeller inside a square.

Rhynn
2013-09-25, 09:51 AM
I've got a 1979 copy, labelled Eric Holmes Basic D&D, that clearly shows 5 alignments (LG, CG, N, LE, CE).

Huh, I had no idea. I've only got the Mentzer BECMI series and the 1981 Moldvay Basic, and both (like OD&D) have three alignments. That is an odd variation! I suppose Holmes was working in something of what he knew Gygax was putting into AD&D, but Moldvay dropped it...

hamishspence
2013-09-25, 09:54 AM
I've seen some references in Rules Cyclopedia (and, I think, the Master Mentzer set) - that say that, while Lawful usually corresponds to good, and Chaotic to evil- this is not always the case- that Chaotics can be happy-go-lucky and unpredictable rather than malevolent, for example.

I think Chaotic genies in particular were supposed to typify this in Mentzer D&D.

Rhynn
2013-09-25, 09:58 AM
I've seen some references in Rules Cyclopedia (and, I think, the Master Mentzer set) - that say that, while Lawful usually corresponds to good, and Chaotic to evil- this is not always the case- that Chaotics can be happy-go-lucky and unpredictable rather than malevolent, for example.

I think Chaotic genies in particular were supposed to typify this in Mentzer D&D.

Yeah, Moldvay basic tells us that Chaos "is the opposite of law", "the belief that life is random, and that chance and uck rule the world. Everything happens by accident, and nothing can be predicted." But it also tells us that from Chaotic view, "laws are made to be broken, as long as a person can get away with it. It is not important to keep promises, and lying and telling the truth are both useful."

Basically, not everything Chaotic is evil, but it is something of a sociopathic, antisocial alignment.

I definitely view Chaos as the "enemy alignment" in my games, but I don't conflate it with evil; for me, it's more about being the antithesis of human civilization and order, typified by creatures as varied as Faeries, orcs, and eldritch horrors and chtonic gods of the underworld.

Jayabalard
2013-09-25, 10:16 AM
One problem I have always noticed from this system, is balancing it. They lower the intelligence of ogres to try and balance them--but if you play as a barbarian and dump INT, their "drawback" does not matter to you at all. If, however, you wanted to play an ogre scholar... you may as well be tied in knots.That's a feature, not a problem. Ogre scholars are ridiculously rare; ogre barbarians are a dime a dozen.

kyoryu
2013-09-25, 12:31 PM
Dave Cook's Expert Set

I had to do a double-take when I saw this - the process went like "but Zeb did that... oh, yeah, that's right, David's his legal name."

:smallbiggrin:

erikun
2013-09-25, 04:05 PM
Does this strike you as odd? Why do we do it this way, and why is it so fun? How do you make it fun like that?
We do it that way because Tolkien did in that way, and later D&D did in that way. So many RPGs copy what D&D did, or use what D&D did as a base of what they go on.

There are two big examples I can think of that break the trend. One is Eclipse Phase, which has "races" along the lines of humans, AIs, and uplifted (intelligent) dolphins. The setting revolves around being capable of downloading a mind into different bodies, and so a person's physical characteristics don't really matter; someone born as an octopus or as a lab-raised baby can literally possess the same body. The differences in "race" are mostly roleplay, or a few character traits.

The other one is the setting of Glorantha (RuneQuest/HeroQuest), in which case the different races are actually races of humans, coming from different lands and with different cultures and different backgrounds. The Bison People from the Grasslands have literal spirit-bonds to their bison, riding them everywhere, and so have talents related to ranging, herding, and animal care and husbandry. However, they don't have the knowledge of politics and study that you'd expect from more urban peoples such as the Esvular, or the shapechanging ability inherent in the Puma People.


One problem I have always noticed from this system, is balancing it. They lower the intelligence of ogres to try and balance them--but if you play as a barbarian and dump INT, their "drawback" does not matter to you at all. If, however, you wanted to play an ogre scholar... you may as well be tied in knots.
Try giving some games other than D&D a try.

Shadowrun has the typical dwarf/elf/orc/troll races, but there is nothing restricting a troll from being a mage and no penalities from doing so. Burning Wheel has dwarf/elf/orc, but the distinction is their racial natures and the magic inherent in each race; there is nothing stopping or even penalizing a dwarf from learning the same non-racial magic as any other character. World of Darkness, and most White Wolf systems, have different clans with different abilities and different vulnerabilities, but there's nothing stopping a member of one clan from learning the abilities of another - except, perhaps, in finding a teacher.

CombatOwl
2013-09-25, 05:03 PM
I think your point is that race in RPGs usually ends up as nothing more than a few stat bonuses/penalties, and maybe a few special abilities. And that doesn't lead to much distinctness in actual play.

I prefer the way Fate handles races - generally, you choose a racial Aspect which can then be compelled/invoked as appropriate. It de-emphasizes the usual "ogres are strong but not smart" bits and replaces them with things that have more character/story impact.

I agree about the Fate method of handling races. It is just about the most ideal method I've seen--way better than anything that delivers fixed mechanical adjustments for races.

TheCountAlucard
2013-09-25, 06:10 PM
Yeah, I don't quite understand what genetics and taxonomy have to do with creatures usually created from nothing by gods.
Except when they aren't. :smallannoyed:

Sure, in Exalted, you can and do encounter, or sometimes even play as, non-human creatures shaped in the mists of time by the hands of gods or titans. But if you are playing a Jadeborn or a Dragon King, you aren't a "race," you're legitimately a different order of being; you can't Exalt, your magic works entirely differently, and while sex is possible (often through the aid of magic), producing offspring with a human is a fever-dream. Nine times out of ten, referring to someone as being of a different "race" in Exalted is going to be referring to humans, who run the gamut from white, black, Beastman, Lintha, and so on.

Shadowrun ain't my only example here, is what I'm saying. :smalltongue:

GungHo
2013-09-26, 12:58 PM
I had to do a double-take when I saw this - the process went like "but Zeb did that... oh, yeah, that's right, David's his legal name."

:smallbiggrin:

If it makes you feel better, I read it as "Dane Cook's Expert Set" and thought the creep had broken into the RPG market.