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Dausuul
2007-07-02, 09:56 AM
One of the people in my gaming group loves non-human races and hates humans. I'm not entirely sure why.

Me, I have the opposite feeling. I really don't like the non-human races. The reason for this is that I don't see any justification for their existence. They're all just humans in funny suits, and they always end up being played exactly like human characters with a few personality quirks; the dwarves are short humans who like ale and axes, elves are skinny humans with pointy ears who are too pretty for their own good, et cetera. This ruins my suspension of disbelief. I can't believe that beings who are supposedly a different species would act in such identical ways to humans.

Since I often DM for my group, however, I'm trying to find a solution that makes both of us happy. To do this, I'm looking for ways to make nonhuman characters really distinct from the humans. I have tried to do this with the existing PHB races--mostly by coming up with exotic cultures for them--but it doesn't work very well. No matter what the race's home culture may be like, the PCs are part of an adventuring group which isn't part of that culture, so cultural attitudes have little impact in play.

So: How would you go about making nonhumans seem really different from humans in play? If homebrewing races, what traits would you give them? If using the existing races, what would you do to make them distinct from humans?

JellyPooga
2007-07-02, 10:09 AM
This is one of the biggest problems with Fantasy RP, if you ask me. How can the Player know what it's like to be a 140 year old Elf? Most people don't even live to 100, let alone be young at 140.

The only way around it is to point your players in the direction of literature (whether it's WotC material presented in the 'Races' books or LotR or whatever). If you actually read the descriptions of the 'other' races they do tend to have very different outlooks and it is possible to construct a personality out of it...it's just a matter of research.

I get the impression that, basically, you're just after a bit more RP in your games. You say that the characters' home culture has little impact on game-play...well, it should have quite a big impact...after all, your culture defines who and what you are. If the party Elf comes from a culture in which it is forbidden, on religious grounds, to...I dunno...cross a river at mid-day, then if the party comes to a bridge at mid-day, the Elf should give serious consideration to not crossing that bridge for an hour or so.

It's a silly example, but it kind of makes my point...the Elfs aversion to crossing rivers at mid-day seem really quite insignificant, but it becomes extremely significant if the situation actually comes up and the player plays on it. If your players don't give any consideration to playing in character, try throwing some situations at them that conflict with their characers racial culture (whatever that may be)...without these 'conflicts' there is no way to have that culture show through.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-07-02, 10:11 AM
I've never been a fan of D&D races for precisely this reason.

Burning Wheel does a much better job: a starting Elvish character will have literally *nothing* in common with a starting human character.

banjo1985
2007-07-02, 10:11 AM
A difficult one, I would tend to trace it back to all players being human (at least to the casual observer, they're all around us I tell you!), it's really difficult to make any non-human race very different while keeping them playable. We're humans, we think in a particular way that any other race watching would find impossible to comprehend or mimic themselves, if they tried there own racial traits would come out in their attempt. I think thats why no natter the race most characters seem to be played with a human perspective, and any more disparate races would be more difficult to play.

That said, making the other races cultures very radically different to human culture in your game world could help to create some very differing character portrayals/exploration. If the other races don't mix with humans, and have cultures so vastly different that no-one knows much about it at least increases the likelihood that all the characters will seem at least a little different.

Genome
2007-07-02, 10:17 AM
Humans run the gamut in cultures and philosophies in the real world. Thus, they are hugely variable in culture and personality. The nonhuman races are generally based off of one or two cultures, and therefore have far fewer options.

The best advice that I can give is to check out the Races of _____ books. They're quite helpful for fleshing out the nonhuman races, yet they will probably always fall into a stereotype, because that is what we're familiar with. I mean, what's a stereotypical human? Maybe if you get down to nationalities (such as in Faerun, with Calish-ite (Heh, swear filter), Chondathan, Illuskan, etc.) then you can pinpoint something, but otherwise, they're unpredictable.

Hmm, just thought of an idea for making nonhuman races very different: Give them strange customs and social rules, and do not have them conform to human culture in the area. For example, Dwarven friends may spit on one another in greeting, and to not do so is an insult to their family line. Halflings may require a blind exchange of goodwill before they will do business (you give something to them without knowing what they're giving you, and vice versa). Elves (to get away from the pretty boy syndrome) might have more respect those who cover 90+% of their bodies with clothing, rich or poor. Heck, they might even wear head wraps and such, identifying each other entirely by their unique patterns and color choices.

SoulCatcher78
2007-07-02, 10:17 AM
As far as how to make them extremely different goes, it's going to take some serious role play but making them xenophobic to the extreme is probably the best way. For a Dwarf who's grown up only around other Dwarves, he's had to hear about how tricky those other races are. You can't trust 'em and that's a fact. Same thing for Elves. The "lower" or less advanced races are not to be trusted. Cultural differences might include something as mundane as bathing habits (elves that must complete a purifying ritual daily as the sun rises) or as confusing as bad omens (can't go to war today, sorry...I saw three black birds flying in a v formation and that means bad luck). Work it out with the individual players beforehand and stick to your guns. All of these things will come down to how successfully you can get your players to role play them. If you slack off on making them do it, you'll be back to funny looking humans.

Unfortunately (for this question anyway) what brings them in contact with the humans are their commonalities rather than any cultural differences. PCs are likely to be the oddball of the clan/family/tribe that wants to see what's over the top of the farthest hill. Being the oddball, they either leave their ancesteral home/village/lands and end up mixing with the humans. When they do this, it's not unrealiztic to think that they will become more like the humans and less like their original people (whom they differed from anyway). When they try to go back home (either visiting or permanently) they find that their time outside the group makes them even more different.

The best example of this would be the country born/raised person wanting to move to the city. Their whole childhood/young adulthood revolved around wanting to do this. Their way of thinking was different from their peers and therefore set them apart. They won't be happy until they accomplish their goal of going to live in the big city. Once there, they will stick out for a while since the things that they have learned to be true throughout their lives might be proven false or just different. Once they become accustomed to the new way of life, fitting back in with their former peers becomes 10x harder then previously.

Remember; no-one remembers the ale swilling axe swinger but everyone will remember the nervously twitching Dwarf who broke a bootlace before the final battle with the BBEG. Details count.

Emperor Tippy
2007-07-02, 10:23 AM
You also need to remember that by their very definition the PC character's are not normal for their race. They are people for who it is quite understandable to have very different views from the rest of their society.

Kiero
2007-07-02, 10:43 AM
I'll choose an all-human-with-cultures game over one with a variety-of-races-in-monoculture every time. But then I prefer Sword and Sorcery to Tolkein-esque fantasy, and there human is the default (indeed only) option.

I'm not even that fussed about SoD or versimilitude, so much as not liking flimsy analogues for human cultures in lieu of bothering to develop them.

Diggorian
2007-07-02, 10:48 AM
The challenge of playing an inhuman race attracts me most of the time. I play for escapism, am a human all the time, so let me escape the mindset. Best way to me comes by highlighting the radical differences to our homo sapien baseline.

My elves: treat non-elves as adults treat teenagers; respect life to point of being vegan; have blurred gender roles, sometimes to the point of being sexually ambiguous; look at the big picture or the long view of a situation.

The hobgoblin I've been playing for year: views people as their occupation/class first, roles arent chosen but bred from birth; views pain and misfortune as tests of mettle, recreation and frivolity leave you vulnerable; holds loyalty as the highest expression affection, words and hugs are cheap but blood bonds.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-07-02, 10:51 AM
My elves: treat non-elves as adults treat teenagers; respect life to point of being vegan; have blurred gender roles, sometimes to the point of being sexually ambiguous; look at the big picture or the long view of a situation.


The thing is, though, none of those characteristics are actually "inhuman."

What's the difference between playing an "elf" and playing a superior, vegan, sexually ambiguous human who takes the long view?

Knight_Of_Twilight
2007-07-02, 10:53 AM
I've had different races mirror different human cultures before, but thats a weak solution at best.

I'm not sure really. I've seen players play other races well, but I just can't put my heart into.

Except for Githyanki for some reason. I play a mean Githyanki.

banjo1985
2007-07-02, 10:58 AM
The thing is, though, none of those characteristics are actually "inhuman."

What's the difference between playing an "elf" and playing a superior, vegan, sexually ambiguous human who takes the long view?

That's the thing unfortunately. The different races in pretty much every fantasy setting I've played seem to reflect the extreme examples of normal human culture, giving the fantasy world some basis and giving characters an idea of what the person they're going to talk to will be like i.e. he's got funny ears, so he's going to be aloof and rude. This is lazy, but I haven't really seen anything where the races available are anything more than masks for differing human cultures or outlooks.

Lapak
2007-07-02, 11:16 AM
It's a really tough problem, because any game played by human beings is going to put intelligent creatures in that context. And reasonably so; we're the only example we have to work with. If you're going to do anything beyond "they have a funny culture", you need a real reason for it - something that requires them to be that way. Something theological or, better yet, biological.

I'd recommend starting by looking at some compelling examples of genuinely alien races in fiction. A good start might be Vernor Vinge's novels A Fire Upon The Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. Both of those have alien races which have a strikingly different view of consciousness for solid, biological reasons: one race undergoes a periodic interruption of consciousness due to centuries of hibernation, and another is a multi-body/single mind species. Humans have uninterrupted, physically integrated minds - the outlook created when those rules are broken is different.

Really, looking at the standard D&D races as written, they don't have compelling biological reasons to have a particularly different outlook from humans. One good solid biological difference is their aging, so you could run with that. Elves taking their time about a decision is nothing new, but run with it. Make sure that any elvish society, and any individual elf that you introduce, acts as if it has all the time in the world to make a decision. From their perspective, they do; every new human government, every new invasion, and every new magic is ultimately a flash in the pan for them and will soon enough become old news. The expectation of any decision-making involving an elf could be a matter of switching out hours for days, days for weeks, and weeks for decades.

