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huginn
2017-11-03, 09:52 PM
I never quite understood why someone will say well I am human in rl so I wont play a human in game or humans are boring.
If they find humans boring is it the fault of the race or lack of imagination on the the player ?

Nifft
2017-11-03, 10:04 PM
I never quite understood why someone will say well I am human in rl so I wont play a human in game or humans are boring.
If they find humans boring is it the fault of the race or lack of imagination on the the player ?

If you've done something twelve times, and now you want to do a different thing, is that likely to be because of a lack of imagination?

If you grew up rich, and you want to play someone who is very poor, is that likely to be because of a lack of imagination?

If you can walk, and you want to play someone who can fly, is that likely to be because of a lack of imagination?

War_lord
2017-11-03, 11:53 PM
Humans don't have darkvision, and DMs can be jerks when magical aging and ghosts come up.

KillianHawkeye
2017-11-03, 11:58 PM
You see... the thing about escapism is that it works a lot better when you're pretending to be something that's unlike your normal self. Ideally, as different as possible.

Slipperychicken
2017-11-04, 12:04 AM
The word "human" doesn't cause a fun visual image to pop into their heads.

I almost always play humans, but I can still see where they're coming from. It's a fantasy universe, you're told you can be whatever you want to be, do whatever you want to do. If you're choosing to roleplay in a fantasy universe with an understanding of what that means, chances are you don't want something relatable ("human" might make you think about your rent payment, or that one guy at work who shouts in every meeting), you might want to be something crazy, cool, really farther out there, feel like a part of this mystical wonderland instead of a normal person passing through on his way back to the office.

Fiery Diamond
2017-11-04, 01:45 AM
Another simple answer is exoticism.

But yeah, I usually play humans.

Satinavian
2017-11-04, 01:51 AM
The humans and their culture are pretty much always what is most similar to our regular real world experience and thus the least interesting to explore part of a setting.

Mastikator
2017-11-04, 02:05 AM
If you've done something twelve times, and now you want to do a different thing, is that likely to be because of a lack of imagination?

...yes?

There are 7 billion variations of human characters in the real world. Each one with a rich backstory and inner life. If you can't come up with an interesting and different 13th character without making their ears pointy then you absolutely definitely lack imagination.

I'd take it one step further and say 99% of all of the non-humans characters I've seen played could have been human and would have been more original for it, not less.

Lvl 2 Expert
2017-11-04, 02:44 AM
You see... the thing about escapism is that it works a lot better when you're pretending to be something that's unlike your normal self. Ideally, as different as possible.

And the game offers you the possibility. You can be any of dozens of species, yet over half your games you play as the least interesting of them, the ones you already know well. Why are you wasting so many opportunities?

The fact that humans are typically, or at least in d&d, the only race that isn't pidgeonholed both by strict mechanical (dis)advantages and flavor text only makes it a bigger challenge. I should be able to get something out of the 95% of the characters that I don't use enough.

The Insanity
2017-11-04, 03:09 AM
Never quite understood why people would play human (well, that's not exactly true, I know it's for the feat).

Anymage
2017-11-04, 03:10 AM
In theory, it's interesting to look at things from another perspective. This works best in a game where everybody is the same sort of nonhuman, and where their nonhuman traits are well codified by rules. Whatever else they may have going for them, white wolf games have been interesting for this perspective.

In practice, a few issues. When you have race glut like D&D has, it's hard to give a decent amount of thought to any particular one of them. In fact, even many of the basic PHB ones are just lightly touched on instead of getting a properly deep dive. In that case, race is just another bunch of modifiers on your playing piece. And given how humans are generally the generalist race, it's hard for a generalist benefit to be as tempting as a specialist's benefit that happens to match your specialization.

If it bugs you, though, I recommend doing what I do. Allow people to play whatever race they like mechanically, keeping all traits they can justify, while being skinned as normal humans with ears and lifespans to match. You get to tighten your theme around a group that could more easily have histories together, instead of having to justify why this cosmopolitan group all met and decided to run together. And they get the cool powers they want.

Satinavian
2017-11-04, 04:05 AM
I'd take it one step further and say 99% of all of the non-humans characters I've seen played could have been human and would have been more original for it, not less.Maybe.

And 99% of human SCs would have worked as elves or dwarfes or whatever and also been more original for that (as in : not being a race stereotype).

So why should that be a reason to choose humans ?


Seriously what is this with wanting players to choose humans instead of what they like ?

Kaptin Keen
2017-11-04, 04:20 AM
As a GM, I've seen two things:

People who roll - say - an elf, then roleplay it like a human, or
People who roll an elf, then just roleplay if very, very poorly.

That's my sole reason why people should play humans. We just have a lot greater familarity with human mannerisms and so on - even bad roleplayers can play humans decently. But I've honest never really seen a well-played un-human.

Mastikator
2017-11-04, 04:56 AM
Maybe.

And 99% of human SCs would have worked as elves or dwarfes or whatever and also been more original for that (as in : not being a race stereotype).

So why should that be a reason to choose humans ?


Seriously what is this with wanting players to choose humans instead of what they like ?

If you play an elf as a human in a setting were elves aren't just humans with pointy ears then your character is detached from the setting. It makes them harder to relate to, it worsens the roleplaying experience for the other players and puts a cap on the depth you can play at. If everyone is just doing a race/class/alignment combo of themselves then it doesn't matter but if you're actually playing a character and not an archetype then it does matter.

IronMike
2017-11-04, 05:17 AM
You see... the thing about escapism is that it works a lot better when you're pretending to be something that's unlike your normal self. Ideally, as different as possible.

I'm human IRL but not a monk. Not even close. My human monk PC is my escapism.

Eldan
2017-11-04, 06:06 AM
Honestly, that question, in the end, sounds to me a bit like "Why would you play a wizard? You could play a fighter*! There's many kinds of people who fight in real life, they wouldn't all be the same!"

Different people want different things from their escapism.

*And that's not to mean that fighter is a boring concept**. It's just the concept that exists in real life.

**well, I think it is, personally, but that's a matter of taste.

Mastikator
2017-11-04, 09:19 AM
Honestly, that question, in the end, sounds to me a bit like "Why would you play a wizard? You could play a fighter*! There's many kinds of people who fight in real life, they wouldn't all be the same!"

Different people want different things from their escapism.

*And that's not to mean that fighter is a boring concept**. It's just the concept that exists in real life.

**well, I think it is, personally, but that's a matter of taste.

Kind of depends on what you mean by fighter, a fighter in the D&D sense will quickly reach super hero power levels.

KillianHawkeye
2017-11-04, 10:01 AM
I'm human IRL but not a monk. Not even close. My human monk PC is my escapism.

And that's totally fine, but different people will naturally have different preferences on how much of a difference is the right amount.

huginn
2017-11-04, 12:04 PM
If you've done something twelve times, and now you want to do a different thing, is that likely to be because of a lack of imagination?

If you grew up rich, and you want to play someone who is very poor, is that likely to be because of a lack of imagination?

If you can walk, and you want to play someone who can fly, is that likely to be because of a lack of imagination?

When someone never played a human and refuses to play a human only because humans are somehow boring then yes I would consider the possibility that they lack imagination.

I meet great role players and I meet bad role players and based on personal experience its usually the bad ones who say humans are boring

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-04, 12:15 PM
Because they have to play a human being for hours on end, most days of the week, most weeks of the year, for a lifetime?

pwykersotz
2017-11-04, 01:43 PM
When someone never played a human and refuses to play a human only because humans are somehow boring then yes I would consider the possibility that they lack imagination.

I meet great role players and I meet bad role players and based on personal experience its usually the bad ones who say humans are boring

My personal experience also aligns with this, though it is not 100%. Personal taste is a thing, after all.

Xuc Xac
2017-11-04, 02:30 PM
When someone never played a human and refuses to play a human only because humans are somehow boring then yes I would consider the possibility that they lack imagination.

I meet great role players and I meet bad role players and based on personal experience its usually the bad ones who say humans are boring

And then when they play a non-human, they don't give them any personality because they think "being a dwarf/elf/whatever" is a substitute.

Bohandas
2017-11-04, 02:35 PM
there's also the issue that the traits for humans in D&D are kind of an asspull

KillianHawkeye
2017-11-04, 04:11 PM
When someone never played a human and refuses to play a human only because humans are somehow boring then yes I would consider the possibility that they lack imagination.

Isn't this kind of like saying that you have a friend who never eats vanilla ice cream, refuses to eat vanilla ice cream because they think vanilla is boring, and then complaining that they lack taste?

I know that there are some people who really like vanilla, but with so many flavors available it seems weird for anyone to have a problem with someone not liking a particular one. Especially vanilla!

I mean, I don't have any problem with eating a plain cheese pizza, but I certainly wouldn't ever buy one if a pizza with actual toppings was available.

If you were complaining about a person who never eats vanilla ice cream or plain cheese pizza, I'd say the problem is definitely on your end and not with the person who has a preference which you unreasonably disagree with. And to be honest, I don't see how your actual argument is substantially different from that.

Maybe instead, you could try accepting that people try to avoid things that are boring?

Mastikator
2017-11-04, 04:40 PM
Isn't this kind of like saying that you have a friend who never eats vanilla ice cream, refuses to eat vanilla ice cream because they think vanilla is boring, and then complaining that they lack taste?

There are more kinds of people than there are flavors of ice cream, by an order of magnitude that makes this comparison meaningless.

That said, giving your character pointy ears or green skin or hairy feet isn't going to make them less boring. It's 100% of how you create their character and 0% how you stat them out.

Satinavian
2017-11-04, 05:09 PM
That said, giving your character pointy ears or green skin or hairy feet isn't going to make them less boring. It's 100% of how you create their character and 0% how you stat them out.Sure.

But that is not actually a reason to not use the pointy ears, green skin or hairy feet.

Lord Raziere
2017-11-04, 05:13 PM
Sure.

But that is not actually a reason to not use the pointy ears, green skin or hairy feet.

Ok.

Do I care? No. I don't care what reason you have to try and make me stop playing these things. I want to play them. Stop bothering people about their playstyle choices.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-04, 05:24 PM
Ok.

Do I care? No. I don't care what reason you have to try and make me stop playing these things. I want to play them. Stop bothering people about their playstyle choices.

I think Satinavian was saying that it's not a reason to not play them -- so kinda agreeing with your position.

Lord Raziere
2017-11-04, 05:42 PM
I think Satinavian was saying that it's not a reason to not play them -- so kinda agreeing with your position.

Oh, I didn't see the NOT in there. Derp.

An Enemy Spy
2017-11-04, 05:48 PM
Because people have their own preferences of how they like their characters to be. Personally, I like playing as halflings. Is this because I find humans too realistic? Nope, I just like halflings and that's all there is to it.

dascarletm
2017-11-04, 06:09 PM
Funny, my players tend to play human over other things. I think they like being a heroic version of themselves.

Bohandas
2017-11-04, 06:28 PM
That said, giving your character pointy ears or green skin or hairy feet isn't going to make them less boring.

The latter will actually make them more boring due to being a cheap knockoff

Xuc Xac
2017-11-04, 06:30 PM
If you were complaining about a person who never eats vanilla ice cream or plain cheese pizza, I'd say the problem is definitely on your end and not with the person who has a preference which you unreasonably disagree with. And to be honest, I don't see how your actual argument is substantially different from that.


You seem to be equating "human" to "bland base that other things are added to".

Vanilla is not flavorless "blank" ice cream that you use as a base for toppings and sauces (although the cheaper versions treat it that way and give it that reputation). It's its own flavor. It's a bean with a rich flavor, just like chocolate.

Treating humans like a boring base--plain cheese pizza--is how you get boring elves, dwarves, orcs, and everything else. Instead of being their own thing, elves are just "humans with a dex bonus and an excuse to be arrogant" and dwarves are "humans with a con bonus and a license to be rude".

Bohandas
2017-11-04, 06:37 PM
You seem to be equating "human" to "bland base that other things are added to".

Vanilla is not flavorless "blank" ice cream that you use as a base for toppings and sauces (although the cheaper versions treat it that way and give it that reputation). It's its own flavor. It's a bean with a rich flavor, just like chocolate.

Technically correct, but they don;t seem to dump the vanilla flavor in thick the way they do with chocolate or coffee

2D8HP
2017-11-04, 07:45 PM
Hmmm.... most of my PC's have been human (but there was that one Vampire *shudder*).

I did have a 1e AD&D Half-Orc Cleric/Fighter that tried to hide his Orcish heritage by wearing a great helm most of the time, that I thought was interesting, but judging by the 5e PHB illustration, a Paladin with Orcish blood (what I was essential trying to play, as only humans could be Paladins back then) is now a regular thing.

All my Traveller, RuneQuest, etc. PC's were human.

Currently I'm just playing Pendragon with a Cymric (Welsh Briton human) PK (Player Knight), and WotC 5e Dungeons & Dragons Half-Elf PC.

I've mostly played a plurality of 5e D&D Half-Elves recently, and that's for "mechanics" and so I may play PC's that are my RL age, but have a PC with the fitness of youth, but have played some Wood-Elves (for the mechanics mostly) that I made up some cultural uniqueness for, but a human with that culture could have worked as well.

Honestly I'm clueless as to how to RP a distinct race/species as opposed to personality and culture.


..elves are just "humans with a dex bonus and an excuse to be arrogant" and dwarves are "humans with a con bonus and a license to be rude".


Now I want to plat a mixed Dwarf/Elf.

I want that license!

:amused:

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-04, 08:30 PM
Here's a related, but distinct question--is it truly possible to role play an actually alien character? After all, we're all human. We've never met, not have any information about real aliens. Thus, when we role play, I feel we're always playing humans with funny ears.

Mechalich
2017-11-04, 09:43 PM
Here's a related, but distinct question--is it truly possible to role play an actually alien character? After all, we're all human. We've never met, not have any information about real aliens. Thus, when we role play, I feel we're always playing humans with funny ears.

It's possible, difficult, but possible. The player just has to keep in mind whatever the psychological variances happen to be and react accordingly in such situations where they would matter, which for most species wouldn't necessarily be all that often.

This challenge is heavily dependent upon just how alien the species you are representing actually is. There are some categories:

1. 'Near-Humans:' These are basically human variants. In some settings they may even be literal human variants created via genetic or magic. So it's basically a matter of playing a human with a peculiar quirk that might be largely cosmetic (like green skin or cat ears or something).

2. Hominids: These are different species that are still pretty darn close to humans biologically. Their variations are measured and fit on a short list. If you cut one open they'll still look like a human on the inside. This gets you elves, dwarves, and many common science fiction species. This means playing something that is like a human, but skewed in a significant way. This can be challenging, because the differences may be subtle and difficult for players to keep in mind - for example, players often fail to keep the extraordinarily long lifespan of elves in mind when playing them. It's still doable and probably isn't that different from playing a human with a significant mental variation - like being a psychopath or having severe OCD or the like. Note that this is actually rather challenging compared to to baseline roleplaying expectations and attempts to impose the roleplaying mental illness on players, ie. Malkavians, have generally gone terribly.

3. Humanoids: These are species that may have wildly different physiology and psychology from humans, but are still within a humanoid body-plan. This is where lizardmen, catfolk, and similar creations fall, alongside a huge number of science fiction species (this stage is basically as far as you can go and have a live human actor actually portraying a role and still be able to move about). These species may be very different from humans in how they think and how they are motivated, but they can at least act within human-built environments in a fashion recognizable to a human. Playing these types effectively is a serious challenge, because there are going to be substantial differences between them and actual humans if the species are properly conceptualized (note that they often aren't, games are notorious for ignoring things like how being a bunch of obligate carnivores would drastically change a society from a human baseline and so forth). By this point, what you are is at least equally important to the character as who you are and properly playing such a person means being mindful of this at all times. This is hard, and for the most part only a tiny fraction of roleplaying games and campaigns are properly set up to interrogate something like this during gameplay (D&D absolutely is not, something Eclipse Phase is much closer) and will have the kind of heavy characterization at the table that supports this sort of thing.

4. True Aliens: These are species that are not even humanoid. They don't move like humans, they don't interact with human spaces in a human way, they don't have human mouthparts, and they have a completely alien mentality. The classic D&D example is the Thri-Kreen. The original 2e version of the Thri-Kreen was as bipedal mantids roughly the size of a small horse. They went through multiple instar development, lived for a mere 30 years, couldn't pronounce certain letters, and didn't understand what sleep was, among other really weird traits. The Thri-Kreen of Athas book took the whole issue on in a very serious way, and if you read through it you get a sense of both how cool the idea really was, and at the same time how totally unreasonable to would be to implement at tabletop. not one player in ten thousand is willing to commit to avoiding certain sound-options when they talk in character, and about that many GMs are willing to properly deal with Thri-Kreen racial memory and a species that evaluates other sapient species partially based on how they taste (Thri-Kreen think elves taste good, much better than humans, as actual 2e canon). Even in large fantasy and science fiction novels there's usually only enough room to accommodate a single character from a species like this. It just takes so many words and interactions to build that character into a real being as opposed to a caricature that there isn't room for more. Heck even highly speculative franchises like Star Trek of Babylon 5 generally avoided dealing with non-humanoid aliens at all beyond as things to shoot at.

Personally, from the perspective of what your can reasonably do in tabletop, you're good with the first two types. Those are doable without coming off as stupid, though I personally would steer inexperienced players away from more challenging species or house rule things to make some of those more like humans - for example, if you cut away the extended lifespan, elves are basically just humans adapted to live in temperate forests and dwarves humans adapted for temperate mountains with extensive cave systems. multiple hominid species living on one planet at the same time is archeological reality, so advancing them into history is barely fantasy at this point. I'd be extremely leery of players wanting to play something like lizardfolk unless it was clear they were willing to be appropriately serious about it, and you can forget about playing non-humanoids and I think game rules shouldn't even allow it. It's difficult enough for a GM to properly portray a dragon in a few short and tightly structured scenes, never mind as a full time character.

Bohandas
2017-11-04, 11:32 PM
Here's a related, but distinct question--is it truly possible to role play an actually alien character? After all, we're all human. We've never met, not have any information about real aliens. Thus, when we role play, I feel we're always playing humans with funny ears.

There's plenty of information available about reptiles, hyenas, etc; play a lizardman or a gnoll

Bohandas
2017-11-04, 11:36 PM
not one player in ten thousand is willing to commit to avoiding certain sound-options when they talk in character

Then don't talk in character. Say the gist of what your character said or better yet get another character to say the gist of what your character said the way characters in Star Wars are always translating for R2-D2 and Chewbacca.

Mechalich
2017-11-05, 01:25 AM
Then don't talk in character. Say the gist of what your character said or better yet get another character to say the gist of what your character said the way characters in Star Wars are always translating for R2-D2 and Chewbacca.

You do realize that, at 99% of actual gaming tables, any player who insists on playing a character who can't talk properly - even something as simple and conceptually legitimate as a mute human - is going to be seen by everyone else as a deliberately disruptive jerk right?

In the moment, while gaming in an actual live session, scenarios that involve one player speaking for another, or a player having to pass notes to represent what their character says, are incredibly annoying. Translation barriers are brutal enough that even single-player video games tend to elide them whenever possible (think about just how many languages Revan speaks in KOTOR).

Most gaming tables have an incredibly low immersion level - to the point that at a significant fraction of gaming tables players can't be bothered to remember the names of the other characters in their own party. Anything in game that is dependent upon a high immersion level to work, and something like 'playing a Thri-Kreen in a lore-accurate way' absolutely qualifies, is almost guaranteed to fail and to make other people miserable out-of-character. We have whole games - like Wraith: The Oblivion, that became shipwrecked upon this shore.

Deeply inhuman characters can work great in novels. They can work great in movies. They can even work out well as NPCs if they are managed carefully - one of the more memorable NPCs I ever ran was a White Ethergaunt who went by 'Wax Face' - but they make for terrible party members.

Anymage
2017-11-05, 01:45 AM
There's plenty of information available about reptiles, hyenas, etc; play a lizardman or a gnoll

If you really think that players will put in that much research to play even an anthropomorhpized animal type, you must run in very different circles than I do.

(Not to mention all the mental overhead required on the DM's part to remember any issues these nonstandard characters have. In almost every case it gets handwaved and/or ignored. The fact that players all seem quite content with this is another point of evidence that they care less about playing centaurs and angels, and more about playing a spiffy set of racial traits.)

I'll also note that this is rather setting dependent. Shadowrun games tend to be rather cosmopolitan unless racial issues are the core of the campaign, since the world works that way and there are plenty of reasons that various races would rub shoulders with each other. WoD crossover games can be rather sketchy, but any individual game line tends to have everybody playing nonhumans as a matter of course. The specific issue happens in D&D a lot more often, when I want to have a bunch of characters who all start out from the same general area, without having to explain why an elf came wandering out of the elven forest, a dwarf came wandering out of the dwarven mountains, and there's suddenly room for a robot somehow. It can work if the setting centers on a big metropolitan melting pot, but it's limiting to expect every campaign to center on such a place.

Kaptin Keen
2017-11-05, 01:46 AM
Here's a related, but distinct question--is it truly possible to role play an actually alien character? After all, we're all human. We've never met, not have any information about real aliens. Thus, when we role play, I feel we're always playing humans with funny ears.

Propably not. We're pattern recognition machines, we're not actually anywhere near as clever as we think we are. So everything is just human+whatever:

Elf=human+woodhugger+arrogant
Orc=human+green+angry
Dwarf=human-tall+beard

All we ever do is emphasize, usually to the point of comedy, human traits. Also, we're bad at it. I have literally never met a really good roleplayer. Not pointing any fingers - I'm terrible myself, I'm really more of a problem solver, not a roleplayer.

Satinavian
2017-11-05, 04:40 AM
You do realize that, at 99% of actual gaming tables, any player who insists on playing a character who can't talk properly - even something as simple and conceptually legitimate as a mute human - is going to be seen by everyone else as a deliberately disruptive jerk right?
That doesn't mean you as player have to actually make every accent or dialect your character might possess. Some players do voices, others don't. And that is fine.

Sure, a character should be able to communicate properly. But that is rarely really a problem, even in games that don't use the D&D way of Common as a language.


I also agree with your 4 categories, but not with the advice of sticking to the first two.


Most gaming tables have an incredibly low immersion level - to the point that at a significant fraction of gaming tables players can't be bothered to remember the names of the other characters in their own party. Anything in game that is dependent upon a high immersion level to work, and something like 'playing a Thri-Kreen in a lore-accurate way' absolutely qualifies, is almost guaranteed to fail and to make other people miserable out-of-character. We have whole games - like Wraith: The Oblivion, that became shipwrecked upon this shore.In a low immersion game it doesn't bother anyone if some race is not properly represented anyway.

But in a mid or high immersion game (which is generally far more common than you think, especcially in circles that don't use D&D that often) it gets the attention it needs.

pwykersotz
2017-11-05, 07:39 AM
Here's a related, but distinct question--is it truly possible to role play an actually alien character? After all, we're all human. We've never met, not have any information about real aliens. Thus, when we role play, I feel we're always playing humans with funny ears.

It helps to do some design out of game for how the alien race processes things, and yes there are limits, but sure, with enough effort you can make a very convincing roleplay for an alien character. The more distinct they are from human, the more brainpower it uses to keep up the illusion though, and there is definitely a point of diminishing returns. Obviously if you're going for a purist definition of "truly possible" then no, we can't actually break out of the earth-centric condition. We can only mimic what we know and create minor extrapolations. Still, that will be enough to get the right feel for most people.

Twizzly513
2017-11-05, 11:31 AM
When I create a character, I usually have a race in mind from the get-go so that I can incorporate it into the backstory as a possible plot device. If I ever have a full character concept and no race, I go human since they are so diverse and mechanically work for all classes in most rpgs. This happens maybe 40% of the time.

As for other people, I think it's just that they'd like to play something different than what they are, especially since human society and culture is so ridiculously similar to ours in fantasy settings. It comes down to the thought process of: "If I'm playing a fantasy game, why would I play something that doesn't feel fantasy?"

Bohandas
2017-11-05, 12:04 PM
In the moment, while gaming in an actual live session, scenarios that involve one player speaking for another, or a player having to pass notes to represent what their character says, are incredibly annoying. Translation barriers are brutal enough that even single-player video games tend to elide them whenever possible (think about just how many languages Revan speaks in KOTOR).

Most gaming tables have an incredibly low immersion level - to the point that at a significant fraction of gaming tables players can't be bothered to remember the names of the other characters in their own party. Anything in game that is dependent upon a high immersion level to work, and something like 'playing a Thri-Kreen in a lore-accurate way' absolutely qualifies, is almost guaranteed to fail and to make other people miserable out-of-character. We have whole games - like Wraith: The Oblivion, that became shipwrecked upon this shore.

Ok. That rules out my sevond suggestion but if anything it makes my first suggestion (just give the gist of what your character says) more plausible if there's low immersion.

(ie "my character says we should go north" instead of "my character says 'we should go north' "

redwizard007
2017-11-05, 12:21 PM
Technically correct, but they don;t seem to dump the vanilla flavor in thick the way they do with chocolate or coffee

You are eating the wrong vanilla ice cream. Try Breyers or Ben & Jerry's.

Bohandas
2017-11-05, 12:35 PM
If you really think that players will put in that much research to play even an anthropomorhpized animal type, you must run in very different circles than I do.

I think I come to it from a different perspective than most people because I've got a degree in biology.

Honest Tiefling
2017-11-05, 12:57 PM
If the DM accuses the players of having a lack of imagination because they take options offered, I can't help but think that trolling might be partially involved. I mean, for many people, if you gave them a challenge to make non-humans as interesting as their human counterparts, they're going to do it just to prove it can be done.

Also, I do it because I like tieflings and prejudice (justified or no) against them gives me an easy in with the party even if the initial introduction is a bit shaky. Oh, you're not coming after me with pitchforks and intending to kill me in front of a temple? BFFS FOREVER!!!!

Tanarii
2017-11-05, 02:30 PM
Honestly I'm clueless as to how to RP a distinct race/species as opposed to personality and culture.
The 5e PHB gives a run down of the common traits for other races. Also SCAG if you're in FR. Theres actually less on the common traits of most Human sub-cultures than on the non-human. Decide where your character is an exception to the common traits listed, and why.

Obviously you don't want to forget to build a distinct personality in either. But that's why Backgrounds in 5e have suggested personality traits.

Between the combination of stereotypical racial personality traits (including typical Alignment ), where your individual PC is different from stereotypical racial personality traits, and your PC's distinct personality traits, it gives quite got a lot to go for making in character decisions (aka Roleplaying).

Esprit15
2017-11-05, 03:42 PM
Because not all builds need the bonus feat and skills over some extra strength.

Because a human coming from the snow elf lands as a spy would be weird.

Because I want a character who remembers when that thing happened 100 years ago because he was there.

Because the DM didn’t spend as much time fleshing out the human lands as she did the dwarves.

Because having four arms sounded badass.

Because I want to try to explore a mindset different from my own.

Because I want to explore a character with a clearly visible bloodline.

***

There are plenty of valid reasons to have no interest in playing humans.

huginn
2017-11-05, 05:07 PM
Because not all builds need the bonus feat and skills over some extra strength.

Because a human coming from the snow elf lands as a spy would be weird.

Because I want a character who remembers when that thing happened 100 years ago because he was there.

Because the DM didn’t spend as much time fleshing out the human lands as she did the dwarves.

Because having four arms sounded badass.

Because I want to try to explore a mindset different from my own.

Because I want to explore a character with a clearly visible bloodline.

***

There are plenty of valid reasons to have no interest in playing humans.

No one is saying there are no valid reasons not to play human. Its only when someone says I wont play a human in D&D or any other game cause I am a human in RL or humans are boring do I question their reasons

Frozen_Feet
2017-11-05, 05:07 PM
Here's a related, but distinct question--is it truly possible to role play an actually alien character?

I'm sufficiently alien that people have mistaken me for a robot and frequently express the notion that they can't understand a whiff of what's going on in my head. This only gets worse if I'm playing a character with actually exotic philosophy, viewpoint etc.

So the answer is "yes", once you factor in that being alien is a really damn low bar to pass when it comes to some people.

Otherwise, Mechalich had a decent description of how this works and it is in many ways similar to what Gary Gygax wrote into 1st Edition AD&D DMG: most characters are humans or demihumans, because humanity provides the most readily usable sets of assumptions for human players. Most players who want to play non-humans do so for somewhat shallow reasons, such as gaining in-game power; they're not actually interested in deep exploration of such roles. The few players who are, should be allowed to do so, but a GM should firsr check that they first understand all the difficulties of integrating such characters into a normal adventuring framework.

This is also prime the historical reason why non-human characters have been soft-banned in D&D, via penalties like level caps or LA. It was deemed that either the players would be unable or unwilling to play such characters properly, so the only reason to pick such characters was powergaming via trying to stack up advantages non-humans had over humans. Undesireable both for roleplaying and game balance reasons.

Tanarii
2017-11-05, 05:55 PM
"Alien" is why there are racial stereotypes. So you, a person that is a human and not an Elf or Dwarf or Halfling, or even more exotic like a Tiefling or Dragonborn, can play them.

Angry did a good article on this being why racial stereotypes exist, and how to break them right. I'll see if I can dig it up.

Edit:
http://www.madadventurers.com/angry-rants-stop-playing-against-stereotypes/

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-05, 06:09 PM
Alien in this case has little to do with the malformed notion of "race", conflation of race and cultural tendencies, etc.

(See also, conflation of "species" and "race".)

Cluedrew
2017-11-05, 06:36 PM
Actually I think the mix-up of species and race is ironically appropriate. Because really most races feel like racial variation instead of the difference that a different species would bring on. Plus you know interracial children, which would be harder if they were actually different species.

Actually I don't think some races being actual races of humans is a stretch. Dwarfism makes you about as tall as a dwarf after all. Although generally their overall build is more reminiscent of a Halfling.

As for always picking non-humans: I know I like to pick a feature that definitively makes the character "not me" to focus on. I usually don't go for race, it is usually a personality trait or a more general background thing. But maybe some of them use race in the same way.