Any elf player who moves at human speed is probably something of an outcast for it. Not that they've gotten around to publicly censuring him for it yet, but sooner or later they'll make it clear. Eventually.

Maybe dwarves respond to their greater spans and isolation by retreating into tradition. And not at a human level of stick-in-the-mud, but "do it the way it has always been done, on pain of death" determination. They don't make treaties with other species; the relationship with humans and with elves and with orcs was decided somewhere back in the mists of prehistory even from an elvish perspective. They use raw iron armor and weapons hacked out of the rock, because steel is a new technology. Anything too novel is met with lethal opposition. It's not cultural; it's a biological compulsion, a survival tactic of 'we have survived thus far in this way, and that's how we will always survive.' There's a trading caste, a warrior caste, a ruling caste, and you do what you were born to do because you must.

Any dwarf player who goes adventuring is probably considered - probably actually IS - defective, and is likely to be killed on sight if she slips up when interacting with 'regular' dwarves.

It's tough to use the elvish connection with nature really work to make them different, because human cultures have gone that route and human rangers and druids explicitly run in that direction. The dwarvish affinity for stone and mountains is tough to make more culturally significant without making them less suitable for adventuring in the world at large.

But the basic idea is this: if you want them to be different, decide WHY they are different first. What about how they are made forces them to be different - that's the key to making them feel non-human.

psychoticbarber
2007-07-02, 11:29 AM
If you want some decent examples of "alien" species (I mean species that are specifically inhuman) and how difficult it is to work with them, I suggest you read just about anything by the author C. J. Cherryh, but specifically the first book in one of her series called "Foreigner"

It's about the only human allowed on the continent controlled by the atevi, a number-based, political species who have "Fourteen words for betrayal, one of which doubles as 'taking the obvious course'".

Diggorian
2007-07-02, 11:41 AM
What's the difference between playing an "elf" and playing a superior, vegan, sexually ambiguous human who takes the long view?

In todays world, especially in liberal crowds, not much. But in the context of a western medieval setting, these differences maybe far enough from the average man to feel inhuman. It's often sufficient but never perfect, since I cant shed my inate human perceptions.

If a human in the party portrayed these traits, I'd highlight different elven traits to effect the feeling.

Lapak
2007-07-02, 11:46 AM
It's about the only human allowed on the continent controlled by the atevi, a number-based, political species who have "Fourteen words for betrayal, one of which doubles as 'taking the obvious course'".In tune with what I was talking about above, the atevi are different from humans for two biologically-wired reasons:

- their brains are capable of extremely efficient raw numerical calculation, which leads to extremely arcane numerology being important to them

- and they have a hardwired pack mentality. They are more or less incapable of having social relationships as humans understand them; everything is defined by loyalty to the structure they find themselves in. Their relationship with you is defined not so much by your personality as your relative legal standing or biological relationship.

nerulean
2007-07-02, 12:01 PM
Getting a difference in race can depend quite a lot on the group's roleplaying quality, both players and DM.

For instance, I know one player who loves playing gnomes, and if you talk to him it's clear that he has quite a deep and well-constructed view of precisely how gnomes are different from humans in all the important areas, but he's a terrible roleplayer and this never comes across in character. The fact that his eloquent, fun-loving characters stutter, fumble their words and use modern phrases and sayings ruins whatever careful thought and preparation he's put into the race.

On the other hand, I know a player who couldn't really care less what a gnome is like deep down, but he's an excellent, fluent roleplayer, and whenever he plays a non-human race there's always something ambiguous and off-kilter about them that makes them seem really alien. Again, speech makes a big difference, using things like strange expletives and odd syntax, but his actions, both in what his character does and his IC mannerisms around the table, are equally noticeable.

For all that play-style is the most important factor, it is possible to make races that do handle slightly differently from humans. Give them a deep, dark racial secret that the other players don't know, or a racial goal. That gives even bad roleplayers an extra factor to take into consideration when making decisions for their characters, and just might make an impact on the game.

SpiderBrigade
2007-07-02, 12:30 PM
The thing is, though, none of those characteristics are actually "inhuman."

What's the difference between playing an "elf" and playing a superior, vegan, sexually ambiguous human who takes the long view?Well, I agree with you about the superior, vegan ones. The one that would really make an elf different is the "taking the long view" part. Because for your common version of elves, that view is really so long that it would be crazy for a human to be that way. Making plans that'll take 200 years is something humans might do if it were really important (vital magical research, preparing for a coming invasion, etc) but an elf wouldn't think twice about starting really long projects just for fun.

Similarly, that long view is going to effect the elf's day-to-day actions as well, in ways that will be really weird to a human. If he meets someone new, he might say "yeah, we should go do XYZ some time" and then the human will assume that the elf has forgotten about it when he doesn't hear from him for six months after that. But to the elf, that's perfectly normal. He'll get around to doing XYZ in 4 or 5 years, and it'll be cool. Now, an elf who has lived with humans would know that this appears rude or strange to them, and might adjust his behaviour.

Now, of course, this is just a rough example. And it's still very true that the elf is basically acting like a human who has a really long natural lifespan. But that's just what elves are. They're basically designed to be humans with a few different traits. That's okay IMO, because really, a human wouldn't be able to realistically roleplay something that was too different. Like for instance a mind flayer or a modron. A "real" mind flayer would be too different for a human to understand that way they think at all. So if you try to play one it's going to end up as a human with some weird traits. And I agree that that gets kind of silly (guy with a tentacle mask) but if it bothers you unbearably just don't allow those races as PCs. Of course, even the DM isn't really going to be able to run an illithid BBEG, because it'll still just be a human with wierd personality and a mask.

Vyker
2007-07-02, 12:52 PM
Unfortunately, Dausuul, my counterarguement also proves your point.

We had a player (named, incidentally, "Good") whose character was a gnome. This gnome was a walking Russian communist stereotype -- accent, outlook, poofy hat (which, due to his gnome-ness, was larger than he was). Now, it worked great in several campaigns, and his hijinks were hilarious. Moreover, he was so different from everyone else around him that you could kinda buy into the whole "oh, gnomes really are a different people!" vibe.

But that's the thing. He was a Russian communist in a Byzantine/Crusader world. He was a human in a funny suit (with a funny accent). You could replace "gnome" with most any race and it would work. He wasn't a gnome. He was a short dude.

Still, that approach works pretty well if you're looking for a quick fix and your humans are pretty much alike.

The root of the problem, however, is threefold:

First, your players are human, think like humans, act like humans, and even their more outlandish concepts will be human. Additionally, anyone who actually does manage to behave in a very un-human manner runs the risk of either being incomprehensible to the party, or just so different as to be silly ("What do you mean you can't cross water at high noon?").

Second, your adventures are more likely than not going to be exceptional to the folks around them. Their innate differences, coupled with their travels and experiences, may make them alien even to their own culture.

Third, there's the metagame question of "how much time do we want to spend proving that the elf isn't a human with pointy ears?" There's doors to kick in, orcs to slay, and treasure to loot. A reminder every now and then that the elf is, in fact, an elf might be okay. But if every encounter becomes an examination in the subtle socio-political differences between modern human culture and, say, the policies of Lord Elfy McElven the Elvish fourteen centuries ago, that might constitute a problem.

Honestly, my suggestion is to just kill that whole "humans are every culture and everyone else is one silly culture!" vibe right away. All humans are different, but all elves are the same? Screw that. Just replace other cultures with othe races. It'll work, it's quick, and best of all, you end up with Russian gnomes in poofy hats running cloak-and-dagger operations which will leave your players laughing so hard they'll need stitches.

P.S. -- I'd vote for Lord Elfy McElven the Elvish. Would you?

Morty
2007-07-02, 12:57 PM
The main problem is, everyone seems to think that every single elf or dwarf is the same. That's just plain unrealistic even for a fantasy setting. But that's how people -including me- tend to think. Not every elf is aloof, asexual, older-than-thou, even if it's the elven stereotype. Not every dwarf is constantly drung shord, bearder guy with honor in heart and axe in hand. In my setting, when I describe racial psychology traits, I describe it as "culture" - it's dwarven culture that's conservative, hierarchical and orderly, not dwarves themselves.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-07-02, 01:00 PM
Well, I agree with you about the superior, vegan ones. The one that would really make an elf different is the "taking the long view" part. Because for your common version of elves, that view is really so long that it would be crazy for a human to be that way. Making plans that'll take 200 years is something humans might do if it were really important (vital magical research, preparing for a coming invasion, etc) but an elf wouldn't think twice about starting really long projects just for fun.


The thing is, a character who takes *that* much of a "long view" wouldn't fit into a traditional D&D campaign.

What's the point in overthrowing the BBEG if another one is going to show up inside of a century? Why should an ancient, alien being of the deep woods give a *damn* about the affairs of lesser races?

Telonius
2007-07-02, 01:05 PM
Best advice: think about it, and get into the role. Brent Spiner had no experience of life without emotions when he played Data, but with a bit of makeup and a whole lot of work on his part, he was able to play a fairly "realistic" android.

I'll make a wild guess that nobody on these forums actually has any real-life experience of fighting monster hordes. What would it really mean to have killed half a dozen orcs by sundown? Would you get steeled to it, how would it affect your psyche? And what if your companion was cut down by arrows next to you, but you know that life is just a spell and some diamond dust away? You have to imagine what your character would do in that situation. All acting and roleplaying requires you to step outside yourself. Playing a race that's other than human just takes that and goes another step (or fifty). How far down that path you want to go, and how much outside yourself you want to get, is something you have to hash out with your gaming group.

Awetugiw
2007-07-02, 01:10 PM
The problem with truly different races is that they do not mix. Races that are more different from each other than human cultures will simply be unable to work together. That means you might have a party of elves, a party of dwarves, but not one with both elves and dwarves. As such, you'd be stuck with most races NPC-only. And even then encounters between different races will be very rare. If they're different enough they won't even war each other anymore.