Sebastian
2017-11-05, 06:39 PM
I never quite understood why someone will say well I am human in rl so I wont play a human in game or humans are boring.
If they find humans boring is it the fault of the race or lack of imagination on the the player ?

Non-humans can do anything humans can do, but better.

They have better stats, and other special abilities that humans lacks (i.e darkvision/low light vision and so on)

Whatever class you want to play, there is a non-human race with the best abilities bonus for it.

Maybe not the only reason, but i think it is a good part of it.

I mean, all those limitations to demihumans in the old editions of D&D were not there just because Gigax was a jerk. :smallsmile:

FabulousFizban
2017-11-05, 06:41 PM
funny, i see no reason to play anything but human. Why wouldn't I want a bonus feat?

Knaight
2017-11-05, 06:56 PM
Never quite understood why people would play human (well, that's not exactly true, I know it's for the feat).

In the specific context of a few editions of D&D, some players pick human for the feat. That doesn't explain why the vast majority of role playing games only have human characters - what does explain that is that because humans are real they can fit into just about any setting with ties to reality (even if they're really tenuous) without really implying that much about the setting. There's room for variety there that gets dramatically constrained once the standard fantasy races (TM) and all their baggage get tossed into a setting. I'm completely sick of elves, dwarves, and the rest, and while I can still appreciate Tolkien, pre-Tolkein mythology and works closely based on it, and even the occasional derivative work that at least dramatically changes things (e.g. Shadowrun, to use an RPG example) I certainly don't want to play any of these any time soon.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-05, 06:59 PM
There seem to be a lot of posts presuming that we're talking about some edition of D&D (the mention of Feats and such).

Tanarii
2017-11-05, 07:01 PM
I'm completely sick of elves, dwarves, and the rest, and while I can still appreciate Tolkien, pre-Tolkein mythology and works closely based on it, and even the occasional derivative work that at least dramatically changes things (e.g. Shadowrun, to use an RPG example) I certainly don't want to play any of these any time soon.
You could always play warhammer 41k Only War / DH. No elves, dwarves, or halfings at all. No sir. Tau, Ogryn and Ratlings are completely new and different. COMPLETELY I TELL YOU!

Bohandas
2017-11-05, 07:10 PM
I'm completely sick of elves, dwarves, and the rest, and while I can still appreciate Tolkien, pre-Tolkein mythology and works closely based on it, and even the occasional derivative work that at least dramatically changes things (e.g. Shadowrun, to use an RPG example) I certainly don't want to play any of these any time soon.

And that's why I like gnomes. They weren't in LoTR and thus aren't completely done to death

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-05, 07:24 PM
For gaming, at least for me, I don't care what's been done or not done in terms of "too many" or "not enough" of some race species. I care about playing the character I want to play, and whether the species fits the character and their backstory, and whether I simply like that species or not.

For world-building, both the "fantasy" settings I've put a lot of work into don't have the "standards" but do have some overlap with the standards simply because the standards cover some of the ground they do for good reasons. Neither setting has elves, for example, but one has "moon people" (because they were favored by the moon deity) and the other has "wilder". Neither is going to be confused with Tolkein's or D&D's elves in detail, but for setting and narrative reasons they end up hitting a few of the same notes.

Knaight
2017-11-05, 09:44 PM
You could always play warhammer 41k Only War / DH. No elves, dwarves, or halfings at all. No sir. Tau, Ogryn and Ratlings are completely new and different. COMPLETELY I TELL YOU!

I'll give them Ratlings, inasmuch as they're an anthropomorphised animal that are fairly extreme in being human like, which represents a different tradition for pulling in non-human species which is at least a little less tiresome. The other two? Not so much.

Tanarii
2017-11-05, 10:16 PM
I'll give them Ratlings, inasmuch as they're an anthropomorphised animal that are fairly extreme in being human like, which represents a different tradition for pulling in non-human species which is at least a little less tiresome. The other two? Not so much.Ratlings are just hobbit snipers. (Edit: I'm assuming you were thinking of something else.)

Actually Ogryn are the most unusual compared to most D&D-like games. They're effectively half-ogres. But that's still not that alien, ultimately.

I probably should have used blue text. :smallwink:

Knaight
2017-11-05, 11:25 PM
Ratlings are just hobbit snipers. (Edit: I'm assuming you were thinking of something else.)
I'm pretty sure I was thinking of Skaven, on further reflection.


I probably should have used blue text.
The sarcasm was practically audible, I'm just willing to give them Skaven, and made the mistake of thinking that in a setting that definitely has rat people the Ratlings were them. But no, that's just the Skaven/Ratmen/Ratkin.

2D8HP
2017-11-05, 11:44 PM
....I probably should have used blue text. :smallwink:
Thanks for the earlier advice
*sputter*

Bluetext?

:eek:

Never use bluetext!

EVER!

It's bad enough to commit VILE ACTS OF SARCASM!

But to proclaim the sin for all to see?

HERESY!!!

Kaptin Keen
2017-11-06, 02:46 AM
Thanks for the earlier advice
*sputter*

Bluetext?

:eek:

Never use bluetext!

EVER!

It's bad enough to commit VILE ACTS OF SARCASM!

But to proclaim the sin for all to see?

HERESY!!!

Um ... why no blue text? Also, you just did! :p

In my games, just to mess with people, I change the races. Elves are non-player, hugely powerful, evil and ... well, my game world has a grand total of three elves.

Dwarves are awful little bastards who delve into the earth, do their stuff, and hate everyone. They only trade with humans out of spite ('Oi, is'at da best ye've got? I can sell ya much better'n dat - but it'll cost ya!'). Also not a player race.

On the other hand, you can play ... goblins, orcs, gnolls, all sorts of weirdness.

I like the fact that if I'm your game master, your game knowledge doesn't get you anything =)

Cluedrew
2017-11-06, 08:01 AM
Hence the blue text.

Samzat
2017-11-06, 08:20 AM
I like playing as human because the fantasy tropes of the other races dont follow you like a fetid stench unless you put a lot of effort into changing the race's mechanics.

2D8HP
2017-11-06, 08:22 AM
...I like the fact that if I'm your game master, your game knowledge doesn't get you anything =)


Ah, you're of the Judge Smalls school of Gamemastering.

Carry on.

Kaptin Keen
2017-11-06, 11:22 AM
Ah, you're of the Judge Smalls school of Gamemastering.

Carry on.

I have no clue what that is - but in a game based on imagination, I like relying on mine. Not on convention.

Tanarii
2017-11-06, 12:18 PM
I like playing as human because the fantasy tropes of the other races dont follow you like a fetid stench unless you put a lot of effort into changing the race's mechanics.
The tropes are useful. They let the player both play an alien race that's not human despite being a human. And help other players at the table with default assumptions about your character to help them picture them in their mind, again despite the player themselves being human.

I mean, if you find a particular trope / stereotype annoying, subvert the specific trope. Or redefine the race. As long as everyone is on board with the new trope /stereotype, that's fine. But that's done on a whole race level by the DM, and often requires specific buy-in from the players to work, since they need to do some reading on the new trope.

For example, both Dragonlance and Dark Sun radically changed Halflings. DS also changes Elves fairly drastically.

Piedmon_Sama
2017-11-07, 02:29 AM
Funnily enough in my current Pathfinder campaign (now close to two years running), with a table of at times up to seven players virtually all have been human. I had actually opened things up a bit by allowing some unusual races like catfolk and kenku (in my campaign called crowfolk), but the entire party for most of the campaign has been nothing but 'umies. Since I overwhelmingly play humans I actually wondered if my players thought it was what I was expecting but apparently it was just how things shook out.

Over the last few weeks our regular campaign's been on pause while I run my friends through a dungeon module. In "short campaigns" like this you tend to get more unusual character concepts but the party is still more than 50% human.

As for why this might be... well, humans are never a bad option for just about any character concept in 3.5/Pathfinder. A bonus feat and +2 to any stat you want is pretty nice and if you're playing a high skill class you can trade in your racial bonus skill points for some pretty neat stuff like rerolling vs exhaustion or disease. But I also think, since most of my friends are old hands to D&D by now, once you've played the game for a decade the exotic races sort of lose their allure... from a roleplaying perspective, when you've played two or three dwarves how many more interesting variations on "dwarf" do you have in the mental drawer? Of course this is assuming you look at a character to at least some degree as a (hopefully) interesting persona, not just a collection of mechanics.

Bohandas
2017-11-07, 06:31 AM
Actually I think the mix-up of species and race is ironically appropriate. Because really most races feel like racial variation instead of the difference that a different species would bring on. Plus you know interracial children, which would be harder if they were actually different species.

You can crossbreed a zebra and a donkey easy enough

Cluedrew
2017-11-07, 07:17 AM
Yes, I know there are cases where that works, but it doesn't always and usually not as cleanly as presented in the mythic stories. Especially since a lot of races are explicitly come from very difference places. But then, maybe it would work out that way, its kind of hard how the genetics of elves would work.

Kiero
2017-11-07, 07:30 AM
I only play humans. Regardless of system/setting.

If it doesn't have humans in it, then it's a setting/premise I don't want to play.

Christopher K.
2017-11-07, 11:49 AM
To quote my sister, "People don't want to be humans. That want to be.. wings.. and shoot?"

I'm alright with nonhuman party members, but I do find it frustrates me that my players all default to Dragon Tales dragonborn. For a race in decline, there sure a hell of a lot of em.

2D8HP
2017-11-07, 12:06 PM
...I'm alright with nonhuman party members, but I do find it frustrates me that my players all default to ...Dragon Tales... .

:confused:

What's wrong with Dragon Tales?
(Besides being off the air)

It's no Curious George but my older son loved it when it was being broadcast.

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dragon_tales_7088.jpeg


"I wish, I wish, with all my heart,
To fly with dragons, in a land apart!"

Do you just not like Emmy and Max?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d2/Emmy_and_Max.JPG/250px-Emmy_and_Max.JPG

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/07/Dragon_Tales_main_characters.JPG/250px-Dragon_Tales_main_characters.JPG

Maybe you're a My Little Pony partisan?

lunaticfringe
2017-11-07, 12:21 PM
As a GM, I've seen two things:

People who roll - say - an elf, then roleplay it like a human, or
People who roll an elf, then just roleplay if very, very poorly.

That's my sole reason why people should play humans. We just have a lot greater familarity with human mannerisms and so on - even bad roleplayers can play humans decently. But I've honest never really seen a well-played un-human

Playing Completely Different, Alien, or Super Weird Religious imx just causes people to post those "OMG this Player is Freaking Other Players Out" Threads. Seriously just Roleplay your characters reaction to the giant praying mantis in your party instead of whining to weirdos on the web. It's called meaningful character interactions mother****er.

Kaptin Keen
2017-11-07, 12:43 PM
Playing Completely Different, Alien, or Super Weird Religious imx just causes people to post those "OMG this Player is Freaking Other Players Out" Threads. Seriously just Roleplay your characters reaction to the giant praying mantis in your party instead of whining to weirdos on the web. It's called meaningful character interactions mother****er.

I ..... have no idea how that relates to what I said.

lunaticfringe
2017-11-07, 01:42 PM
People play other races like humans because when they don't they get pressured to conform to stereotypical RPG human good guy personality types.

Lizardfolk are a PC race in 5e. The lore is they are Alien-Minded Reptiles and have no qualms about nibbling on Sentient Corpse meat or fashioning a Club out of the BBEGs femur. It's their Culture, they are not Evil just Different.

Try pulling that stuff at a table. Someone's going to flip out and then it's going to be a thing. The Lizardfolk stops acting like a 6ft tall carnivorous Reptile and behaves like a Human to appease the group. The player hesitates to get weird in the future.

At least from what I have noticed. Interesting takes on Not Being Human get shut down more often than not.

Leon
2017-11-07, 01:55 PM
Because why play the thing you are all day everyday in a Roleplaying game. I'm a 6ft male Human, i have a tendency to play Female Dwarves and Halflings. Have played a number of Humans over time but usually due to there being a lack of humans in a party* or it being a human orientated setting.



to my PCs detriment in one case as in the multiracial group fighting a Giant with a Human Bane greatclub it hurt a lot more to be one

Bohandas
2017-11-07, 02:47 PM
To quote my sister, "People don't want to be humans. That want to be.. wings.. and shoot?"

I'm alright with nonhuman party members, but I do find it frustrates me that my players all default to dragonborn.

That seems strange. Are Dragonborn less lame in later editions? And even if so, how is the problem of the derivative name not offputting?

Lazymancer
2017-11-07, 03:06 PM
I never quite understood why someone will say well I am human in rl so I wont play a human in game or humans are boring.
If they find humans boring is it the fault of the race or lack of imagination on the the player ?
This is trolling. Almost all RPGs either don't pretend that you can play as anything but human, or allow to play non-humans only as humans in rubber-suits (at best!).

The D&D itself (as an Ur-Example of everything) offers humans that are short (dwarves/gnomes/hobbits), strong (half-orcs), with pointy ears (elves), or with horns (tieflings). Oh, yes. You also get regular humans. Such variety, much vow.

A special prize goes to tits on female lizards (I refuse to discuss insects - I practically hear Sanity checks being rolled somewhere).



Whatever class you want to play, there is a non-human race with the best abilities bonus for it.
Welcome to anthropocentrism.

If you have only "better/worse than humans" yardstick, humans will end up in the middle of every scale - once you fill-in empty spaces of "better/worse than humans". You have to make a conscious decision beforehand to give humans some special unique quality (which stereotypically ends up being either flexibility, diplomacy, or xenophobia).



There are 7 billion variations of human characters in the real world. Each one with a rich backstory and inner life.
Did you check personally?

Tanarii
2017-11-07, 05:36 PM
Try pulling that stuff at a table. Someone's going to flip out and then it's going to be a thing.
Given that most in-game characters are likely to flip out, that's not necessarily the 'fault' of the players. If their characters are going to flip out, why would they be adventuring with the non-human that's they can't handle in the first place?

If you're going to bring a potentially in-game problem character to the table, it's on you to make sure your character can work with the party in the first place. That doesn't mean don't do it. It just means you shouldn't have an expectation that you can automatically do it without causing in-game issues.

Jay R
2017-11-07, 05:38 PM
There are 7 billion variations of human characters in the real world. Each one with a rich backstory and inner life.

It therefore follows that there are 7 billion different approaches and motivations, so there is no reason why all gamers would make the same choices. There's not even any reason why all the people who don't want to play humans all have the same reason for it.


No one is saying there are no valid reasons not to play human. Its only when someone says I wont play a human in D&D or any other game cause I am a human in RL or humans are boring do I question their reasons

Why question their reasons in the specific cases in which they have already given you their reason? They want to play a specific way, and that's their choice. Ultimately, it's because they prefer playing that way, and they might not even know all of their underlying reasons.

I had a good friend who only wanted to play Fighters. I don't share that desire, and don't really understand it, but I have neither the authority nor the wisdom to question it. He made a great fighter ally for me in many games.


Never quite understood why people would play human (well, that's not exactly true, I know it's for the feat).