In my opinion it is a much better idea to make the differences more subtle. Dwarves are not that different from Humans, they just tend to be a little more lawful. They will probably also be different in a couple of other ways, but none of them really big. From just a description of a personality it should not be possible to determine what race a character is. Maybe what race the character is likely to be, but even that only in rather extreme circumstances.

The problem is of course that this will probably result in exactly the same characters as are being used now. That is a problem of the misinterpretation of statistics people tend to use.
Dwarves tend to law, good, and (due to their constitution) to consume more alcohol than the average person. They are also more likely to use axes than most other races.
"Well, then my dwarf must be a lawful good ale-loving axe-wielder."

The mistake people make is not in the traits they give to a race, but in forgetting that every race has a range of possible personalities, probably with something like a gaussian distribution.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-07-02, 01:10 PM
I think part of the problem here, actually, is that the thing that would make non-human races quantifiably *different* from humans is if they had different *motivations.*

Unfortunately, D&D presupposes that all PCs have essentially the same motivations: treasure and XP.

Perhaps you could make other race feel more alien by, for example, giving all Elves a free (but involuntary) Vow of Poverty: as elves they aren't interested in material possessions, but their innately magical nature compensates.

SpiderBrigade
2007-07-02, 01:22 PM
The thing is, a character who takes *that* much of a "long view" wouldn't fit into a traditional D&D campaign.

What's the point in overthrowing the BBEG if another one is going to show up inside of a century? Why should an ancient, alien being of the deep woods give a *damn* about the affairs of lesser races?That is a good point, although I think it's important to bear in mind that the current D&D version of elves includes a fairly hefty "like to try new things/adventurous" quality. So it's plausible that an elf might want to go try the whole "BBEG-conquering" thing this time, although he took a pass the last 8 times :smallbiggrin:

Also adventurers are different.™ Would every elf want to get involved in the given quest? No way. Most wouldn't, even. But there might be a young elf out there who is in the mood for 20 years of excitement and seeing what the "lesser races" are doing nowadays. And that's the PC. Or, you know, he could be there on a mysterious mission from the elders. Or any of a vast number of character hooks to get him out there.

And again, I think you're overstating the "completely alien to human understanding" aspect of elves. They're different, but the "completely alien" descriptor should be reserved for things like thri-kreen or doppelgangers. That's part of what I was trying to get across in my last post: elves and dwarves are different enough to be interesting, rather than realistically inhuman. After all, they're often referred to as "demihumans," and can sometimes interbreed, which does suggest that these races are essentially variants on a basic "humanoid" model.

So I guess what I'm saying is, yes, the common player races are to some extent "humans with suits." It's inevitable when all your actors are humans! But the reason for that is that it's also kind of fun. The elf, dwarf, and human in the party are probably going to have some different reactions to various events, and that can be interesting. Of course, it's fair to argue that an all-human party should have differing viewpoints too. But the demihuman races are allowed a greater range of "weirdness" in their thought process, and that gives more possible combinations.

Jayabalard
2007-07-02, 01:46 PM
Sure, a human's art is childish, and unrefined to an elf... but to some elves, there's still something interesting and appealing about it. Those are the ones that become adventurers and mix with humans.

That seems to be something that people are skipping over; the non-humans that become adventurers seem a bit human like because they are. They mix with humans because there's something that they have in common with them. The nonhumans that have nothing in common with humans, that don't see anything appealing, generally don't become adventurers, or don't mix with other races if they do become adventurers.


I think part of the problem here, actually, is that the thing that would make non-human races quantifiably *different* from humans is if they had different *motivations.*

Unfortunately, D&D presupposes that all PCs have essentially the same motivations: treasure and XP.That sounds like an awfully shallow game... doesn't anyone have a GM that works with the players and their descriptions of the characters to tap into motivations that have nothing to do with xp and loot anymore? Paladins that want to do good deeds for the sake of doing good, bards that want to explore strange places and learn new tales and songs, Cleric that do their god's work and proselytize amongst the heathens, Druids working to restore balance, people seeking spiritual enlightenment, or political power, dwarves looking for the perfect mug of ale, etc.


The thing is, a character who takes *that* much of a "long view" wouldn't fit into a traditional D&D campaign. Why not? For them, adventuring is a pleasant diversion to what would otherwise be kind of a boring life. They don't need to be in any sort of hurry to do anything... they can wander where they will.


What's the point in overthrowing the BBEG if another one is going to show up inside of a century?They're usually much easier to deal with one at a time; you certainly don't want them teaming up.


Why should an ancient, alien being of the deep woods give a *damn* about the affairs of lesser races?who says that they do?

Dan_Hemmens
2007-07-02, 04:59 PM
That sounds like an awfully shallow game... doesn't anyone have a GM that works with the players and their descriptions of the characters to tap into motivations that have nothing to do with xp and loot anymore? Paladins that want to do good deeds for the sake of doing good, bards that want to explore strange places and learn new tales and songs, Cleric that do their god's work and proselytize amongst the heathens, Druids working to restore balance, people seeking spiritual enlightenment, or political power, dwarves looking for the perfect mug of ale, etc.

Except that *actually* all those characters are motivated by XP and loot.

Say to the guy playing the Bard: "Okay, your character can learn a new song this lesson, or they can get XP and loot from the encounters" and see how quickly the Bard's desire to "learn new tales and songs" evaporates.

SpiderBrigade
2007-07-02, 05:18 PM
Except that *actually* all those characters are motivated by XP and loot.

Say to the guy playing the Bard: "Okay, your character can learn a new song this lesson, or they can get XP and loot from the encounters" and see how quickly the Bard's desire to "learn new tales and songs" evaporates.Heheh.

I see a problem with that argument, though - the player's motivation is to get XP and loot from encounters, this is true. But the character's motivation could be practically anything - as long as that goal can be accomplished via a process that gets them XP and loot (Or, at the very least, XP, so they can level up and get better at doing what they do). I mean, a character who only wants to learn new tales and songs wouldn't be going out to fight orcs, unless defeating monsters somehow enabled him to learn new songs (which, actually, given how bardic music works...it does!).

Furthermore, you can apply the same argument to any motivation. The party's goal is to stop the evil lich king from ruling the world? Okay, see how the players react if you tell them they can achieve that goal - but only if they give up all XP rewards. The characters would jump at the chance, since they don't know anything about XP, but the players would (very rightly, I think) feel unfairly denied the usual benefit of adventuring.

I guess what I'm saying is, of course almost all adventurers are motivated by something at least loosely tied to XP and loot - otherwise they wouldn't be out adventuring.

Pronounceable
2007-07-02, 05:19 PM
Think what makes them different from humans biologically. Now apply a little bit of logic to biological differences to get to the psychological (an social) differences. Remember to use much imagination on every step. Then force the players onto roleplaying. This last step is the most difficult.
And things will naturally go downhill with 24 sentient races.

Here's an example race from my world:

Glibno
Main biological differences: They are extremely resilient. They don't age during life but rapidly age and die (within a week) at the end of natural lifespan. A young adult is indistinguishable from venerable. They mature in 10 years and live up to 140s.

Striking difference from humans: Their superior genetics suppress ill effects from inbreeding. Only one male and female could repopulate entire race from the brink of extinction. More relatives and a larger family not only means mutual gain for the family, but also more relations between people means less social problems. As a result, breeding with blood relatives is not only accepted, it's ordinary. Marriages last as long as there are nonadult children. It's common practice as soon as the youngest child reaches adulthood, parents' marriage dissolves and the child marries a parent. Or a sibling might marry another as soon as both reach adulthood. Often, a glibno's one parent is actually his/her sibling. Or the father is also an uncle (AND the grandpa too). Glibnos define the greatest form of love as producing a healthy member of their species together. And refusal of such is a grave insult, implying the other is incapable of performing such a noble task appropriately.

Needless to say, such behavior appals and disgusts humans. While glibnos find human understanding of love, family and relationships blasphemous.


Now, all this cool fluff will go to waste if I don't act (and force players to act) on it. So glibnos suffers in all things social against humans. Etc.


The secret ingredient is imagination. Enough of imagination will (theoratically, don't quote me on that) make even the effing starwars aliens into something other than humans in funny suits. (Except for hutts. They rock.)

Dervag
2007-07-02, 05:35 PM
So: How would you go about making nonhumans seem really different from humans in play? If homebrewing races, what traits would you give them? If using the existing races, what would you do to make them distinct from humans?Making nonhumans seem really different from humans is mostly a matter of roleplaying.

Remember that the range of human behavior is huge. It should come as no surprise that there are humans who act like dwarves, or that a dwarf acts in a way we can imagine a human acting. That's because humanity defies attempts to pigeonhole it. Arguably, the most inhuman thing you can attribute to non-human species is their lack of that extreme, almost anarchic cultural flexibility. So you do something like this:

Orcs aren't inhuman because they'll kill you as soon as look at you. There are quite a few real humans and human cultures like that. What's inhuman about orcs is that they're all like that, with only a very few exceptions. You can hardly find a pacifist orc; you can hardly even find an orc who has human-normal levels of aggressiveness, xenophobia, or hostility. The range of behaviors in orcs is narrower than that of humans.

or:

Dwarves aren't inhuman because they like to live underground, dig out mines, fight fiercely, and follow laws. None of those things are outside the human experience. What's inhuman about dwarves is that they're nearly all like that; they can't really understand being any other way. There are really weird humans who are almost exactly like dwarves, but there are no really weird dwarves almost exactly like the human average.

Think about that for a while, and you may see what I mean. I'm not sure it makes sense in the abstract, but I hope so. The human experience is so broad that almost any imaginable intelligent being can be imagined as a human in a funny suit. The human in question may be a strange human, but still within the parameters of humanity. To make a truly inhuman intelligent being, the first thing you must do is subtract the broadness of experience from the nonhuman, so that the nonhuman is not going to act like a human.


Any dwarf player who goes adventuring is probably considered - probably actually IS - defective, and is likely to be killed on sight if she slips up when interacting with 'regular' dwarves.Larry Niven did something like that in his Known Space stories. One of the species in Known Space were a race of intelligent, herd-living herbivores that humans called "Pierson's puppeteers." The puppeteers are brilliant traders and extremely advanced technologically, but neither of those things is what really sticks in your mind when you read a story with a puppeteer character. What you remember is this:

Puppeteers are cowards. They freely and cheerfully admit this. They will flee from any danger, even from any hint of danger. They will do so long before the danger could possibly affect them. When they learn that events at the galactic core are going to make known space uninhabitable in twenty thousand years' time, they equip their planets with huge space drives and rocket off towards intergalactic space in a matter of a few years. They don't wait. They don't mess around. They just run like hell at the first sign that anything might be dangerous to them.

Puppeteers are inculcated from birth with an enormous range of reactions to protect them from various forms of danger. When a puppeteer knows that something is about to explode, they curl up into a ball. This is a reflex for them, because they spent many hours being taught the most efficient way to curl up into a ball back in primary school.

They have no sense of humor, arguing that "humor is a sign of an interrupted defense mechanism. No sapient being ever interrupts a defense mechanism."

A puppeteer would rather spend the rest of their natural life in a spacecraft entombed in a huge block of indestructible metal than make any attempt to escape that block.

If you see a puppeteer who exhibits anything resembling courage, they are insane. This is not a judgement of the puppeteer culture; it is a biological fact. A brave puppeteer is suffering from chemical imbalances in the brain, and will invariably also have other symptoms of mental illness, such as manic-depressive cycles.

Now that is an inhuman species.


Also adventurers are different.™ Would every elf want to get involved in the given quest? No way. Most wouldn't, even. But there might be a young elf out there who is in the mood for 20 years of excitement and seeing what the "lesser races" are doing nowadays. And that's the PC.Perhaps interest in the affairs of humans is the elven equivalent of Orientalism- a sort of condescending attitude that makes a fetish of the ways in which human culture is supposedly 'inscrutible' or 'alien' to that of elves.

This doesn't mean that individual elven adventurers are jerks, or condescending, any more than individual European Orientalists were always condescending uninformed jerks when they went to the actual Orient. Many of them were sincerely interested in learning how to 'live like a native,' and gained the trust and approval of the people around them. But they were always at least a little alien, because they remained a European impersonating an Oriental.

In the same way, an elven adventurer might be a person who really wants to understand humans, who finds the idea of actually caring whether it takes a day or a month to perform a task intriguing and inscrutible. But when they try to live among humans, even when they do everything they should and are being perfectly reasonable, considerate people, they always seem a little off, because there's a little voice in their head telling them that human culture is 'quaint' or 'exotic'.

Ulzgoroth
2007-07-02, 05:42 PM
Why is alienness important?

Really. We've never encountered another sapient life form, and if we do it seems entirely plausible that it won't have anything we'd even recognize as biology. Even the more serious SF writers rarely try that hard to address the mentality of an ammonia-breather with a reduction-powered metabolism and complex inorganic micro-crystals for genetic material. Because we'd be lucky to understand it even if we were able to really meet them instead of just imagining them.

Fantasy races are something else. Elves, dwarves, gnomes...I wouldn't call them "humans in funny suits", but they are defined with reference to humans. They are, essentially, humans with a list of differences that you could pretty well enumerate on a single printed page (though they run a lot more than skin deep). It makes all kinds of sense for their minds to be essentially human.

If you want something to complain about, complain about culture...and most of the time, complain about it to your DM. All these races are expected to have exactly one culture each, which is silly to begin with, but the real falling-down point is that they're never defined unless you turn to the "Races of X" books, which material usually isn't actually canonical in any given game. You typically wind up with humans looking like a blend of fairy-tale Europe and the modern world, and all the other races not even having a culture.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-07-02, 05:46 PM
Why is alienness important?


Because, for me at least, a non-human race that doesn't feel alien doesn't feel like a non-human race. They feel like ... well ... like humans in funny costumes.

So actually, I *don't* like my fantasy races to have well defined cultures, because I don't like the idea of fantasy races which have anything which we can recognize as "culture." Or biology for that matter.

lukelightning
2007-07-02, 05:46 PM
I'm fine with the "default" level of "alien-ness" for D&D races. It gives a good illusion of the races being "other" without being impossible to play.

Ulzgoroth
2007-07-02, 06:00 PM
Because, for me at least, a non-human race that doesn't feel alien doesn't feel like a non-human race. They feel like ... well ... like humans in funny costumes.

So actually, I *don't* like my fantasy races to have well defined cultures, because I don't like the idea of fantasy races which have anything which we can recognize as "culture." Or biology for that matter.
Well, then maybe you want things more like cnsvnc's Glibno. Only you know what? They're humans in funny suits too...the suits are just funnier. Not even all that much so, for all that the result offends the typical human on both cultural and instinctive levels. (and me, as a biologist, on a logical level...)

Or those puppeteers? Funny suits. They're hardwired to avoid any sort of danger (Which sounds logically incoherent, but maybe a full description makes it work)? Ok...and besides that, are they inhuman? Because you can easily enough imagine a human with a different body form and an absolutely ingrained avoidance reaction to threats.

There's a reason for this. It seems to me that the definition, in this sense, of a human in a funny suit is 'what a human can imagine by adding exotica to themselves'. And that's all there really is...you can't write or play anything that doesn't fall into that category, because no human can predict or model their thoughts, by definition.

Fiction-writers most often produce the illusion of alienness by making their human characters too narrowminded (or absentminded, it sometimes seems) to deal with the differences. If they did anything else, the aliens in question would necessarily be plot devices rather than characters.

Dausuul
2007-07-02, 06:29 PM
First off: Thanks for all the replies! I have many good ideas to ponder now.


There's a reason for this. It seems to me that the definition, in this sense, of a human in a funny suit is 'what a human can imagine by adding exotica to themselves'. And that's all there really is...you can't write or play anything that doesn't fall into that category, because no human can predict or model their thoughts, by definition.

I think you're taking this a little further than I intended. Obviously any race that's invented by humans is going to have, at its core, a human perspective--there's no other way it could be. And elves, dwarves, and so forth should be more similar to humans than science fiction aliens are.

What I object to is the degree to which, in D&D, the differences between supposedly nonhuman races and humans are purely cosmetic. There isn't anything that cuts to the core of playing such a character and makes it fundamentally different from playing a human character. You still have to eat and drink and sleep and breathe (okay, so elves don't technically have to sleep, but they have to go into a trance that amounts to the same thing). You still age, albeit at different rates, and you still die. You don't have any special abilities or limitations that can't be replicated by a few extra stat points, a feat, or at most a low-level spell. The game still rewards you for the exact same behaviors, namely killing monsters and taking their stuff. What it comes down to is that even a good role-player has to work at it to make the experience different, and less good role-players will see no difference at all.

One poster brought up the Burning Wheel. I took a look at a review of that game and was impressed. That's the sort of thing I'm looking for; a mechanic that makes it mean something, in mechanical terms, to be an Elf or an Orc. It's not a substitute for good role-playing, but it'd sure be nice to have the system support role-playing rather than working against it.

I'm now toying with the idea of a modified XP system where each race gets XP awards for different things. It's crude, but it might address the problem at least to some extent.

Rob Knotts
2007-07-02, 06:34 PM
Me, I have the opposite feeling. I really don't like the non-human races. The reason for this is that I don't see any justification for their existence. They're all just humans in funny suits, and they always end up being played exactly like human characters with a few personality quirks; the dwarves are short humans who like ale and axes, elves are skinny humans with pointy ears who are too pretty for their own good, et cetera. This ruins my suspension of disbelief. I can't believe that beings who are supposedly a different species would act in such identical ways to humans.I don't know if this will help your suspension of disbelief in anyway, but in a lot of ways your right. D&D, other fantasy games, even sci-fi games use "races" as a way to present cultural backgrounds that present significantly different characters from other cultures.

Take elves for example. Fantasy writers and games have attributed everything from Celtic culture, Roman architecture, alchemy, druidic tribalism, to even Lovecraftian decadence (Drow).

In general, Elves have either come to represent forgotten cultural ascendance, or they celebrate a primal/elemental nature that would othewise seem mutually exclusive with a well developed (human) society.

Whatever the specific case, elves are always fundamentally alien to the modern culture of each fantasy setting. Either they're throwbacks to ancient times, or they some racial character that seems incompatible with the dominant society of a setting.

So why make fantasy races a biologically seperate species? First off, it makes them easier for players to grasp mentally. Most modern, real-world people still have a basic mental block that keeps them being able to recognize cultural differences (at least without resorting to bigotry and prejudice).

However, if you say that a strange, imaginary culture is the result of a physical/biological difference, players tend to drop thier mental block pretty quickly by picturing a member of the new "race" based on the description you've given of thier appearance.

Secondarily, there's the issue of cultural sensitivity. If you come up with an imaginary culture and compare it strongly with a real-world culture, language, or nationality, you run the risk of offending a player with ties to that real-world culture.

That said, when it comes to the issue of truly non-human races, I can only offer my experience on the WotC board when I asked how someone would model a D&D race without hands (specifically, I had FFVII's Red XIII in mind). Most, if not all the responses ammounted to a very discouraging, and franky quite dense, answer:

Why not just give them (real/magical/virtual) hands?

Vespe Ratavo
2007-07-02, 06:50 PM
Personally, I think the stereotype of the races is just because that's whats most common.

I mean look at the books. If you read through what it says about Humans, it does dodge trying to stereotype them (mainly because we are Human) but you get the idea that they're very varied and adventurous. Yet many humans are not like that. I would assume it works the same way for the other races too.

Personally, I would just take the race and run the character however I wanted to, not just what the race stereotype says.