Here's one reason to choose: pure mechanical optimization. While this is one legitimate reason to take a human for the extra feat, or to take a non-human for the ideal enhanced stat or special ability, not all players are pure optimizers, and those that are, aren't all optimizing the same aspect. So this can't be a reason why all people making a given choice do so.


Here's a related, but distinct question--is it truly possible to role play an actually alien character? After all, we're all human. We've never met, not have any information about real aliens. Thus, when we role play, I feel we're always playing humans with funny ears.

It is neither more nor less difficult to play an alien than to write about one. Since many of us have favorite characters who are elves, dwarves, hobbits, Vulcans, droids, etc., I assume that people can write an interesting alien character, and therefore I assume that people can play one.

Besides, the same argument can be used for playing a wizard, superhero, or any other character type we've never seen in real life.




Because why play the thing you are all day everyday in a Roleplaying game. I'm a 6ft male Human, i have a tendency to play Female Dwarves and Halflings. Have played a number of Humans over time but usually due to there being a lack of humans in a party* or it being a human orientated setting.

I don't. I have never played a sedentary mathematician role-player who spends too much time on the computer.

By definition, if you are spending your his free time playing role-playing games, and playing a character who sends all his or her time fighting, taking on quests, travelling through wilderness, exploring ruins, saving lives, and/or seeking treasure, then you are [I]not "play[ing] the thing you are all day everyday".

JBPuffin
2017-11-07, 07:58 PM
I can understand asking this as an honest (if rather grammatically incorrect) question, but whenever this comes up, people start fighting like schoolchildren as if taste is an argument of superiority and throw around unfair assumptions like bullets (see what I did there? I made a blanket statement which I feel is completely accurate, but probably isn’t. Somewhere, these discussions are civil). There are all sorts of reasons to play anything. I play humans when I want to, and other things when I don’t. Exactly why I do or don’t want to varies on the day I make the character, but usually is mechanical more than story-related. Admittedly, I usually play humans and just build characters of the other races (happy accident), but it’s totally unintentional. Whether it’s comfort, or exoticism, or escapism, or feeling “disingenuous” because you can’t pretend to be a different species as well as you’d like - they’re all valid reasons to do one or another. Why try to make other people play different fake people in a fake world you participate in to enjoy?!

#rant #letpeoplebepeople #thisisntwhatevermediaplatformuseshashtagswhyamido ingthis

Honest Tiefling
2017-11-07, 09:03 PM
Actually I think the mix-up of species and race is ironically appropriate. Because really most races feel like racial variation instead of the difference that a different species would bring on. Plus you know interracial children, which would be harder if they were actually different species.

When you realize that few people on this thread are going to have 100% human ancestors because one of them decided to bang a non-Homo sapiens...I just assume that fantasy humans are also going to bang anything vaguely human-like.

Through to answer the complaint that players aren't usually able to roleplay non-humans...If the players aren't capable of RPing non-humans, how is the DM able to?
It would seem likely that if you believe in the former argument, the latter is likely true.


To quote my sister, "People don't want to be humans. That want to be.. wings.. and shoot?"

I have no idea what a jib is, but I like the cut of your sister's jib. At the very least, being able to see in the dark and having wings are awesome racial traits.#tieflingsareawesome #suckitdragonborn

2D8HP
2017-11-07, 10:58 PM
...I have never played a sedentary mathematician role-player who spends too much time on the computer....


Clearly @Jay R, you're a Wizard researching a tome of eldrich lore!


...By definition, if you are spending your his free time playing role-playing games, and playing a character who spends all his or her time..
...taking on quests,
....exploring ruins.....
...seeking treasure, then you are not "play[ing] the thing you are all day everyday".


Ah good.

"A dungeon is a room or cell in which prisoners are held, especially underground" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon)

For my employer (The City and County of San Francisco, A.K.A. Lankhmar),

I have:

Gone on quests (searched for any remaining intact plumbing under the piers),

Explored ruins (the former Naval base, shipyards, and let's face it most of the rest of the buildings are "well used")

Seeking treasure (look for plumbing fixtures to steal/salvage from the abandoned 6th floor Jail, for use on the 7th floor Jail).

Also, I've encountered monsters (had Sea Lions surface next to me under the piers, one seemed to be the size of a VW Microbus!, plus... well the inmates), crawled through underground tunnels, entered crypts (I had a job in the autopsy room today!), looted dark passageways (the Jail cell plumbing chases looking for parts to use for the occupied cells), and I'm a Guild member (Plumbers and Steamfitters, Local 38!).

Seems that I'm a dungeon delving Guild Thief (I hope Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser don't slay me :smalleek:)!



...being able to see in the dark and having wings are awesome racial traits.#tieflingsareawesome #suckitdragonborn


:amused:

Man I like this Tiefling!

Cluedrew
2017-11-08, 07:49 AM
To 2D8HP: ... {Claps} Real life can be more interesting than we give it credit for, those are some impressive pluming stories.

2D8HP
2017-11-08, 08:30 AM
To 2D8HP: ....


Thanks Cluedrew!

FWIW, I don't role-play as another personality much at all, as getting the gold won in the Dungeons to spend in the tavern is my RL goal as well!

:wink:

Come to think of it battling with bandits (the copper thieves, AKA "The hardest working people around") was part of the job during the 10 months I was assigned to the Port (not fisticuffs, but it was an ongoing struggle!)..

This Forum actually does have members with adventurous lives, the travelers, hikers, veterans, etc.

The chief difference is that in RL you try to be safe enough to be bored!

LordCdrMilitant
2017-11-08, 01:36 PM
Humans are awesome. I like having an extra feat.

There are a variety of reasons to pick a race, or not pick a race. Mechanical advantage, conforming to or averting fantasy convention, exploring viewpoints on the world, or wishlisting are all reasons that various character traits, race included may be chosen. It's a fantasy world, and you have the option not to be human, so I see no reason to confine oneself to human characters.




You could always play warhammer 41k Only War / DH. No elves, dwarves, or halfings at all. No sir. Tau, Ogryn and Ratlings are completely new and different. COMPLETELY I TELL YOU!

I was not under the impression they were supposed to be different. Just that the names were copyrightable. :)

Talakeal
2017-11-08, 03:24 PM
First off, some people like crunch over fluff, and they will typically play whatever is most effective, if that is a human so be it, if not, then not. I don't think this is really the issue the OP is talking about.

There are also people who know what they like. They love elves, or vampires, or cat girls, or Klingons, and if that thing is available to them they will play it, if it isn't available they will tend to make the closest thing to it. Also probably not the people the OP are talking about.


In my experience choice of race comes down to what the player wants out of the game. For example, I had a player in my gaming group who got really into the game, but he never much RPed or came up with a character backstory, and one time I told him something along the lines of "if you put half the effort into working out your character's personality as you do you're spell list, you would be a really great RPer," and his response was "People are boring. Only powers are interesting."

Its a fundamental difference from what they want out of the game. Some people will look at the human race and see 7 billion individuals, each more unique and wonderful than any snowflake, and another person will see a ubiquitous mass of terrestrial bipeds with some ability tool use and language but lacking the vast array of wonderful abilities found in nature (to say nothing of the fantastic abilities found in a game world).

People are just looking at the game from a different direction and want different things out of it.

This also comes up a lot in the martial vs. caster debates, when the pro magic players boggle at how anyone could be entertained by playing a character who is limited to more or less real world aspects and totally lacking the limitless fantastic power of magic users.

Its not really a "role-player" vs. "roll-player" debate, although it is similar. Some people are fascinated by the internal workings of the human mind, others by the limitless possibilities of shaping external reality. Some people focus on the physical, others the mental, others the social. Some want to fantasize about doing different things, others fantasize about being different things. Some people just want to play themselves and explore a fantasy world or see how they would react in an unusual situation.

Its just a difference in motivation, and rhetoric like "Why would I want to be a human? I can already do that IRL" or "People who choose to play a non-human race do so because it allows them to play tropes without having to make a character," are kind of missing the point and IMO are kind of lashing out at people with different motivations as a defense mechanism.




On a related point, I will say that I think everyone has a limit to their tolerance. Most people would be bored by an RPG which centered around the lives of ordinary people in the ordinary world like a tabletop version of the sims, and this includes people who like human fighters. On the other hand I think that even the people who want to play Half-feral beholder mystic-theurges would be put off by the alien nature of a game where players took the role of sentient hyper-strings who simultaneously exist in seven different universes at 15 different points in time, each with vastly different fundamental laws of physics, and could only interact with the world by singing gluons into different color states.



Also, playing a non-human race is freaking hard. I run into this problem as a player, a DM, and an author. Because it is a really hard line to walk. Go too far to one side and you are just a human with pointy ears or green skin, and go too hard in the other direction and you will become you're typical Star Wars / Star Trek race where the entire society is obsessed with a single profession or personality type or with the classic fantasy cannon fodder race that is "always evil," and is less a person than a walking bag of combat mechanics that you don't feel bad killing for XP.

huginn
2017-11-08, 04:28 PM
Why question their reasons in the specific cases in which they have already given you their reason? They want to play a specific way, and that's their choice. Ultimately, it's because they prefer playing that way, and they might not even know all of their underlying reasons.

I had a good friend who only wanted to play Fighters. I don't share that desire, and don't really understand it, but I have neither the authority nor the wisdom to question it. He made a great fighter ally for me in many games.



Its only when they say I refuse to play a human in any game because I am a human in RL or humans are boring do I question it. Part of the reason why I do is based on personal experience as these players tend to be the ones who never come up with a backstory and they role play every character the exact same way.

Tinkerer
2017-11-08, 04:41 PM
I... don't really see this. For instance in 3.5 there are what, 100 or so playable races without LA? Would you say that less than 1% of players choose humans? If anything I would say that humans receive more of a share of players than they should given the selection, assuming that you are choosing race randomly. The question in my head is one of why do so many people play humans?

EDIT: Bit slow today, I just realized that OP could have meant why they won't play humans upon request. In which case that is weird but I've only run one campaign where I required the PCs to play a certain race, one race systems excepted.

2D8HP
2017-11-08, 04:53 PM
...these players tend to be the ones who never come up with a backstory...


:annoyed:

I do so now come up with long back-stories listing many loved ones who died too soon!

I just don't bother to play out that claptrap.

:wink:


...and they role play every character the exact same way.


:redface:

That's a fair cop.


why do so many people play humans?


Pretending to explore a fantastic world is what I want to do.

The inner life of a different alien personality?

Not so much.

Tanarii
2017-11-08, 05:08 PM
Its only when they say I refuse to play a human in any game because I am a human in RL or humans are boring do I question it. Part of the reason why I do is based on personal experience as these players tend to be the ones who never come up with a backstory and they role play every character the exact same way.
Backstory is not essential to role-playing.

It's not even essential to alternate character "method acting" role-playing. Motivations are. Backstory may contain motivations, but often it's just history.

Jay R
2017-11-08, 05:17 PM
Its only when they say I refuse to play a human in any game because I am a human in RL or humans are boring do I question it. Part of the reason why I do is based on personal experience as these players tend to be the ones who never come up with a backstory and they role play every character the exact same way.

I understand the emotional impulse. I felt that way for awhile. But I eventually realized that my trying to get them to play my way is no different from them trying to get me to play their way.

The answer to your question is that they enjoy playing every non-human character the same way, without a backstory. They enjoy pretending to be another race, but don't enjoy writing a backstory or playing more than the crunch.

And that's fine. It's how everybody plays some games. I don't play Monopoly differently when I'm the race car than when I'm the dog or the shoe or the thimble. I'm just trying to optimize my money and property. I don't play Clue differently as Colonel Mustard than as Miss Scarlett or Professor Plumm. I'm just trying to solve the mystery. There's no reason why people shouldn't play D&D that way.

My friend Glen always wanted to play a Fighter. So why on earth should I try to get him to play a wizard, when he's a great fighter protecting my flank?

If somebody wants to play a dwarf for the CON, the darkvision, and the Craft and Appraise advantages, rather than because she cares about beards or shortness or living underground, then that's what she enjoys. And her enjoyment is far closer to yours than the vast majority of people who won't play D&D at all.

We don't all have to enjoy the same aspects of the game to be allies, comrades, and mutual supporters of each other's fun.

I always have the longest, most developed backstory at the table. I enjoy it. But I simply don't care how long my ally's backstory is when she's attacking the ogre who wants to kill my character.

Honest Tiefling
2017-11-08, 05:36 PM
Its only when they say I refuse to play a human in any game because I am a human in RL or humans are boring do I question it. Part of the reason why I do is based on personal experience as these players tend to be the ones who never come up with a backstory and they role play every character the exact same way.

...You've never met a person RPing an elf who has written a multiple page backstory? I'm frankly amazed. I've BEEN that person before! (And no, the DM didn't read it).

Psikerlord
2017-11-08, 05:56 PM
Humans don't have darkvision, and DMs can be jerks when magical aging and ghosts come up.

Yeah I think the lack of darkvision is massive drawback. Then in older editions at least, non-humans got all sorts of bonus abilities and humans got nothing. So few folks played human. In 5e humans are very strong with the bonus feat, so folk are playing them despite no darkvision.

2D8HP
2017-11-08, 06:03 PM
....(And no, the DM didn't read it).


As unlikely as it is, in case there's anyone left who hasn't read my previous rants and raves on the subject, I too have written a "multiple page backstory" for an Elf, and have quickly found that, while the longer a back-story is the more likely a DM will say, "You can play", it's also disruptive to actually try to play the character implied, and if DM's read it they either forget or ignore the back-story.

With that knowledge I've actually just padded out "back-stories" with lyrics from the Carmina Burana successfully!

Jay R
2017-11-08, 06:26 PM
As unlikely as it is, in case there's anyone left who hasn't read my previous rants and raves on the subject, I too have written a "multiple page backstory" for an Elf, and have quickly found that, while the longer a back-story is the more likely a DM will say, "You can play", it's also disruptive to actually try to play the character implied, and if DM's read it they either forget or ignore the back-story.

With that knowledge I've actually just padded out "back-stories" with lyrics from the Carmina Burana successfully!

The backstory isn't primarily for the DM or the party; it's for me. It's an integral part of developing the character.

Nobody around me needs to know any details about my years of fencing. It helps me parry better anyway.

When I'm solving an equation, nobody around me needs to know my educational background. It helps me solve the equation anyway.

When I'm out in the woods and build a fire out of oak, not pine, the cobbler doesn't have to know I was a Philmont Ranger for two summers.

Similarly, the DM can ignore or forget the reason my Ranger character Gustav has a masterwork axe, or the specific skills I chose, or why he will always attack the largest enemy. These actions and abilities came out of his background.

A backstory that didn't lead to the character crunch isn't a backstory; it's just homework.

Tanarii
2017-11-08, 06:50 PM
The backstory isn't primarily for the DM or the party; it's for me. It's an integral part of developing the character.IMO Backstory is only useful insofar as it helps you play the character moving forward. It's the motivations (if any) in a backstory that matter, not the details of the history. If you're faced with choice X, what will you choose an why?

Example of motivation, and not just history, from examples you gave:
"or why he will always attack the largest enemy"

The rest appears to be a bog-standard "check off how I got all my class features & skill" backstory. Personally, I do not find those particularly useful as a player, although they're useful to DMs sometimes as plot hooks. But that's because I care about developing my character by playing the game, and using their motivations to see how they establish who they are. Not what has already come before, who they were.

In fact, for my 5e campaign, I *require* a list of motivations from players: personality traits. I do not ask for any backstory at all.

Honest Tiefling
2017-11-08, 06:55 PM
Am I the only getting a feeling that people often write backstories for themselves and just fail to show them off? I do wonder how many of these non-humans had backstories that just never got mentioned.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-08, 08:48 PM
IMO Backstory is only useful insofar as it helps you play the character moving forward. It's the motivations (if any) in a backstory that matter, not the details of the history. If you're faced with choice X, what will you choose an why?

Example of motivation, and not just history, from examples you gave:
"or why he will always attack the largest enemy"

The rest appears to be a bog-standard "check off how I got all my class features & skill" backstory. Personally, I do not find those particularly useful as a player, although they're useful to DMs sometimes as plot hooks. But that's because I care about developing my character by playing the game, and using their motivations to see how they establish who they are. Not what has already come before, who they were.

In fact, for my 5e campaign, I *require* a list of motivations from players: personality traits. I do not ask for any backstory at all.

I'm very much in agreement here. I don't care how you got there unless it affects the story going forward. I generally ask for the following:

* Background/Ideal/Bond/Flaw (5e D&D elements)
* A 2-3 sentence summary of why your character became an adventurer and left his old life behind.
* A general sense of geographical background and any possible factions (although at level 1 those should be small).

Everything else can be decided in-play. I work with players to decide exactly how their character fits into the world--one character had the summary "Ran away from home after the arsonous death of her wealthy parents looking for her brother. She believes that the authorities believe she set the fatal fire." We decided that her family had been the leading family in a particular area and that the real culprits were a cult of demon worshipers. This all happened months after we began the campaign.

pwykersotz
2017-11-08, 11:45 PM
First off, some people like crunch over fluff, and they will typically play whatever is most effective, if that is a human so be it, if not, then not. I don't think this is really the issue the OP is talking about.

There are also people who know what they like. They love elves, or vampires, or cat girls, or Klingons, and if that thing is available to them they will play it, if it isn't available they will tend to make the closest thing to it. Also probably not the people the OP are talking about.


In my experience choice of race comes down to what the player wants out of the game. For example, I had a player in my gaming group who got really into the game, but he never much RPed or came up with a character backstory, and one time I told him something along the lines of "if you put half the effort into working out your character's personality as you do you're spell list, you would be a really great RPer," and his response was "People are boring. Only powers are interesting."

Its a fundamental difference from what they want out of the game. Some people will look at the human race and see 7 billion individuals, each more unique and wonderful than any snowflake, and another person will see a ubiquitous mass of terrestrial bipeds with some ability tool use and language but lacking the vast array of wonderful abilities found in nature (to say nothing of the fantastic abilities found in a game world).

People are just looking at the game from a different direction and want different things out of it.

This also comes up a lot in the martial vs. caster debates, when the pro magic players boggle at how anyone could be entertained by playing a character who is limited to more or less real world aspects and totally lacking the limitless fantastic power of magic users.

Its not really a "role-player" vs. "roll-player" debate, although it is similar. Some people are fascinated by the internal workings of the human mind, others by the limitless possibilities of shaping external reality. Some people focus on the physical, others the mental, others the social. Some want to fantasize about doing different things, others fantasize about being different things. Some people just want to play themselves and explore a fantasy world or see how they would react in an unusual situation.

Its just a difference in motivation, and rhetoric like "Why would I want to be a human? I can already do that IRL" or "People who choose to play a non-human race do so because it allows them to play tropes without having to make a character," are kind of missing the point and IMO are kind of lashing out at people with different motivations as a defense mechanism.




On a related point, I will say that I think everyone has a limit to their tolerance. Most people would be bored by an RPG which centered around the lives of ordinary people in the ordinary world like a tabletop version of the sims, and this includes people who like human fighters. On the other hand I think that even the people who want to play Half-feral beholder mystic-theurges would be put off by the alien nature of a game where players took the role of sentient hyper-strings who simultaneously exist in seven different universes at 15 different points in time, each with vastly different fundamental laws of physics, and could only interact with the world by singing gluons into different color states.



Also, playing a non-human race is freaking hard. I run into this problem as a player, a DM, and an author. Because it is a really hard line to walk. Go too far to one side and you are just a human with pointy ears or green skin, and go too hard in the other direction and you will become you're typical Star Wars / Star Trek race where the entire society is obsessed with a single profession or personality type or with the classic fantasy cannon fodder race that is "always evil," and is less a person than a walking bag of combat mechanics that you don't feel bad killing for XP.

This is all very well said. In my previous agreement with huginn though, I think something may have been lost that I reflect upon when I read your post. I have nothing against bad RP'ers. Seriously, nothing. I do believe that people who believe humans are inherently boring do a poor job in the RP department, based solely on personal experience in the game. Exceptions abound, I'm sure. But it doesn't matter. The game is more than RP. It's more than agency, escapism, number crunching, or talky-time. It's more than dice rolling, and it's more than story. So if someone does or doesn't want to play human, that may be due to lack of imagination in at least one category, but it really doesn't matter, because the game is so much more.

Psikerlord
2017-11-09, 02:21 AM
I'm very much in agreement here. I don't care how you got there unless it affects the story going forward. I generally ask for the following:

* Background/Ideal/Bond/Flaw (5e D&D elements)
* A 2-3 sentence summary of why your character became an adventurer and left his old life behind.
* A general sense of geographical background and any possible factions (although at level 1 those should be small).

Everything else can be decided in-play. I work with players to decide exactly how their character fits into the world--one character had the summary "Ran away from home after the arsonous death of her wealthy parents looking for her brother. She believes that the authorities believe she set the fatal fire." We decided that her family had been the leading family in a particular area and that the real culprits were a cult of demon worshipers. This all happened months after we began the campaign.

Yeah I greatly prefer one liner or very short backgrounds, and let it develop in play - where everyone at the table can hear it/riff off it. PLus a roll on the party bonds table to see how the PCs know each other.

Satinavian
2017-11-09, 02:25 AM
On the other hand I think that even the people who want to play Half-feral beholder mystic-theurges would be put off by the alien nature of a game where players took the role of sentient hyper-strings who simultaneously exist in seven different universes at 15 different points in time, each with vastly different fundamental laws of physics, and could only interact with the world by singing gluons into different color states.I generally agree with the paragraph but i am now somehow intrigued by the idea of playing those hyper-strings. You probably would have a very limited player pool and there are still many questions left to ask about how those work, what they can do, what motivations might be and what the game is actually about, but...

Also, playing a non-human race is freaking hard. I run into this problem as a player, a DM, and an author. Because it is a really hard line to walk. Go too far to one side and you are just a human with pointy ears or green skin, and go too hard in the other direction and you will become you're typical Star Wars / Star Trek race where the entire society is obsessed with a single profession or personality type or with the classic fantasy cannon fodder race that is "always evil," and is less a person than a walking bag of combat mechanics that you don't feel bad killing for XP.The easiest way to avoid the species of hats phenomenon is to have more than one charcter of the species. Sure, both will somehow resemble the archetype. But not only will both have different personality and different abilities on top of that, they also will represent different takes on said archetype and automatically broaden the picture what it means to be species X.


This is all very well said. In my previous agreement with huginn though, I think something may have been lost that I reflect upon when I read your post. I have nothing against bad RP'ers. Seriously, nothing. I do believe that people who believe humans are inherently boring do a poor job in the RP department, based solely on personal experience in the game. Exceptions abound, I'm sure. But it doesn't matter. The game is more than RP. It's more than agency, escapism, number crunching, or talky-time. It's more than dice rolling, and it's more than story. So if someone does or doesn't want to play human, that may be due to lack of imagination in at least one category, but it really doesn't matter, because the game is so much more.It is less that humans are automatically boring it is that they are sometimes just far more boring than race X.

If you want to argue against that, you don't have to show that humans are not boring because they allow for lots of concepts. You have to show that race X is boring instead and somehow allows for less concepts or less interesting concepts.
And it is basically impossible to do that. All races have basically the same variety as humans. And which particular concept is more interesting is a matter of taste alone.





Personally, i find people who don't want to play humans not any more strange than people who don't want to play dwarfs. And the idea that this somehow proves "lack of imagination" is just idiotic.




For backstories : Well my backstories are usually between half a page and a page long. They include motivations and loyalities. And they are a guideline about what the character is familiar with and what is new to him/her. They might also explain some mechanical choices during character creation that might come up in conversation.

And i write them mostly for myself to be able to play the character somewhat consistent from the start instead of as some kind of blank sheet. GMs tend to be interested in the motivations for potential plot hooks, but not the rest.

Tanarii
2017-11-09, 09:36 AM
The game is more than RP. It's more than agency, escapism, number crunching, or talky-time. It's more than dice rolling, and it's more than story. So if someone does or doesn't want to play human, that may be due to lack of imagination in at least one category, but it really doesn't matter, because the game is so much more.
That's some poetry right there man.

Jay R
2017-11-09, 10:56 AM
IMO Backstory is only useful insofar as it helps you play the character moving forward. It's the motivations (if any) in a backstory that matter, not the details of the history. If you're faced with choice X, what will you choose an why?

This assumes that the backstory didn't help me create the character, or is only for the benefit of the GM. This is simply not the case. My Ranger has a masterwork axe (a wood-cutting axe, not a weapon) because I've known three people who lived in the woods, and each one was proud of the quality of his axe. He has a lyre and a single point in Perform (stringed instruments) because he has lived alone in the woods, and was lonely.

There's no reason a GM needs to know that, but I needed to know it, to learn who he was, and allocate his points.


Example of motivation, and not just history, from examples you gave:
"or why he will always attack the largest enemy"

The rest appears to be a bog-standard "check off how I got all my class features & skill" backstory. Personally, I do not find those particularly useful as a player, although they're useful to DMs sometimes as plot hooks.

It's not a "check off how [my character] got [his] class features and skills" backstory. It would be more accurate to call it a "how I decided what my character's class features and skill would be" backstory. I didn't decide he needed a masterwork axe and then decide he'd be proud of the quality of his axe. I observed that the sort of people I was basing him on always were proud of their axes, and so I paid for one.

I agree that much of the backstory is no longer needed once the character design is complete, but it's a crucial part of designing him as a person, and not merely a set of abilities.


But that's because I care about developing my character by playing the game, and using their motivations to see how they establish who they are. Not what has already come before, who they were.

I think developing his character by playing the game alone is as limiting as developing it only on what went before, and for the same reasons. There is no single point in my life when my important development started, and there shouldn't be in my character's life either. The fact that that life started having a player at 1st level is a meta-fact, not relevant to the character.

To put it another way, what developed before he was 1st level should affect him when he's third level just as much as what happened before he was 11th level should affect him when he's 13th.


In fact, for my 5e campaign, I *require* a list of motivations from players: personality traits. I do not ask for any backstory at all.

I really don't care what the GM "requires". For the same reason he doesn't need to know why I chose to play a Ranger, he doesn't need to know why the Ranger chooses to play a lyre.

If that's not important for you, fine. most people don't. Design your characters your way, and have fun with it. But it's nonsense to say that my backstory doesn't matter because you don't design characters that way.

Tanarii
2017-11-09, 12:15 PM
Yah, my personal opinion that a post-character-build backstory filling out historical details isn't critical to the character moving forward, outside of the motivations / hooks within it, has no bearing on other peoples feelings about its importance. I definitely prefer to cut to the chase and explicitly list those motivations /hooks without making it a story, so it's clear and obvious what they are. But that's just my approach.

It certainly has bearing if you're writing the backstory first then creating a character (to the best of your ability) that matches it mechanically. That's (mostly) the opposite way around from the way I do it. But that's also personal preference.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-09, 12:23 PM
I consider the backstory a tool for developing a character with motivation, depth, etc... someone who is a believable "fictional person".

But it's not the only tool, and I care more about the ends than the means in this case.

pwykersotz
2017-11-09, 12:26 PM
It is less that humans are automatically boring it is that they are sometimes just far more boring than race X.

If you want to argue against that, you don't have to show that humans are not boring because they allow for lots of concepts. You have to show that race X is boring instead and somehow allows for less concepts or less interesting concepts.
And it is basically impossible to do that. All races have basically the same variety as humans. And which particular concept is more interesting is a matter of taste alone.

Personally, i find people who don't want to play humans not any more strange than people who don't want to play dwarfs. And the idea that this somehow proves "lack of imagination" is just idiotic.

Yeah, you can't really argue either case. They are so inherently subjective, as has been articulately posted by others. You may have missed my initial point, which is that, from personal experience, those who find humans boring to play are the same ones that do the poorest job roleplaying. I find it an interesting correlation, but not one which I would use to judge people or tables I haven't met. In the same breath, I clarify that this is only in my experience and it is not proof of anything. So basically, I agree with you, except where you believe we are in disagreement. If that makes sense.

@Tanarii: Thanks! You may have noticed my delineation between RP and talky time. That was your corrupting influence. :smalltongue:

Fiery Diamond
2017-11-09, 12:30 PM
One thing I don't understand is this insistence that other races need to be alien. What's wrong with "all characters are psychologically human (except where living a long or short life affects things) with cosmetic differences and special powers"? As long as you're not just making them races of hats and instead actually delving into their minds and personalities, why should I feel obligated to make elves be different from humans? Both when I'm playing/running games and when I write stories, I make all "person" species psychologically human, not due to lack of imagination, but because I have no interest in the truly alien whatsoever while I do have interest in people. In fact, this is the DEFAULT in the majority of fantasy stories (except where "always evil races" come up, of course).

Talakeal
2017-11-09, 02:18 PM
Personally, i find people who don't want to play humans not any more strange than people who don't want to play dwarfs. And the idea that this somehow proves "lack of imagination" is just idiotic.

It isn't that people don't like a certain race, it is that they say they can't possibly make a human character who isn't boring. For people who are really into character driven RP this is a giant red flag, and often implies that the player is unwilling or incapable of playing anything other than a collection of cool powers or a racial stereotype.

Our fiction is written by humans for humans, and as a result most of it is about humans. For many genres, and many fantasy campaigns, humans are the default. If we were running a game about dwarves (for example the current actual play on Fear the Boot) I would look at someone who refused to play a dwarf or who said they couldn't make a non-boring dwarf in exactly the same way (although I do admit that RPing a good non-human character is harder than a human due to look of familiarity and RL inspirations.)

Tanarii
2017-11-09, 02:21 PM
@Tanarii: Thanks! You may have noticed my delineation between RP and talky time. That was your corrupting influence. :smalltongue:
Hopefully no one gets the idea that I don't like talky-time or funny voices. Even in a dungeon crawl adventure, negotiations to create an alliance, conducted between a distinctly Russian-sounding Traladaran PC and a squeaky annoying little Kobold NPC (to pick a not at all random example) is fun! As well as both an important aspect of Roleplaying in terms of making decisions in the in-game universe that affect the PCs, and adding a little something to the atmosphere.

I just think it's a all too common mistake to label those aspects alone RP, when it's only one facet of Roleplaying.