CockroachTeaParty
2007-07-02, 06:52 PM
This reminds me of the time I made a Thri-kreen character for a short-lived campaign I played in a few years ago?

Do you want to guess why it was short lived?

I played my Thri-kreen character unlike any character I had ever played before. He was enslaved by orcs, and he joined the main party when they freed the mantis man. They would have killed him, but one character knew of the mantis warriors and how they weren't all monsters. And so, thousands of miles away from his homeland, D'rik Chikthzit joined the party, much to everyone's future aggravation.

D'rik had no equipment to start off with, which was fine by him, but his mere appearance caused a riot in most small towns, and so the others bought a heavy cloak to conceal his form. When it came time to divide up treasure, D'rik would claim the body of the fallen enemy, and devour it. He had no use for coins.

He tried using different weapons, but they were nothing like the traditional Gythka and Chatkchas of his youth, and so he fought with his bare claws. He would often steal from merchants, for the concept of economy and trade was completely foreign to him. This often got the party into legal trouble.

When I talked in character, the others could barely make out what I was saying as I clicked, buzzed, and sprayed spittle all over the place. D'rik disappeared into the wilderness for hours on end, frightened children, got kicked out of taverns, chased by angry mobs... It was just too bizarre for our poor DM. He did a good job managing my antics while the campaign lasted, but D'rik was so alien that it slowed the game down.

I had a lot of fun with him. If I'm going to play a non-human race, I prefer really funky races. Goblins, dromites, kenkus... The more extreme, the easier it is to just make up weird behavior.

Neek
2007-07-02, 07:00 PM
There's an underlying thing that I felt none of you have yet to addressed. What comprises culture? What makes up being part of a culture? What defines it? Coult'll tell us "values, norms, institutions, and artifacts." Most fantasy races are still built with this premise, which is very "out of a box" definition, and normally rubs off as shallow because they're the same elements of a culture that compromise human culture.

Define a universal method of defining non-human culture that exemplifies a universal set of all possible psychologies, and we might have a start.

But let's think here. If you've got a dual-hemisphere brain, two eyes, two ears, nostrils, tongue, two hands, two feet, good tactile responses, you require carbon-based life on varying degrees of complexity to keep your organs good and healthy, you drink water to keep yourself hydrated, you breathe nitrogen-rich, oxygen-laced air to feed cells in your body, oxygen, food, and water are transported through your body in blood vessels, and you communicate by vibrating air in a box of cartilage located in your neck and by compressing, blocking, or altering the flow of air through your neck and mouth... well, you might end up with a similar basis of psychology when compared to a human.

Now, if you are this creature who has the aforementioned abilities, you know you can interbreed with a select few of other creatures who share a common biological ancestry. Worse yet, you share a global ecosystem--even though some of the other creatures who possess these same elements may live in mountains or swamps or may be half your size. Hell, you even share a global history, share religion, constantly trade, and your languages even effect each other. Yet some of these people live way longer, and yet some of them are not the longest-lived of creatures. The shortest lived seems to be the most populated, too. Such a problem, isn't it?

However, you and all these creatures take part in a global interaction on a biological, ecological, sociological, anthropological, and linguistic level. You share the basis of a global culture, where information is constantly going between these creatures, and this is the way it's been for thousands, tens of thousand--sometimes even millions of years--this is the basis for these "non-human races" to be human.

Consider this. A species of monkey, the bonobo, is a highly communal animal that has a very human-like face. They make human-like facial expressions and communicate not in true language, but have a complex system of body-language and noises. They're one of the few select species on the world that understands sex outside of the context for a reproduction drive. In fact, they're always having sex. You meet someone new? You don't shake their hand, you have sex with them. Your friend's down on his luck? You're not giving him a pat on the back or a hug, but you might sex him up. And any number of sexual intercourses are available.

But yet, if I were to change "bonobo" with the name of some non-human race and give them a language, they might come off as "humans with funny clothes" (or in this case, "no clothes.")

Ulzgoroth
2007-07-02, 07:05 PM
The only deep difference on the time-scale and focus of the typical adventure should be inside the character's head (though that doesn't mean it shouldn't be significant). All the races interact with the same world, in the same way.

I don't think it makes sense to create different 'XP goals' for different races...why would an elf get better at bashing things by doing different things than an orc, or a human? They're gaining the same type of ability...Interested to see what you come up with, though.

That said, when it comes to the issue of truly non-human races, I can only offer my experience on the WotC board when I asked how someone would model a D&D race without hands (specifically, I had FFVII's Red XIII in mind). Most, if not all the responses ammounted to a very discouraging, and franky quite dense, answer: Why not just give them (real/magical/virtual) hands?
That's pitiful... There is something to it, though. Modeling a race without hand-analogues isn't so hard...anything they want to do, think about how they could do it, and only do it if the body they have permits. But if you want something with Red XIII's body form to be able to do any of the things you expect of a normal being, you may be stuck. Dressing, for instance, is right out...without substantial tools or help, it would be barely possible to get into a backpack, or any kind of pack, and getting back out of it would be worse. There are plenty of magic items he could benefit from but few he could use without assistance, and that isn't just because the lists are made with humanoids in mind. Making things is unlikely, with no fine manipulation. Writing is just barely possible. Most of the D&D skill list goes out the window, and doesn't get replaced by anything...there are just a lot of things you can't do when you can only pick up one thing at a time, and that in your teeth.

A species like that sharing a world with humanoids, if they had any sort of competitive impulse or friction with them, would spend much of its time cursing whoever was responsible for sticking sapience in a body so badly suited to using it. That or trying to find a way to get hand substitutes, either by magic or by enslaving humanoids.

Rob Knotts
2007-07-02, 07:18 PM
A species like that sharing a world with humanoids, if they had any sort of competitive impulse or friction with them, would spend much of its time cursing whoever was responsible for sticking sapience in a body so badly suited to using it. That or trying to find a way to get hand substitutes, either by magic or by enslaving humanoids.The solution I liked best was to make these quadrupeds close friends, culturally, of one of the smaller and more reclusive humanoid races, such as gnomes or halflings.

Physically similar to predators, I figured these quadrupeds could build a society/economy around herding domesticated livestock like sheep or cattle.

Thier humanoid allies could craft specialized equipment for them (when necessary), and the quadrupeds could be a primary source of livestock too large for the small humanoids to easily raise themselves.

In the end I was just so stunned and discouraged by the poor response I got when I posted the idea that I gave up trying to develop it further.

Tallis
2007-07-02, 11:16 PM
Well the idea that races that have been arround each other for thousands of years would become similar makes sense. It's almost inevitable. So the first step to making alien cultures is to seperate them. The demihuman races should have little or no contact with humans. They should have a hard time understanding how they think. Dwarves might think of humans like unruly children. Elves might look at them like a scientist studying primates. They might mimic human behaviour so they can get closer to them, but they'll never consider themselves one of them.
Different taboos and superstitions can set the opther races apart. Elves are very nature oriented. How do they view death? Maybe it's just natural to them. They don't mourn, they don't even bury their dead. They just move the bodies out of the way and leave them. Or maybe they eat them, no point wasting good meat.
Most of the posters talked about how it's bad to assume that all mambers of a given race are the same, after all there are differences among humans, so there must be differences among dwarves, right? Why must there be? Those differences are a basic human trait. Maybe all dwarves really are the same. Maybe adventurers have suffered a psychotic break and that's the only reason they're different.
There will always be similarities to humans, simply because we ae humans trying to design these alternate cultures and because they have to be able to work together to make a viable campaign. But if you take one major belief or trait that your players can identify with, a basic assumption that they will almost always make, and make it wrong. Your races will seem much more seperate from humanity.

Dervag
2007-07-03, 12:50 AM
Why is alienness important?

Really. We've never encountered another sapient life form, and if we do it seems entirely plausible that it won't have anything we'd even recognize as biology. Even the more serious SF writers rarely try that hard to address the mentality of an ammonia-breather with a reduction-powered metabolism and complex inorganic micro-crystals for genetic material. Because we'd be lucky to understand it even if we were able to really meet them instead of just imagining them.Actually, a lot of the serious SF writers have tried from time to time, some with considerable success.

Moreover, you can make a case that some of the basics would be set by evolution. Creatures without certain types of urges would not be able to survive in a competitive environment, for instance.


If you want something to complain about, complain about culture...and most of the time, complain about it to your DM. All these races are expected to have exactly one culture each, which is silly to begin with, but the real falling-down point is that they're never defined unless you turn to the "Races of X" books, which material usually isn't actually canonical in any given game. You typically wind up with humans looking like a blend of fairy-tale Europe and the modern world, and all the other races not even having a culture.You can't have intelligent beings without a culture. The culture may be vaguely explained to the PCs, but it has to be there, because everything people do is affected, if not determined, by culture.

If the DM describes the elves as being "you know, a bunch of tree-village dwelling navel-gazers," they've just defined an elven culture; namely one that is contemplative and likes to live in huts suspended from trees in the middle of large forests.

As for the fact that nonhuman races are frequently very uniform culturally, that may be their most inhuman feature.

Human beings are extremely polymorphic when it comes to psychology and culture. We've tried an enormous range of totally different things, and are quite good at adapting within that range.

Why should other intelligent species be the same way? Maybe they live in a particular ecological niche and have adapted to fit that niche, rather than trying to live in deserts and tundras and jungles and massive cities all at once.


Or those puppeteers? Funny suits. They're hardwired to avoid any sort of danger (Which sounds logically incoherent, but maybe a full description makes it work)? Ok...and besides that, are they inhuman? Because you can easily enough imagine a human with a different body form and an absolutely ingrained avoidance reaction to threats.But they'd have to be a really weird human. They'd have to be a complete coward (a rare breed in their own right). They'd have to possess remarkable intelligence, and combine this with complete cowardice, which is hard to do.