Honest Tiefling
2017-11-09, 02:36 PM
One thing I don't understand is this insistence that other races need to be alien. What's wrong with "all characters are psychologically human (except where living a long or short life affects things) with cosmetic differences and special powers"?

Well, they do. That's usually how tieflings are handled. If Pathfinder, 4e, and 5e are any indication, tieflings aren't exactly unpopular. I'd be curious if any other DnD clone has ever had a tiefling equivalent.

Jay R
2017-11-09, 03:53 PM
It isn't that people don't like a certain race, it is that they say they can't possibly make a human character who isn't boring. For people who are really into character driven RP this is a giant red flag, and often implies that the player is unwilling or incapable of playing anything other than a collection of cool powers or a racial stereotype.

Which is fine. His cool powers and racial stereotype guard my character's flank just as well as character-driven play does, and sometimes better.

It's not necessary that we have the same role-playing goals. It's only necessary that our characters work together to achieve their goals.

Talakeal
2017-11-09, 05:34 PM
Which is fine. His cool powers and racial stereotype guard my character's flank just as well as character-driven play does, and sometimes better.

It's not necessary that we have the same role-playing goals. It's only necessary that our characters work together to achieve their goals.

Maybe.

I absolutely agree that people need to be more accepting of other people's gaming styles and recognize that different people are in the hobby for different reasons.

But, on the other hand, you get a lot of player conflict if people aren't on the same page about their expectations. If you expect my fighter to guard your flank, but I have established that I am playing a guy with a phobia of undead who turns tail and runs when we are flanked by a horde of zombies you will probably be pretty cheesed with me. Likewise if the hypothetical you picks fights during every social scene because they want to skip the boring talky stuff and get to some hacking, I am going to be pretty cheesed at you.

Compromise and understanding are key.

2D8HP
2017-11-09, 05:54 PM
...For many genres, and many fantasy campaigns, humans are the default. If we were running a game about dwarves...


Just a thought:

I remember that my second DM liked to play Dwarves (when he played) back in the 1980's, but mostly it was a comga-line of Human Fighter PC's, and I can't remember why.

Yeah there were Level limits on non-human characters (except for Thieves), but reaching those limits was pretty much just theoretical in my gaming circle, but by-and-large we still mostly just played humans, and we didn't have Feats then!

In the 5e D&D games I play now, most PC's are non-humans, and once there was an all Elf or Half-Elf party!.

I wonder why the change?

Bohandas
2017-11-10, 12:17 AM
Humans effectively start with two extra feats, one of them being variable and the other being the "Open Minded" feat that grants 5 extra skill points, with another Open Minded equivalent every 5 levels

Satinavian
2017-11-10, 03:03 AM
Our fiction is written by humans for humans, and as a result most of it is about humans. For many genres, and many fantasy campaigns, humans are the default. If we were running a game about dwarves (for example the current actual play on Fear the Boot) I would look at someone who refused to play a dwarf or who said they couldn't make a non-boring dwarf in exactly the same way (although I do admit that RPing a good non-human character is harder than a human due to look of familiarity and RL inspirations.)Yes. That is a thing that annoyed me a very long time.

I really hate how humans are default or "most numerous" in the majority of settings resulting in every not backwater area being based on human culture alone. That is also something that i get rid off everytime i design one of my own settings.

Bohandas
2017-11-10, 11:36 AM
Yes. That is a thing that annoyed me a very long time.

I really hate how humans are default or "most numerous" in the majority of settings resulting in every not backwater area being based on human culture alone. That is also something that i get rid off everytime i design one of my own settings.

I agree. It's cheap and hackneyed.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-10, 11:45 AM
Yes. That is a thing that annoyed me a very long time.

I really hate how humans are default or "most numerous" in the majority of settings resulting in every not backwater area being based on human culture alone. That is also something that i get rid off everytime i design one of my own settings.


I agree. It's cheap and hackneyed.

Depends on whether the setting -- history, geography, cultures, etc -- and the species ("races") are built to support it or not; it's entirely situational as to whether it makes sense.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-10, 12:21 PM
Depends on whether the setting -- history, geography, cultures, etc -- and the species ("races") are built to support it or not; it's entirely situational as to whether it makes sense.

I agree. Human centric, human minority, either can work if implemented right. Ideally a given world will have a mix of areas (some human centric, some not) in a way that makes sense given history, culture, etc.

Tanarii
2017-11-10, 12:32 PM
Yes. That is a thing that annoyed me a very long time.

I really hate how humans are default or "most numerous" in the majority of settings resulting in every not backwater area being based on human culture alone. That is also something that i get rid off everytime i design one of my own settings.


I agree. It's cheap and hackneyed.
Alternatively, it produces something the reader can easily relate to, instead of requiring pages and pages of reading or lots of table-time exposition to establish understanding of the necessary alien(s) thinking and culture.

In other words, as a general rule, it makes a more solid setting.

Bohandas
2017-11-10, 12:54 PM
Why bother even having it in a fantasy setting at all then?

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-10, 01:06 PM
Why bother even having it in a fantasy setting at all then?


As much as I love to include other "races" in the settings I build, and as much as I like to play other "races", the presence of non-human "races" / cultures is not a requisite for fantasy settings. (See, same, regarding aliens and science fiction.)

If someone wants to create a setting with no or isolated/rare non-humans, and players want to play in that setting, and the setting is well-crafted, I see no reason to begrudge them those choices. The more quality, variation, depth, and breadth of fantasy settings out there, the better. It's better than every last thing being a popularity-and-assumptions-driven D&D or WoW kitchen-sink clone.

Tinkerer
2017-11-10, 01:11 PM
Why bother even having it in a fantasy setting at all then?

I think you might be falling into a bit of a False Dichotomy there. Having a fantasy world with relatable aspects is definitely different from a historical setting. Similar to the above (paraphrased) "why play a gnoll when you could be playing a hyper sentient piece of string existing in multiple dimensions".

EDIT: Wow, I didn't phrase that correctly. To put it simply the more that you change, the more time needs to be spent exploring those changes and the more information the players have to absorb. And how well that works is going to change from situation to situation.

2D8HP
2017-11-10, 01:33 PM
Why bother even having it in a fantasy setting at all then?


Well.. fantasy doesn't have to take place in Barsoom or Middle Earth like multiple sentient species settings, and even when they do the protagonist may remain human for example read:

1939's Two Sought Adventure/The Jewels in the Forest (http://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0088/ERBAEN0088___2.htm) by Fritz Leiber
Well that could take a while.

..which was an inspiration for D&D:


"These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don't care for Burroughs' Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard's Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find Dungeons & Dragons to their taste. But those whose imaginations know no bounds will find that these rules are the answer to their prayers. With this last bit of advice we invite you to read on and enjoy a "world" where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!
E. Gary Gygax
Tactical Studies Rules Editor
1 November 1973
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin"

Also fairly mundane settings may still fall under "Fantasy", for example my favorite short story from The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Two: 2007's The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics (http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cambist-and-lord-iron-a-fairy-tale-of-economics/).

The pencil and paper RPG 7th Sea has a setting that intrigues me (and have considered using with D&D rules), and Pendragon is a fave of mine game in which all PC's are human, but in both of those games national origin has mechanics that are similar to how "racial" mechanics work in D&D.

I know that lately as a player I often have non-human PC's, but as a GM for the adventures that I want to run (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?536663-How-to-herd-PC-s-Viking-kids-vs-Morlocks) a humanity vs. monsters theme requires human appearing PC's.

For my personal PC's, being human or not doesn't really change how blandly I play them (sorry!).

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-10, 02:19 PM
On the flip side, I don't know why people think it's hard to play a non-human.

Surrounded by humans every day, I feel like an alien playing a human -- people constantly say and do things that I have to really work to make sense of, and MUCH of the "this is how your mind works" psychology, sociology, and neurology science journalism sounds to me like it's coming from another planet, because it bears no relationship at all to how I experience the world.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-10, 02:35 PM
and MUCH of the "this is how your mind works" psychology, sociology, and neurology science journalism sounds to me like it's coming from another planet, because it bears no relationship at all to how I experience the world.

<cynical>That's because most X science journalism is absolute crap that has no relationship to reality in any way, shape or form</cynical>

Ok, maybe I didn't need those tags--it's the absolute truth. Science journalism, with a very few exceptions, is crap.

Knaight
2017-11-10, 02:35 PM
Why bother even having it in a fantasy setting at all then?

There's all sorts of good reasons to go for a fantasy setting without going for a setting dominated by fantasy elements, from a thinly-veiled historical setting where there's a bit more flexibility to a fantasy setting where the fantasy elements tend to appear at the margins of a more mundane human society. The question can also be turned around easily - if fantasy elements are thrown around so heavily that they become a mundane part of the setting, what was the point of putting them there in the first place?

Take the King Arthur stories. There's a lot of versions of them, but inasmuch as there's a common thread it's a fairly mundane story about warfare and politics where King Arthur rises to power, followed by a bunch of knights (universally human) questing where the occasional quest brought them up against the fantastic, followed by the Grail quest which involved the fantastic more heavily but was still fairly sparse on it for any individual knight. These stories work; they've accumulated a great deal of cultural cachet with very good reason, and the setting depicted involves a world of humans with some weird stuff at the margins. Similarly there's a lot of gothic fiction which involves a totally normal city, populated by totally normal people - plus one oddity. There's one vampire, or one werewolf, or one mad scientist and his creation, or one scientist and his potion of fury and violence, or one weird dude with a painting who never ages. Again, these stories work.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-10, 02:51 PM
<cynical>That's because most X science journalism is absolute crap that has no relationship to reality in any way, shape or form</cynical>

Ok, maybe I didn't need those tags--it's the absolute truth. Science journalism, with a very few exceptions, is crap.


My experience with these things, and it includes shows like Radio Lab and "the TED hour" (whatever NPR actually calls it), is to hear someone say "this is how YOUR brain works and this is what YOUR mind is doing and this is what YOU are thinking and feeling"... and to wonder what the F they're talking about and if these things are true for other people, because I don't have any personal experience with the supposedly universal phenomena they're talking about.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-10, 02:57 PM
My experience with these things, and it includes shows like Radio Lab and "the TED hour" (whatever NPR actually calls it), is to hear someone say "this is how YOUR brain works and this is what YOUR mind is doing and this is what YOU are thinking and feeling"... and to wonder what the F they're talking about and if these things are true for other people, because I don't have any personal experience with the supposedly universal phenomena they're talking about.

Yes, and my point was that that's because the reports are wrong (or at least only very vaguely connected to reality), not necessarily because you're so alien. Who knows, though. You might be alien. I've often thought the same of myself. In fact, the normal people are the weird ones. Always being so average and all....:smallbiggrin:

Satinavian
2017-11-10, 03:08 PM
. Again, these stories work.
Sure, those stories do work.

Doesn't mean that all fantasy has to be like them. Does not even mean that the majority of fantasy should be that way.

Playing in a human dominated or low fantasy setting once in a while can be nice, but there is absolutely no reason why this should be the standard.

Talakeal
2017-11-10, 03:21 PM
Sure, those stories do work.

Doesn't mean that all fantasy has to be like them. Does not even mean that the majority of fantasy should be that way.

Playing in a human dominated or low fantasy setting once in a while can be nice, but there is absolutely no reason why this should be the standard.

People like to be able to follow and relate to what is going on and don't like having to do an excessive amount of homework.

If the players start out in a human dominated region they are more or less good to go, and then when they go visit the dwarves they can learn about dwarven culture alongside their characters, making for an immersive and organic learning experience.

If we start out in Sigil with 10,000 fantasy races most of which are inhuman the players are going to be utterly lost, and even if you bog the game down with explanations they are going to be suffering from information overload and won't be able to recall anything.

If the experience you are going for is "stranger in a strange land" or are a jaded long time player who has memorized every monster manual the latter might work fine for you, but for the average person it is going to find the experience a bit... alienating :smallcool:.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-10, 03:39 PM
Yes, and my point was that that's because the reports are wrong (or at least only very vaguely connected to reality), not necessarily because you're so alien. Who knows, though. You might be alien. I've often thought the same of myself. In fact, the normal people are the weird ones. Always being so average and all....:smallbiggrin:

So even the "reputable" ones are wrong.

I mean, I realized that TED had jumped the shark at some point...

Knaight
2017-11-10, 04:00 PM
Sure, those stories do work.

Doesn't mean that all fantasy has to be like them. Does not even mean that the majority of fantasy should be that way.

Playing in a human dominated or low fantasy setting once in a while can be nice, but there is absolutely no reason why this should be the standard.

Conveniently enough, I never said that all fantasy has to be that way - I was defending that against the question of why one should have fantasy at all if it wasn't positively swamped in the fantastic. With that said, there's also no reason that the fantasy kitchen sink should be standard, and if one of the two has to be I'd rather it be the low fantasy. Better yet is just not having a standard - there's room for low fantasy, high fantasy, historical games, hard science fiction, cyberpunk, space opera, noir, pulp, thrillers, superheroes, magical realism, and even slice of life stories about ordinary people in ordinary settings.

Satinavian
2017-11-11, 11:44 AM
But now you are mixing genres with how many humans there are.

You could totally make a low fantasy game where nearly no one exists who is not a dwarf.

The choice between kitchen-sink and all or mostly human is a false one.

Tanarii
2017-11-11, 12:11 PM
The choice between kitchen-sink and all or mostly human is a false one.
Especially since most kitchen sink D&D settings (specifically) are still mostly human.

It's just the PC parties that aren't.

Honest Tiefling
2017-11-11, 01:09 PM
Especially since most kitchen sink D&D settings (specifically) are still mostly human.

It's just the PC parties that aren't.

Well, to be fair, it's not like tieflings, half-orcs, and drow can easily apply to become farmhands or something. So maybe a higher percentage of adventurers are odd or monstrous races because that's the only work available to them.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-11, 01:35 PM
Especially since most kitchen sink D&D settings (specifically) are still mostly human.

It's just the PC parties that aren't.

My setting is explicitly kitchen sink--the only 5e races (PHB) that aren't playable are drow (which don't exist) and gnomes (thought extinct). Humans are the dominant race of 2 of five civilizations, rare (non-native only) to two more, and the plurality but not majority in the fifth. Even in the two human-heavy civilizations, there are significant (if not almost equal) numbers of other races:

* Bysia is about evenly split human / wood elf, with half-elves in third place. Genasi are uncommon, but not rare.
* The Stone Throne is slightly majority human, with half-elf in second place and yuan-ti close behind. But even most of the humans there have noticeable high-elven ancestry. Half-elves are just those with >50% elven ancestry, and they tend to have higher status. Dwarves are rare but not unknown.
* The Windwalker tribes are purely goblinoid.
* The Remnant Dynasty is dragonborn + orc + goblinoid. Humans are foreigners here.
* The Council Lands are racially mixed:
** 30% human (with a sprinkling of tieflings and aasimar)
** 20% halfling
** 20% wood elf
** 15% dwarf
** 10% high elf
** 5% other (dragonborn, hobgoblin, orc/half-orc)

Despite all this, my adventuring parties are as follows:
Party 1:
Tiefling druid
Halfling bard
High elf wizard

Party 2:
Tiefling paladin
Human Fighter
Wood elf rogue
Halfling rogue

Party 3:
Human druid
Half-elf warlock
Dragonborn monk
High elf rogue

What that all means, I'm not sure. Parties 1 and 2 are teenagers and new players, so they tend to go for "cool factor" over optimization.

Tinkerer
2017-11-11, 01:48 PM
My setting is explicitly kitchen sink--the only 5e races (PHB) that aren't playable are drow (which don't exist) and gnomes (thought extinct). Humans are the dominant race of 2 of five civilizations, rare (non-native only) to two more, and the plurality but not majority in the fifth. Even in the two human-heavy civilizations, there are significant (if not almost equal) numbers of other races:

* Bysia is about evenly split human / wood elf, with half-elves in third place. Genasi are uncommon, but not rare.
* The Stone Throne is slightly majority human, with half-elf in second place and yuan-ti close behind. But even most of the humans there have noticeable high-elven ancestry. Half-elves are just those with >50% elven ancestry, and they tend to have higher status. Dwarves are rare but not unknown.
* The Windwalker tribes are purely goblinoid.
* The Remnant Dynasty is dragonborn + orc + goblinoid. Humans are foreigners here.
* The Council Lands are racially mixed:
** 30% human (with a sprinkling of tieflings and aasimar)
** 20% halfling
** 20% wood elf
** 15% dwarf
** 10% high elf
** 5% other (dragonborn, hobgoblin, orc/half-orc)

Despite all this, my adventuring parties are as follows:
Party 1:
Tiefling druid
Halfling bard
High elf wizard

Party 2:
Tiefling paladin
Human Fighter
Wood elf rogue
Halfling rogue

Party 3:
Human druid
Half-elf warlock
Dragonborn monk
High elf rogue

What that all means, I'm not sure. Parties 1 and 2 are teenagers and new players, so they tend to go for "cool factor" over optimization.

That actually seems like a fairly even split. Not exactly along the race lines however are you expecting the players to look at the census for your world and decide to break down exactly along those lines? You have about 20% of your players as human in a world where ~25% of the available population are human, that's insanely close.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-11, 02:04 PM
That actually seems like a fairly even split. Not exactly along the race lines however are you expecting the players to look at the census for your world and decide to break down exactly along those lines? You have about 20% of your players as human in a world where ~25% of the available population are human, that's insanely close.

Nope. It's totally random. Groups 1 and 2 are complete newbies and pick what seems cool (usually with only knowing what's not allowed), group 3 started when only the Council Lands (which then had dragonborn in it in bigger numbers) were there. They didn't look at the racial balance either. Last year (the kids groups change yearly), I had a bunch of dragonborn and no halflings (with the rest elves/humans/one homebrew mind flayer!)

Edit: In-setting, adventurers are weird. By definition. That's where people who can't handle a normal life go--it's a separate social class that has international exemption from some of the caste/class/social laws in various nations. They also can't gain official rank unless they retire, but them's the breaks.

Knaight
2017-11-11, 06:41 PM
But now you are mixing genres with how many humans there are.

You could totally make a low fantasy game where nearly no one exists who is not a dwarf.

The choice between kitchen-sink and all or mostly human is a false one.

This depends on how exactly the genres are defined - and at the very least there is an extremely strong correlation between the genres and the extent to which individual settings are human dominated.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-11, 06:52 PM
IMO we're getting away from the core point, which is that the presence and commonness of non-humans, and whether it's "fantasy", are two different things.

Tanarii
2017-11-11, 07:16 PM
IMO we're getting away from the core point, which is that the presence and commonness of non-humans, and whether it's "fantasy", are two different things.Yeah.

To answer the flip side of why include non-humans at all, if humans are more easily identified with by players:
- a sense of wonder
- to highlight part of our humanity. Either by showing us a race with a part taken to an extreme. Or something that very few humans reasonably have. Or something missing that most humans have.

Example: Spock (who effectively represents all Vulcans in the eyes of the original viewers) takes "logical" to an extreme, and then contrasts it by battling with his emotional side. There are many humans that do this to a degree, and they're usually callered Nerds. :smallamused: But Spock takes that to an extreme and highlights part of our humanity as a consequence.

Knaight
2017-11-11, 07:43 PM
IMO we're getting away from the core point, which is that the presence and commonness of non-humans, and whether it's "fantasy", are two different things.

I'd agree with that - particularly given that my core point is that there's plenty of reasons to have fantasy which just has humans, which is all I'm really arguing. I've got nothing against the existence of fantasy which has lots of other races; I'm just vanishingly unlikely to actually read it.

Satinavian
2017-11-12, 01:16 AM
I'd agree with that - particularly given that my core point is that there's plenty of reasons to have fantasy which just has humans, which is all I'm really arguing. I've got nothing against the existence of fantasy which has lots of other races; I'm just vanishingly unlikely to actually read it.And how about fantasy without humans ?

Knaight
2017-11-12, 05:40 AM
And how about fantasy without humans ?

Another totally valid form. It is and should be a broad genre (and in practice I'm actually more likely to read this, because it's much less likely to be a rehash of the same three to four shallow Tolkien ripoffs and more likely to be something like Redwall or Mouseguard which is actually coherent).

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-12, 10:01 AM
Another totally valid form. It is and should be a broad genre (and in practice I'm actually more likely to read this, because it's much less likely to be a rehash of the same three to four shallow Tolkien ripoffs and more likely to be something like Redwall or Mouseguard which is actually coherent).

IMO, it's quite possible to have multiples "races" and not have a set of shallow Tolkien ripoffs. When it comes to certain "races", what I'm actually more bothered by are the direct lifts from D&D, which can be quite different from Tolkien's take on them.

What I do get tired of is when someone tries to play "find the race" in a new setting -- "Oh, those are your elves, and those are your dwarves, and..." by grasping at the most tenuous of similarities or parallels.

Satinavian
2017-11-12, 11:09 AM
AS far as Tolkien goes, well i always found his first age always far more interesting as setting than his third age.

And while his races are pretty much the known standard, having inspired so much stuff, even this ur-example is not a human dominated setting at all.

Archpaladin Zousha
2017-11-12, 12:35 PM
I know one reason I'll sometimes go for humans over other races is that the concept in trying to make doesn't really fit otherwise. It's kind of hard to play a yokel farmer type as an elf. Can you imagine an elf leaning against a tree in a straw hat and overalls commenting on the state of his crop in a Yorkshire accent?

Lord Raziere
2017-11-12, 12:46 PM
I know one reason I'll sometimes go for humans over other races is that the concept in trying to make doesn't really fit otherwise. It's kind of hard to play a yokel farmer type as an elf. Can you imagine an elf leaning against a tree in a straw hat and overalls commenting on the state of his crop in a Yorkshire accent?

Yes, they'd just make it the most stylish and mystical overalls and straw hat you ever seen enchanted with things to help farming while using farmer tools that look like they were crafted by artisan to be fancy decorations except they actually work and don't get dirty, and all the crops would look like a fancy work of art because they've done this for centuries.

Dang elves, even their yokel farmers try to be fancier than you. :smalltongue:

2D8HP
2017-11-12, 12:48 PM
For non-Tolkien-ish multi-sentient species settings, off the top of my head there's:

The
Barsoom (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barsoom) of Edgar Rice Burroughs,

and the

Marjipoor (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majipoor_series) of Robert Silverberg.

Tanarii
2017-11-12, 12:49 PM
If he's a wood elf, yes.

Certainly Wood Elves make an acceptable stand-in for a British yeoman longbow man.

Cealocanth
2017-11-12, 12:56 PM
There's a couple reasons why people may not want to play humans:

In many RPGs, including D&D and Pathfinder, humans are considered to be 'default'. They can be good at things, but never as good at one particular thing as other races are. In this case the choice is simply a mechanical one - no different than choosing a particular stratrgy in chess or choosing to back one stock over another. It's the way the game is played. It's a common trope, as unfortunate as it may be, that an elven ranger, a half-orc barbarian, and a halfling rogue are universally better than a human ranger, a human barbarian, and a human rogue.

But beyond that, the primary reason is exoticism and power fantasy. People like to see what it's like to live in a different person's shoes. In games that only have humans (see superhero games or westerns), I see people exploring types of people that they do not particularly share a lot in common with. Frankly, there's not that much difference between a tired office worker playing a dextrous elven ranger than a cowboy sharpshooter or a Hawkeye-style superhero.

It's really just the tropes. Don't provide options for people to play non-humans, or seperate humans into different subgroups such as Elder Scrolls does, and you have people playing humans a lot more often.

Honest Tiefling
2017-11-12, 02:13 PM
Yes, they'd just make it the most stylish and mystical overalls and straw hat you ever seen enchanted with things to help farming while using farmer tools that look like they were crafted by artisan to be fancy decorations except they actually work and don't get dirty, and all the crops would look like a fancy work of art because they've done this for centuries.

Dang elves, even their yokel farmers try to be fancier than you. :smalltongue:

Well, how else would the elves eat if the farmers spend all of their time fixing and repairing their house and equipment instead of actually farming? Through I could easily see a dwarf doing that. Have to get the hops and grains for the booze SOMEHOW.

Tanarii
2017-11-12, 02:18 PM
Well, how else would the elves eat if the farmers spend all of their time fixing and repairing their house and equipment instead of actually farming? Through I could easily see a dwarf doing that. Have to get the hops and grains for the booze SOMEHOW.

I thought elves lived off twigs & berries? Usually goodberries.

Archpaladin Zousha
2017-11-12, 03:18 PM
I thought elves lived off twigs & berries? Usually goodberries.
I thought they lived off salad and their weapons and armor were made of magically hardened iceberg lettuce.

Cluedrew
2017-11-12, 03:35 PM
Did you ever had/seen a stupid idea that you know is stupid, but you wish it wasn't stupid so you could make it work? In other words: Not going to use that but I like it.

Honest Tiefling
2017-11-12, 05:22 PM
Did you ever had/seen a stupid idea that you know is stupid, but you wish it wasn't stupid so you could make it work?

Please tell me that you weren't thinking that in regards to the lettuce sword. Through the idea of using one against a minotaur who just eats the thing is amusing.

Knaight
2017-11-13, 03:06 PM
IMO, it's quite possible to have multiples "races" and not have a set of shallow Tolkien ripoffs. When it comes to certain "races", what I'm actually more bothered by are the direct lifts from D&D, which can be quite different from Tolkien's take on them.

Sure, but again when one actually looks at the literature the shallow Tolkien ripoffs, with their dwarves and their elves and their orcs are irritatingly abundant.

Zanos
2017-11-13, 04:01 PM
Eh, I think it's possible to create shallow, uninspired characters of any species. People who think humans are boring really aren't very creative, especially since most elves or dwarves are just pointy eared tree hugging humans or bearded short drunk humans.

I'd prefer someone who rolls human over someone who thinks that an exotic species is enough to make a character interesting.

Knaight
2017-11-13, 04:07 PM
Eh, I think it's possible to create shallow, uninspired characters of any species. People who think humans are boring really aren't very creative, especially since most elves or dwarves are just pointy eared tree hugging humans or bearded short drunk humans.

Absolutely true, but around the time you decide to write a fantasy book and start including stock races out of what can be charitably termed a sense of genre obligation any hope I had for you as a writer is gone - and there's a lot that fits this description.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-13, 04:13 PM
Eh, I think it's possible to create shallow, uninspired characters of any species. People who think humans are boring really aren't very creative, especially since most elves or dwarves are just pointy eared tree hugging humans or bearded short drunk humans.

I'd prefer someone who rolls human over someone who thinks that an exotic species is enough to make a character interesting.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but... I think that we've seen in this thread that there's also a danger of presuming that if a character is of an exotic species, then the player (or writer) is relying on that alone in their attempt to make the character interesting.

Calthropstu
2017-11-13, 04:23 PM
I play humans quite a bit. In 3.5/PF their extra feat is amazingly useful as is their skill bonus. Plus the +2 any attribute (PF) allows for great class customization.

In earlier editions, their ability to progress further than all other classes made them an ideal choice, especially with the rules for dual class being what they were. Humans got so many bonuses in earlier d&d it was ridiculous. I know most tables completely ignored the lvl cap rule, but not me.
Shadowrun humans get amazing bonuses there too. The only system humans didn't get amazing abilities that I've played is whitewolf... which makes sense.
Don't get me wrong, I love playing elves, aasimar, tieflings etc but humans have a versatility that other races can't compare.

Zanos
2017-11-13, 04:34 PM
Absolutely true, but around the time you decide to write a fantasy book and start including stock races out of what can be charitably termed a sense of genre obligation any hope I had for you as a writer is gone - and there's a lot that fits this description.
A lot of uninspired stuff probably fits in that bucket, but I think you could still create something interesting with "stock races." I think Warhammer Fantasy has some pretty cool lore, even if the Elves and Dwarves there are pretty stock besides some Warhammer twists. Well, depending on how GW is feeling that particular year.


I'm not saying you're wrong, but... I think that we've seen in this thread that there's also a danger of presuming that if a character is of an exotic species, then the player (or writer) is relying on that alone in their attempt to make the character interesting.
It's not a guarantee by any means but I've certainly seen it happen fairly frequently. I reserve judgement, but going for the wackiest playable races right off the bat is something I consider to be a red flag.

Archpaladin Zousha
2017-11-13, 05:25 PM
Please tell me that you weren't thinking that in regards to the lettuce sword. Through the idea of using one against a minotaur who just eats the thing is amusing.
"ICEBERG LETTUCE! IT'S GOT NO NUTRITIONAL VALUE AT ALL!! IT'S LIKE EATING AIR!!!" :smallfurious:

Fiery Diamond
2017-11-14, 01:37 AM
Absolutely true, but around the time you decide to write a fantasy book and start including stock races out of what can be charitably termed a sense of genre obligation any hope I had for you as a writer is gone - and there's a lot that fits this description.

"There is nothing new under the sun."

Or, put another way: if you have a problem with the concept of stock races, the problem is with you rather than the author. Whether the author does anything interesting with the story is an entirely separate and completely disconnected matter to whether they include stock races.

Jay R
2017-11-14, 12:05 PM
Sure, but again when one actually looks at the literature the shallow Tolkien ripoffs, with their dwarves and their elves and their orcs are irritatingly abundant.

Of course. Sturgeon's Revelation applies here just as everywhere else. ["90% of science fiction is cr*p. But why not? 90% of everything is cr*p."]

Meanwhile, a quick glance at Elfquest or Harry Potter makes it clear that elves don't have to be based on Tolkien.

[And Tolkien's elves themselves make it clear that a great author can create his own brilliant and unique approach to elves and make it work.]

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-14, 12:20 PM
Cliche is not inherently wrong. Originality isn't inherently good. There's a lot of value to reducing cognitive load on readers, especially for things that aren't the central focus of the work. It's why authors that make up all their own words for things are obnoxious--it hampers the ability to focus on the other things going on.

Same goes for races--including the "tolkien-ripoff" races allows your readers/players to focus on other parts instead of constantly trying to remember how your elves are different (and how it applies in each case).