Human beings tend to discount minor threats, or to weigh extremely small risks against things like time and money and decide that it's not worth spending 100 hours of their time to avoid a one in a hundred million risk of dying. Puppeteers never discount a threat. If they can avoid a threat by overengineering or spending vast sums of money, they will.

For instance, human beings might decide not to buckle their seat belt. For a puppeteer, this is totally unimaginable. Human beings might decide to ride on a roller coaster. Puppeteers will never do so. Human beings might decide that it isn't worth the cost of strengthening the levees in a major metropolitan area to prevent flooding "just in case" an unprecedented hurricane blows through. Puppeteers will never do so; they will keep building and overbuilding the levees until it is physically impossible for any viable weather to flood the city, and will cheerfully pay extremely steep tax rates to do so.

If they can't eliminate a threat, its existence will terrify them. They will research huge areas of technology in hopes of finding a way to eliminate the threat. They will scheme and manipulate on world-shaking scales to avert the possibility of an alien species posing a threat, and they define 'threat' very broadly. Basically, anyone with weapons and spacecraft is a threat, never mind that their weapons technology might be millenia behind what the puppeteers can build.

And despite their extreme cowardice, they are not paranoid or delusional in the human senses of the word. They are quite capable of recognizing when things aren't out to get them, though they will take defensive measures just in case, even then. They can form relationships of trust (generally with each other). They can correctly evaluate risks, and will often recognize a huge problem while humans are still in denial about it.

You can imagine a human being who is like this, even though they'd be one in a billion. What is virtually impossible to imagine is a society where this is standard, accepted behavior for the entire culture. Where everyone is like this, all the time. Where human-normal courage, or even the courage of a human coward, is a sign of serious mental illness. Not "the society considers a brave puppeteer ill." The brave puppeteer really is ill, and you can prove it.


Different taboos and superstitions can set the opther races apart. Elves are very nature oriented. How do they view death? Maybe it's just natural to them. They don't mourn, they don't even bury their dead. They just move the bodies out of the way and leave them. Or maybe they eat them, no point wasting good meat.The catch is that humans have done all these things. The ancient Persians disposed of bodies by exposure, leaving them in a high place, reasoning that the process of decay, scavenging, and the elements would strip away the flesh and set the soul free. And many tribes in protein-poor areas engage in some form of ritual cannibalism.

So such customs will not make your elves clearly inhuman, though they make them weird to the PCs.


Most of the posters talked about how it's bad to assume that all mambers of a given race are the same, after all there are differences among humans, so there must be differences among dwarves, right? Why must there be? Those differences are a basic human trait. Maybe all dwarves really are the same. Maybe adventurers have suffered a psychotic break and that's the only reason they're different.Exactly what I've been trying to say.

Xuincherguixe
2007-07-03, 02:16 AM
I kind of like the idea of using non humans to talk about humanity. Maybe they've got tails, horns, 15 arms and no mouth. But such a character could still have a certain human element to it.


And I think, that's part of what D&D is supposed to be like. Though probably no real thought was made as to what it means that all the things are so human like.

Some(most) of the Abberation races get pretty far from Human though. That's about it though. Little else is all that alien. (No, not even Demons and Devils)

Leush
2007-07-03, 02:39 AM
This thread is funny- it got me thinking- what if I was to try roleplaying a dog, or a sapient ant, of a hamster or a dolphin?

I came to the conclusion that if you're human, it's not even that there is enough variety in humans to cover every base, but that you'll see the character in terms of human traits and trimmings, and as a result it will always be a human in a funny suit, so I wouldn't worry about it that much.

Ulzgoroth
2007-07-03, 05:32 AM
Actually, a lot of the serious SF writers have tried from time to time, some with considerable success.

Moreover, you can make a case that some of the basics would be set by evolution. Creatures without certain types of urges would not be able to survive in a competitive environment, for instance.
Er...I give up. There is an entirely plausible position that there is a space beyond the boundary of things that we can describe by modifying humans, and that anything else we meet in the universe will probably be somewhere out there. But I don't like that position enough to try to argue it.

If the DM describes the elves as being "you know, a bunch of tree-village dwelling navel-gazers," they've just defined an elven culture; namely one that is contemplative and likes to live in huts suspended from trees in the middle of large forests.
That isn't a culture. You can make up a culture compatible with it, but it's so wide-open it hardly tells you anything. The PC backgrounds, if they intersect with non-human cultures, are likely to flesh them out more than that DM ever will. You're vanishingly unlikely to be in an elven or dwarven settlement in this situation, let alone a gnome town...because no one has a clue what one would look like, or what the people would do there.

You can't really have a population without a culture, I agree. But that's not an insurmountable problem when you don't really have a population.

Human beings are extremely polymorphic when it comes to psychology and culture. We've tried an enormous range of totally different things, and are quite good at adapting within that range.

Why should other intelligent species be the same way? Maybe they live in a particular ecological niche and have adapted to fit that niche, rather than trying to live in deserts and tundras and jungles and massive cities all at once.
Declining to move into an open ecological niche would make them not merely unlike humans, but unlike all earthly life. It would also probably make them extinct a couple million years ago...niches tend not to be entirely persistent.

Active divinity might suppress those problems, but it would require a lot of stasis.

You can imagine a human being who is like this, even though they'd be one in a billion. What is virtually impossible to imagine is a society where this is standard, accepted behavior for the entire culture. Where everyone is like this, all the time. Where human-normal courage, or even the courage of a human coward, is a sign of serious mental illness. Not "the society considers a brave puppeteer ill." The brave puppeteer really is ill, and you can prove it.
You say that it's impossible to imagine...I actually agree, if these creatures are supposed to be both intelligent and imaginative, but you've just finished giving what seems a very fine summary of the completely unsurprising (optimistic) consequences of this deviation from human-norm.

I can't see how they can even breathe. Sure, you'll die if you don't...but can they trade off the threat of asphyxiation against the threat that their next breath will contain a novel fast-acting poison? They'd have to be pretty much demigods to completely negate that possibility. Wouldn't it put them into paralytic terror, despite being in the domain of 1-in-a-googleplex odds?

Tallis
2007-07-03, 02:11 PM
The catch is that humans have done all these things. The ancient Persians disposed of bodies by exposure, leaving them in a high place, reasoning that the process of decay, scavenging, and the elements would strip away the flesh and set the soul free. And many tribes in protein-poor areas engage in some form of ritual cannibalism.

So such customs will not make your elves clearly inhuman, though they make them weird to the PCs.


You don't have to go back to ancient Persia, there are cultures that still do that today, as well as people that eat their dead. It's virtually impossible to come up with a racial trait that is outside human possibility. What I was talking about is working against your players expectations. Most players come from a culture where this would be strange and unacceptable. They would probably be bothered by it if they thought about it happening in the real world (even though it does). That is enough to gives these cultures the feeling of being inhuman for them.
You only need to work against your players experience and expectations, not against the sum of human experience.

Jayabalard
2007-07-03, 02:55 PM
Speaking of fantasy races, and sci-fi authors... I've always thought that if elves (and other eldar races) were so long lived they should have atttude towards time much like Heinlein's Martians. The idea of an elf being in a hurry just seems... absurd.


Except that *actually* all those characters are motivated by XP and loot.

Say to the guy playing the Bard: "Okay, your character can learn a new song this lesson, or they can get XP and loot from the encounters" and see how quickly the Bard's desire to "learn new tales and songs" evaporates.I think you mean players... XP is a wholly metagame concept, and as such it's not a motivation for characters. Loot may or may not be a character motivation (it certainly isn't a motivation for a character with a vow of poverty)

While getting XP and loot can be fun, it's not my motivation to play RPGs. I'm quite content just playing of the game; I don't need anything but in character rewards ... I could care less if the number beside XP increases or stays the same.

I don't assume that everyone is like me; some players are highly motivated by loot and XP. Your remark seems to be implying that you and the people that you game with are only motivated by loot and XP, or that if you do have other motivations to play, they pale in comparison.

Matthew
2007-07-03, 06:17 PM
The more you encounter Non Human Races, the more immune you become to them. I have a strong distaste for 'Demi Humans', which has led me to try a number of other games. In the end, though, what I found most made for keeping the mystique and 'otherness' of Elves and Dwarves and such, is to limit their frequency and interaction with Player Characters. Usually, for my (A)D&D Campaign, I assign them the equivalent of LA (increased experience requirements to level up).

Snooder
2007-07-03, 06:51 PM
What I find interesting is that nobody has really addressed the fundamental point in Dausuul's original post, i.e. that the non-human PC classes must be fundamentally different from humans. WHY?

Look at it this way, they are humans in funny suits because they are essentially human. Considering that it is possible in D&D for humans and non-humans to have non-sterile children, that indicates that they are races, rather than different species. Expecting an elf to be radically different from a human is like expecting an asian to be radically different from a european. Or, better yet, to take the analogy of differences in age, a European from the middle ages to be different from a modern person. The medieval man has a lifespan of about 35 years while a modern person has more than twice that. But they are still people and are still motivated by the same basic needs: food, shelter and so forth.

Saph
2007-07-03, 07:20 PM
This reminds me of the time I made a Thri-kreen character for a short-lived campaign I played in a few years ago?

Do you want to guess why it was short lived?

I think this short story sums up why other races end up as humanlike.

If you make every non-human race have a radically different culture, an alien mentality, and a totally different way of thinking, then a mixed-species party won't be able to agree on what time to have dinner, much less how to go adventuring together. Even communication's going to be difficult.

There's also the issue that most people don't want to play a race that's radically inhuman. Too much work and not enough fun.

- Saph

Matthew
2007-07-03, 07:31 PM
The medieval man has a[(n) average] lifespan of about 35 years while a modern person has more than twice that. But they are still people and are still motivated by the same basic needs: food, shelter and so forth.
The average lifespan takes into account infant mortality, which was very high in the medieval period. People did not drop dead at age 35, they lived normal human lifespans, barring disease, famine, murder or misadventure.

Hectonkhyres
2007-07-03, 09:59 PM
Play a grimlock. All races of the world, save the chosen people, seem to possess some strange magic they call 'sight'. With this strange power, they can know the nature of things far away and secret words away in a way you can not understand.

Part of you is envious... but a much larger part of you knows that such a gift is poison fruit. The spirits have taken much from the outsiders in exchange, sealing their nostrils and ears and tongues with dirt. Their magic can be stopped by as little as a flimsy sheet of cloth or the curve of a tunnel or the wrong angle of turn to their heads. They can not sense what had happened even a few moments past and some can not even use their magic at all outside of the presence of fire for some strange reason.

Let them keep their sight then. But they have many strange things which may better the people. One way or another, they will part with them.


Some races are a little more alien than the conventional elf or dwarf so many like to play. They are still a bit like men, but only a bit. I really want to see someone cook up more races like the grimlock. They make things very novel indeed.

TheElfLord
2007-07-03, 11:59 PM
Q: Why do the DnD races seem similar to humans?

A: Because creatures that are vastly different from humans are called monsters. The more alien races such as grimlocks, beholders, mind flayers are what most characters and players would consider monsterous. Different is scary. Creatures that scare us are labled as monsters.

Hectonkhyres
2007-07-04, 01:27 AM
It depends on if you are talking about prime material hicks or somewhere on the planes. A lawful neutral illithid could walk through most planes without much more than being watched nervously. Pallies will do one check for evil and then leave with a shrug. The commonfolk will just stay away from the seven foot tall Mister Tentacles, having the common sense to know that it is not smart to poke scary looking things with a stick. Once it does its business, it will go away. About the only thing you have to watch out for is a gith-somethingorother jumping out of the shadows and collecting your tentacles to wear on a belt. Which, admittedly, happens a lot.

Everyone loves the illithid and everyone would play them if we could find some way to knock that damn LA down a whole bunch of knotches.

Its better with grimlocks. Only a rather small LA and not too much in the way of enemies. Generally, they can get away with people only being skittish as long as they aren't trying to eat somebody currently. I always thought of them as one of the most playable monsterous races.

But, as with all things, it depends on how your DM works things.

Fhaolan
2007-07-04, 01:45 AM
The commonfolk will just stay away from the seven foot tall Mister Tentacles, having the common sense to know that it is not smart to poke scary looking things with a stick.

Okay, you have a much higher estimate of the level of common sense in the average person than I do. :smallsmile:

Dervag
2007-07-04, 04:14 AM
Er...I give up. There is an entirely plausible position that there is a space beyond the boundary of things that we can describe by modifying humans, and that anything else we meet in the universe will probably be somewhere out there. But I don't like that position enough to try to argue it.Actually, I agree that the position is plausible. It is by no means clear that we can reconstruct all possible minds by combining various human traits.

However, there are ways to combine human traits that produce minds that do not act in ways that any ordinary person would consider human.


Declining to move into an open ecological niche would make them not merely unlike humans, but unlike all earthly life. It would also probably make them extinct a couple million years ago...niches tend not to be entirely persistent.That isn't quite what I meant.

Sure, maybe dwarves would speciate into surface-dwelling races of desert nomads, hearty ice-fishermen, and pastoral farmers over the course of a million years. But I'm not talking about speciation or evolution on geologic time scales. I'm talking about the 'short' term- spans measured in millenia, not in dozens, hundreds, or thousands of millenia.

Over those spans of time, human cultures will tend to diversify rapidly. Humans will try to live anywhere. Collectively, they won't look at a place and say "nope, not enough trees." They won't say "wow, there isn't an open body of water within a hundred miles of this place; maybe we should go live somewhere else." Humans will make a go of it almost anywhere on the planet; the only places people don't live are places where it is physically impossible to do so. For that matter, if a place is marginally habitable some of the time, you can bet that humans will try to live there, retreating from the marginal land as conditions worsen and advancing into it as conditions improve.

What if, say, elves aren't like that? What if they don't have the 'pioneer spirit' that leads humans to wander out into radically different environments and either adapt to those environments or tame them? If an elf literally cannot imagine growing up in a place without trees, to the point where they would never inflict such a burden on their children?

There are humans like that. But what would an entire species of people who are all like that be? If the elves and the forest have been growing together for millenia, then the elves are going to be rather alien to humans. With the remotely possible exception of hunter-gatherer bands, humans don't form that kind of bond with a specific patch of terrain or a specific ecosystem.


You say that it's impossible to imagine...I actually agree, if these creatures are supposed to be both intelligent and imaginative, but you've just finished giving what seems a very fine summary of the completely unsurprising (optimistic) consequences of this deviation from human-norm.

I can't see how they can even breathe. Sure, you'll die if you don't...but can they trade off the threat of asphyxiation against the threat that their next breath will contain a novel fast-acting poison? They'd have to be pretty much demigods to completely negate that possibility. Wouldn't it put them into paralytic terror, despite being in the domain of 1-in-a-googleplex odds?Because they are capable of weighing one risk against another.

The thing is that they don't consider time or money to be of significant value compared to life and risk evasion. They don't care about freedom; a puppeteer will be thrilled to learn that his spacecraft is permanently entombed in a block of impenetrable metal (keeping in mind that his spacecraft is lavishly stocked with every imaginable medical supply and life support system to keep him alive indefinitely). The fact that he can never leave his ship is irrelevant; he is safe.

Humans simply do not work like that. We do put our lives at risk for money or to save time. The risks may be small, but they are real. Ever disconnected the battery on your smoke detector because it was giving false alarms? It's faster than getting it fixed right now; and the odds of a serious fire breaking out in your house are practically negligible.

But a puppeteer won't think that way. If the smoke detector is malfunctioning, they will head to the store at four in the morning to get a new one if that's what it takes. They won't wait. It simply isn't safe to live without a smoke detector; therefore, they'll get it fixed (or order one express-delivered by automated mail service, or whatever) immediately.

Again, there is a limit. They do recognize limits on what they can do to make themselves safer, and they certainly recognize cases where one risk is far more important than another (the risk that you will asphyxiate from not breathing vastly exceeds the risk that you will die of a fast-acting neurotoxin if you do breathe in normal situations). That's another way in which they are at least somewhat inhuman. Nothing is inconceivable to them, if it averts a greater danger. Puppeteers are extremely utilitarian. When they find out that the galactic core is exploding and that the wavefront will make their space uninhabitable in twenty thousand years, they immediately pull up all their stakes, cash all their assets, fit space drives to their planets, and bug out of the galaxy. The policy dispute is over in a flash.

Now, fitting space drives to planets is an almost unprecedented feat of engineering in this setting. Why do the puppeteers do it?

Firstly, they don't trust the FTL drive ships with the future of their species; they know things can go wrong with them. Whereas they do know that they can safely fit space drives to their planets without blowing anything up or running into a gravity well and disintegrating.

Meanwhile, humans (and all the other intelligent species in the region) are still in denial about this. They haven't so much as moved to avoid this twenty-thousand-year-in-the-future disaster. The difference is illustrative.


You don't have to go back to ancient Persia, there are cultures that still do that today, as well as people that eat their dead. It's virtually impossible to come up with a racial trait that is outside human possibility. What I was talking about is working against your players expectations. Most players come from a culture where this would be strange and unacceptable. They would probably be bothered by it if they thought about it happening in the real world (even though it does). That is enough to gives these cultures the feeling of being inhuman for them.
You only need to work against your players experience and expectations, not against the sum of human experience.The ancient Persians were the first example that came to mind, and I understand what you're saying. It makes sense.

CockroachTeaParty
2007-07-04, 12:52 PM
I think this short story sums up why other races end up as humanlike.

If you make every non-human race have a radically different culture, an alien mentality, and a totally different way of thinking, then a mixed-species party won't be able to agree on what time to have dinner, much less how to go adventuring together. Even communication's going to be difficult.

There's also the issue that most people don't want to play a race that's radically inhuman. Too much work and not enough fun.

- Saph

Hey now, I had a blast! It was too much work for the DM, though... which ultimately is the more important issue.

Diggorian
2007-07-04, 01:24 PM
I'll mirror Cockroach's sentiment. Playing my hobgoblin is fun, and when he's called back to endless iron battlefields of Acheron (his afterlife) I've got a Thri-kreen ranger waiting in the wings. :smallamused:

About stereotypes, if they didnt hold a grain a truth they wouldnt exist. Factoring some of a races stereotype makes them authentic in character portrayl IMO. They only become thin when stereotypes are all they are.

Capt'n Ironbrow
2007-07-04, 02:06 PM
Hey, it's not about evolution or anything like that. It's fantasy! there are polytheďstic pantheons creating life!

Elves are made by some nerdy god(ess) who wanted his/her creations to be both beautifull and brainy instead of only brainy or just beautifull, Dwarves where made by the aleslobbering craftsman(-/lady) god(ess) with a high sense of loyalty and honor and humans... well, they where made by the god(ess) who saw his/her two friends busy and sought something in-between not to be called a rip-off or something like that ;)

God soon to create the humans: "hey cool, you guys are creating sentient beings! let me have a go! I now something great!"

PLOT!

God who created the dwarfs: "Och, lad, 'ere ye 'ave a pint, it innae sa bad, but ye shoold 'ave put more work inta their brooin' and craftin' skills... and they 'pear a bit unthrustworthy ta me."

God who created the elves: "You didn't put nearly as much effort in the Sapient part of their being as I with all my brilliant intellect have managed to do with these creatures of great arcane and intellectual potential I myself just created"

God who created the humans: "Aaaw! they just begin fighting amongst themselves about some diety I've not even heard off! - and about money too"

Ulzgoroth
2007-07-04, 03:05 PM
However, there are ways to combine human traits that produce minds that do not act in ways that any ordinary person would consider human.
Um, ok. I don't particularly have standards for what is and isn't 'human'.

Sure, maybe dwarves would speciate into surface-dwelling races of desert nomads, hearty ice-fishermen, and pastoral farmers over the course of a million years. But I'm not talking about speciation or evolution on geologic time scales. I'm talking about the 'short' term- spans measured in millenia, not in dozens, hundreds, or thousands of millenia.
What you're not accounting for is how that happens. A species can only colonize a new niche by moving into it first. If no population of elves ever left their forest, plains elves (or whatever) couldn't arise by any means. Dwarves can't speciate into ice-fishermen unless there are dwarves trying to live that way.

As for why humans manage to spread so quickly, and as a single species, it's essentially a consequence of intelligence. Intelligence is more or less the ability to adapt by learned behaviors, and is a much faster way of adjusting than genetic natural selection. It imitates Lamarckian evolution. And any of the intelligent races could do it.

If the non-humans do seek to expand into other environments, they would succeed. Maybe not quite as fast as humans, since we're supposed to be highly flexible and driven maniacs, but on the same time scale. If they don't seek to, they very probably wouldn't be with us today unless protected by something powerful enough to make climate change go bother someone else.


Again, there is a limit. They do recognize limits on what they can do to make themselves safer, and they certainly recognize cases where one risk is far more important than another (the risk that you will asphyxiate from not breathing vastly exceeds the risk that you will die of a fast-acting neurotoxin if you do breathe in normal situations).
Fair enough, but that doesn't eliminate the threat. They breathe because not breathing is worse, but why doesn't it terrify them?


Meanwhile, humans (and all the other intelligent species in the region) are still in denial about this. They haven't so much as moved to avoid this twenty-thousand-year-in-the-future disaster. The difference is illustrative.
Yup. Humans, collectively, are stupid and shortsighted. Puppeteers evidently remain smart and forethoughtful when acting in large numbers. Also, Puppeteers seemingly take a strong interest in the future of their species beyond their own lives, unless they also live tens of thousands of years... And they don't have much technological optimism, possibly, since they choose to solve a problem by the 'quick' (but safe) off-the-shelf solution rather than spending a few millennia trying to develop a better approach, with the OTS option as a fall-back.

Rob Knotts
2007-07-04, 03:20 PM
Hey, it's not about evolution or anything like that. It's fantasy! there are polytheďstic pantheons creating life!

Elves are made by some nerdy god(ess) who wanted his/her creations to be both beautifull and brainy instead of only brainy or just beautifull, Dwarves where made by the aleslobbering craftsman(-/lady) god(ess) with a high sense of loyalty and honor and humans... well, they where made by the god(ess) who saw his/her two friends busy and sought something in-between not to be called a rip-off or something like that ;)

God soon to create the humans: "hey cool, you guys are creating sentient beings! let me have a go! I now something great!"

PLOT!

God who created the dwarfs: "Och, lad, 'ere ye 'ave a pint, it innae sa bad, but ye shoold 'ave put more work inta their brooin' and craftin' skills... and they 'pear a bit unthrustworthy ta me."

God who created the elves: "You didn't put nearly as much effort in the Sapient part of their being as I with all my brilliant intellect have managed to do with these creatures of great arcane and intellectual potential I myself just created"

God who created the humans: "Aaaw! they just begin fighting amongst themselves about some diety I've not even heard off! - and about money too"Possibly the best response in this entire thread:smallbiggrin:

Hectonkhyres
2007-07-04, 03:52 PM
Capt'n Ironbrow: Whatever god made men was almost certainly trying to make orcs or goblins... but didn't quite manage due to a night of heavy drinking with the dwarven god.

Mwah? What is with all these shiny yellow discs? He has something you want, you hit him over the head and take it from him, me-damn-it!

Of course, sometimes we still pleasantly surprize the bastard.


Okay, you have a much higher estimate of the level of common sense in the average person than I do. :smallsmile:
Every time some group of peasants tries to gang up on whatever abomination happens to pass through town, a whole hell of a lot of people die... even if they somehow win. For many, many generations thereafter, if there is even a town left afterwards, every child will have the life-lesson 'don't poke scary looking things with sticks' beaten into them on a nightly basis. Every town within the reach of traveling merchants or bards or clergy will echo those words: leave killing things to the people who know what they are doing. That is why we have adventurers.

And of course many places wouldn't even need that sort of instruction. Any location within a month's travel of Sigil via portals and other stable dimensional tomfoolery is bound to get a steady stream of otherworldly horrors. If an illithid walked into town in many places, there would be five vendors trying to sell him a literate slave as an afternoon snack. Elsewhere, in places under watch by pallies or other forces of flappyness and good, they would be limited to offering fresh cow and monkey brains. Of course women will still be hiding their children and yadda-yadda.

Peasants are stupid... but they are also cowards. They generally only lynch an easy mark.

Fhaolan
2007-07-04, 06:08 PM
And yet, we have sterotypical torch-bearing mobs combing the forests after a supposed werewolf sighting. I make it a rule to never underestimate the courage of stupid people in large groups.

Or teenage boys when there's a girl... somewhere. The girl just has to be on the same planet... or maybe not. [So, we jump on the back of a lion? Right. And we beat it about it's head with it's own tail? Right. And then we meet girls?] :smallbiggrin:

More seriously, people almost always overestimate their own abilities (see the 'what class/stats are you' threads), and even the perception of having backup from peers boosts courage a measurable amount. Otherwise, concepts like military draft wouldn't work at all.

Back on topic: It may be possible to have a nonhuman race act in a nonhuman way, but it makes working in an adventuring party almost impossible. See the thri-kreen example up above.

In most literature and myth, elves, dwarves and the like are superhuman, not nonhuman. They have abilities and lifespans far beyond the human norm, but they are still motivated in way still comprehensible to humans. They are... shorthand for certain traits, cultures, and attitudes so the writers/storytellers don't have to go into depth explaining every little thing about them. We already know what elves are like, so just say they're elves and we can get on with the plot without needless exposition.

Since RPGs tend to model after literature, movies, etc. they will fall into the same patterns. Nonhuman races have a single culture because nonhumans are symbolic of those cultures. Breaking the symbol, or expanding the symbol is an interesting gimmick if done correctly, but it is still a gimmick. Describing orc culture as nature-loving wilderness warriors who fight against the encroachment of humans and their exploitive ways is cute, but it's still just a gimmick.

Hectonkhyres
2007-07-04, 06:48 PM
I bet you that the Salem witch trails would have amazingly stopped short in a given area after the first guy to throw a stone has half the skin blasted off his body without a drop of blood... condemned to a slow and suitably horrible death by infection. You would be amazed at how fast 'burn the monster' turns to 'run for your lives'.

Anyway, I actually didn't find the thri-kreen that incomprehensible. Basically human nomads with little concept of property or written laws and a truely everpresent sense of community and love of kin.... and generally apathy (to the point of amoralism) around those who are not kin. They have weird dietary customs, the smell of elves makes their mandibles water, and tend to make pretend-families out of whoever is available when they are away from others of their kind. For me, that isn't any harder to wrap my brain around than tribal peoples from New Guinea or islamists in the middle east.

I think we are setting our standards for alien too low. Picture a species that can pass on some of its knowledge and experience to the next generation through its flesh, actually wanting to be cannibalized. Or a species that can choose what it is going to remember and what it is going to forget, rewriting its own history in its solopsist bubble.

I personally place the illithid as the minimum for something to be truely alien.

Jorkens
2007-07-05, 08:19 PM
Speaking of fantasy races, and sci-fi authors... I've always thought that if elves (and other eldar races) were so long lived they should have atttude towards time much like Heinlein's Martians. The idea of an elf being in a hurry just seems... absurd.
Read Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter. Not only are elves immortal, they live in a place with no sense of time. When Lurulu the troll (more like an imp in standard fantasy terms) crosses over from Elfland to The Fields We Know, the first thing he does is just watch and marvel at all the signs of time passing...

Dervag
2007-07-05, 09:38 PM
God who created the humans: "Aaaw! they just begin fighting amongst themselves about some diety I've not even heard off! - and about money too"The deity in question would probably get a new catchphrase from watching their creations:

"Huh? What are they- oh Me; I didn't know they could do that!"
or
"That wasn't in the design specifications!"


If the non-humans do seek to expand into other environments, they would succeed. Maybe not quite as fast as humans, since we're supposed to be highly flexible and driven maniacs, but on the same time scale. If they don't seek to, they very probably wouldn't be with us today unless protected by something powerful enough to make climate change go bother someone else.Maybe they only seek so in an emergency.

If the climate changes and the elven forests are dying, the elves will go out and look for another forest. If they don't find any, they may suck it up and decide to live on the plains instead, but they will hate it, because all their instincts are set for "forest."


Fair enough, but that doesn't eliminate the threat. They breathe because not breathing is worse, but why doesn't it terrify them?Because they don't panic in response to a danger that they can't do anything about.

Think of them as being cowardly Vulcans. They're very logical, but they're very risk-averse.


Yup. Humans, collectively, are stupid and shortsighted. Puppeteers evidently remain smart and forethoughtful when acting in large numbers. Also, Puppeteers seemingly take a strong interest in the future of their species beyond their own lives, unless they also live tens of thousands of years...Well, with the medical technology they have, it's possible that they might live that long, especially since they're so careful to avoid dangerous behaviors. However, your characterization is correct. They're social herd animals, as opposed to being social individuals like humans. So they think in terms of herd survival when forming policy, though they will certainly act for themselves when they are alone.


And they don't have much technological optimism, possibly, since they choose to solve a problem by the 'quick' (but safe) off-the-shelf solution rather than spending a few millennia trying to develop a better approach, with the OTS option as a fall-back.Yup; you've got that right. Puppeteers don't do optimism. It's incomprehensible to them; the closest a puppeteer gets to 'optimistic' is 'manic'.