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-14, 12:44 PM
Cliche is not inherently wrong. Originality isn't inherently good. There's a lot of value to reducing cognitive load on readers, especially for things that aren't the central focus of the work. It's why authors that make up all their own words for things are obnoxious--it hampers the ability to focus on the other things going on.

Same goes for races--including the "tolkien-ripoff" races allows your readers/players to focus on other parts instead of constantly trying to remember how your elves are different (and how it applies in each case).

Perhaps at this point if you call a species/people "elves" but want to do something different or unique, you're fighting an uphill battle against the reader's or player's assumptions from Tolkien, D&D, WoW, ElfQuest, Gloranthan plant-elves, etc. Perhaps that ship has sailed at this point.

Maybe, if you want to go in a different direction, it's better to just call them something else, and let people draw parallels where they will from any similarities.

In one setting, I have the Moon People, who someone I was bouncing ideas off of once called "kinda Celtic gypsy moonbeam forest nomad elves, if you squint from a distance" (I'm paraphrasing a bit, it's been years now). I refuse to call them elves despite some similarities, because I don't want the cliches to be the first thing that people picture, or to have to fight against those preconceptions.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-14, 12:52 PM
Perhaps at this point if you call at species/people "elves" but want to do something different or unique, you're fighting an uphill battle against the reader's or player's assumptions from Tolkien, D&D, WoW, ElfQuest, Gloranthan plant-elves, etc. Perhaps that ship has sailed at this point.

Maybe, if you want to go in a different direction, it's better to just call them something else, and let people draw parallels where they will from any similarities.

In one setting, I have the Moon People, who someone I was bouncing ideas off of once called "kinda Celtic gypsy moonbeam forest nomad elves, if you squint from a distance" (I'm paraphrasing a bit, it's been years now). I refuse to call them elves despite some similarities, because I don't want the cliches to be the first thing that people picture, or to have to fight against those preconceptions.

And that's fair. I was pointing out that if that's not important (ie the exact nature of the elves/dwarves/etc wouldn't change the story significantly) then using the "stock" ones is not a sign of lack of skill--it allows you to focus on other matters without distracting the reader. Basically the flip side of your point.

Jay R
2017-11-14, 06:14 PM
In the last game I ran, the elves were going to be very different (Terry Pratchett's elves from Lords and Ladies). And the dwarves were believed to be extinct after the Dwarf/Giant Wars. In truth, they were enslaved far to the north, as a potential story arc after the PCs were high enough level.

So I just told them that elf & dwarf characters were disallowed.

2D8HP
2017-11-14, 06:36 PM
In the last game I ran, the...
.
I'm not sure if I've said so before, but that set-up sounds AWESOME! and I have hopes of totally stealing being inspired by your idea Jay R.

Bohandas
2017-11-15, 07:52 PM
Cliche is not inherently wrong. Originality isn't inherently good. There's a lot of value to reducing cognitive load on readers, especially for things that aren't the central focus of the work. It's why authors that make up all their own words for things are obnoxious--it hampers the ability to focus on the other things going on.

Same goes for races--including the "tolkien-ripoff" races allows your readers/players to focus on other parts instead of constantly trying to remember how your elves are different (and how it applies in each case).


In the last game I ran, the elves were going to be very different (Terry Pratchett's elves from Lords and Ladies)...

On this note, I think the choice and variety of cliches is also important; they seem to be becoming less diverse. The only recent media franchises that I know of to feature proper unseelie for example are Discworld and the last couple seasons of The Fairly Oddparents

Tanarii
2017-11-15, 09:45 PM
On this note, I think the choice and variety of cliches is also important; they seem to be becoming less diverse. The only recent media franchises that I know of to feature proper unseelie for example are Discworld and the last couple seasons of The Fairly OddparentsThe Dresden Files.

Lord Raziere
2017-11-15, 09:48 PM
The Dresden Files.

Its not even the only urban fantasy book of its kind, there is an entire genre of supernatural detective stuff out there that probably has this as well, Harry Dresden's just the most famous.

Tinkerer
2017-11-15, 10:21 PM
On this note, I think the choice and variety of cliches is also important; they seem to be becoming less diverse. The only recent media franchises that I know of to feature proper unseelie for example are Discworld and the last couple seasons of The Fairly Oddparents

... How recent is recent? DC Comics featured them on occasion in their supernatural comics.

Pugwampy
2017-11-17, 08:21 AM
When 3.5 came out it was all about feats worship.

Humans were top choice in my group because of the extra feat that supposedly gave huge tactical advantage .

If I play a wizard , I insist on being a human .

Minty
2017-11-19, 07:12 AM
I never quite understood why someone will say well I am human in rl so I wont play a human in game or humans are boring.
If they find humans boring is it the fault of the race or lack of imagination on the the player ?

Usually the latter, since 99% of people who say "humans are boring" proceed to play a "non-human" exactly the same as they would play a human anyway.

These days, my group only plays "humans only" games and settings, so it's no longer an issue.

Tanarii
2017-11-19, 09:16 AM
Usually the latter, since 99% of people who say "humans are boring" proceed to play a "non-human" exactly the same as they would play a human anyway.
I don't know about 99%, but this seems to just be a general rule, not specific to people who say humans are boring. Players rarely play non-humans significantly differently from a human. It's easy to forget they're supposed to be a bunch of elves, dwarves, and halflings. Let alone an Dragonborn, Tieflings, Orc, lizard folk, kobold or goblin.

That's one reason so many players use quick cheats like substituting funny voices or incredibly stereotypical quirks. There's no visible way to remind people of your non-human race. And it's hard to establishing an alien mindset based on the available description for the race, while not descending into farcical stereotype without individual character, as well as often requiring quite a lot of spotlight time. So a funny voice or catch phrase or quirk that comes up often in play is a constant reminder that they're not human.

A big chunk of that is just skin deep perception of course. Part of the reason we think players are playing non-humans just like humans is we see a bunch of humans sitting around a table. Not necessarily because they are. Same goes for trying to play a different sex or even different human 'race'.

RPG Factory
2017-11-22, 03:48 PM
I never quite understood why someone will say well I am human in rl so I wont play a human in game or humans are boring.
If they find humans boring is it the fault of the race or lack of imagination on the the player ?

My guess is that is they play a human day in day out in RL - granted, Human in DND can be far different... Why not be a fantastic creature :)

Xuc Xac
2017-11-24, 03:39 AM
My guess is that is they play a human day in day out in RL - granted, Human in DND can be far different... Why not be a fantastic creature :)

I play a low-level human expert day in day out in real life. I'm not a wizard or a barbarian or a high-level anything. I can play a lot of human characters very different from myself before I exhaust the possibilities.

Satinavian
2017-11-24, 03:48 AM
I play a low-level human expert day in day out in real life. I'm not a wizard or a barbarian or a high-level anything. I can play a lot of human characters very different from myself before I exhaust the possibilities.Does that make the human possibiklities more interesting than the nion human possibilities ?

No, it doesn't.

Pugwampy
2017-11-24, 08:16 AM
Well its sort of understandable . Whats one extra feat or skill points compared to all the 'powers' a gnome can enjoy . That players handbook was written by gnome fanboys.
Even if the gnome takes a martial class she is still has a huge advantage . Sorcerer and Wizard gnomes are gods . Two campaigns i ran the player all stars were Gnome ranger and Sorceress . I still have nightmares over that sorceress.

Cluedrew
2017-11-24, 08:23 AM
To Satinavian: I think the point is it doesn't make it less interesting, that the are a lot of good human characters to play out there as well.

Tanarii
2017-11-24, 03:15 PM
Does that make the human possibiklities more interesting than the nion human possibilities ?

No, it doesn't.
Does that make all the non-human possibilities more interesting than the human possibilities? No, it doesn't.

Jay R
2017-11-24, 03:34 PM
People aren't all the same.

What appeals to me isn't what appeals to you. That's perfectly reasonable.

It's not true that we will all make the same choices, or that the choices right for you should be the choices right for somebody else.

We've spent a lot of time and made very heavy weather trying not to accept the following simple fact:

People aren't all the same.

Lord Raziere
2017-11-24, 03:39 PM
People aren't all the same.

What appeals to me isn't what appeals to you. That's perfectly reasonable.

It's not true that we will all make the same choices, or that the choices right for you should be the choices right for somebody else.

We've spent a lot of time and made very heavy weather trying not to accept the following simple fact:

People aren't all the same.

Yeah, I agree with this.

I mean, I kind of get where the humans-only people are coming from, I'm a nonhumans guy myself, but really its all about just accepting that one guy is just different from you and that your never going to get your perfect game ever. like just acknowledge that even the players in your own group are probably different from you in some ways and that sometimes you just got to accept they do things differently.

GreatKaiserNui
2017-11-24, 03:58 PM
To OP:

It's just YOUR players, not us. If you want good human characters I think you are going to have to get new players.

huginn
2017-11-24, 11:26 PM
To OP:

It's just YOUR players, not us. If you want good human characters I think you are going to have to get new players.

I never said i wanted good human characters. I want to play with good players and based on personal experience good players rarely say I won't play a human because I am a human in RL or humans are boring

Knaight
2017-11-25, 12:42 PM
People aren't all the same.

What appeals to me isn't what appeals to you. That's perfectly reasonable.

It's not true that we will all make the same choices, or that the choices right for you should be the choices right for somebody else.

We've spent a lot of time and made very heavy weather trying not to accept the following simple fact:

People aren't all the same.

That's one way to put it. Another is that some of us are right, and some of us have terrible taste. :smallwink:

Jay R
2017-11-25, 04:23 PM
That's one way to put it. Another is that some of us are right, and some of us have terrible taste. :smallwink:

Actually, I expect that all of us are right, and all of us have terrible taste.


"The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality."

-- Oscar Wilde

Calthropstu
2017-11-25, 08:49 PM
Actually, I expect that all of us are right, and all of us have terrible taste.


"The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality."

-- Oscar Wilde

Can confirm, I taste terrible.

Bohandas
2017-11-25, 09:25 PM
There are troubling ontological issues with D&D's humans. They're not similar enough to real humans to be called human, especially in games where the differences between real world and fantasy world physics and chemistry are played up. Biologically they must be closer to Star Trek style conveniently human-shaped aliens

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-25, 09:37 PM
There are troubling ontological issues with D&D's humans. They're not similar enough to real humans to be called human, especially in games where the differences between real world and fantasy world physics and chemistry are played up. Biologically they must be closer to Star Trek style conveniently human-shaped aliens

And why is this troubling exactly? I'd be more troubled if a fantasy world's "humans" were biologically identical (or even closely related) to Earth humans. Does DNA actually exist in the Forgotten Realms or in Eberron (for example)? That's simply translation convention at work--they're the most outwardly similar to Earth humans and a decent touchstone reference point for readers.

CleverUsername
2017-11-25, 11:25 PM
I never quite understood why someone will say well I am human in rl so I wont play a human in game or humans are boring.
If they find humans boring is it the fault of the race or lack of imagination on the the player ?

I exclusively play humans.

Bonus feat and skills. Can fit any class decently. Easy to think of an original character. Complete blank slate race.

Satinavian
2017-11-26, 10:29 AM
Does that make all the non-human possibilities more interesting than the human possibilities? No, it doesn't.
No, it doesn't.

humans and non-humans can be exactly as interesting as the other. Which means it is left to personal taste and preference as none is objectively is better.

So why demand that those whose personal taste prefers some none human concepts over human concepts to play humans ? Why not just let the players preferring humans play humans and those preferring lizardfolk play lizardfolk ?

Tanarii
2017-11-26, 11:22 AM
So why demand that those whose personal taste prefers some none human concepts over human concepts to play humans ? Why not just let the players preferring humans play humans and those preferring lizardfolk play lizardfolk ?
So why did you challenge someone who was countering the idea that being a normal human in real life naturally results in wanting to play a non-human in RPGs?

pwykersotz
2017-11-26, 02:33 PM
So why demand that those whose personal taste prefers some none human concepts over human concepts to play humans ? Why not just let the players preferring humans play humans and those preferring lizardfolk play lizardfolk ?

I don't think I've seen anyone assert that people should be stopped from playing non-humans, or that they are wrong for preferring them. Only that people who say humans are boring lack imagination in that area. There is a world of difference between those two points. One is a love of many things, other is derision of a particular thing. I often play non-human races, and enjoy the heck out of them. Yet I don't find humans boring. These things are not opposite ends of a spectrum, they each a different axis entirely. I would make the same assertion about anyone who said elves, dwarves, hobgoblins, or any other of the well developed fantasy cultures with deep roots in a multitude of lore and a vast array of character archetypes were boring.

Also, lacking imagination in an area is not an insult. I find halflings tremendously boring. Every iteration of them, including the Kender and the cannibals. And while halflings are a modern phenomenon, there is still a tremendous amount written about them. But I am bored to tears by it all. That's on me, I lack imagination when it comes to halflings.

Xuc Xac
2017-11-26, 02:53 PM
In my experience, if someone says "I want to play an elf because elves are cool", that's fine. If they say, "I want to play an elf because humans are boring", then they're going to play a really boring elf because they think being a non-human is a substitute for having a personality.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-26, 02:57 PM
My position on the matter is that player should be able to play what they find fun so long as it's available in that setting and campaign, and other players should stop trying to parse and deconstruct each other's motives and supposed personal shortcomings that they imagine underlie those choices.

Worry about the results at the table -- players who play boring characters play boring characters, film at 11. It has nothing to do with that species they might happen to chose.

/end

Bohandas
2017-11-26, 03:04 PM
Also, lacking imagination in an area is not an insult. I find halflings tremendously boring. Every iteration of them, including the Kender and the cannibals. And while halflings are a modern phenomenon, there is still a tremendous amount written about them. But I am bored to tears by it all. That's on me, I lack imagination when it comes to halflings.

I definitely agree with this, (except for the kender, at least they have personality and an original name even if it is impractically difficult to play them in a way that doesn't piss everyone off). The halflings started out as a knockoff of a race that didn't even fit into their own setting and over time somehow got worse. Now their existence in the game is more like the ghost of a departed knockoff.

pwykersotz
2017-11-26, 03:23 PM
My position on the matter is that player should be able to play what they find fun so long as it's available in that setting and campaign, and other players should stop trying to parse and deconstruct each other's motives and supposed personal shortcomings that they imagine underlie those choices.

Worry about the results at the table -- players who play boring characters play boring characters, film at 11. It has nothing to do with that species they might happen to chose.

/end

Weirdly, I agree, but it misses the point. When you see a trend, you want to try to isolate the cause of the trend. Without hard data, extrapolation is the best usable tool. Which is why we come together and discuss. The goal is to better the experience. Identifying trends helps overall. Talking to players and GM's helps for specific cases.

If you have a GM who runs a particularly fun/unfun game, talking about their expectations and interests is relevant.
If you have a player who shies away from/embraces certain roleplaying elements, same.

None of this is ever an excuse to belittle anyone.

Cluedrew
2017-11-26, 06:35 PM
To pwykersotz: ... {claps} That is honestly one of the best bits of the philosophy about why we are (should be) here I think I have ever seen. Good job.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-26, 08:58 PM
Weirdly, I agree, but it misses the point. When you see a trend, you want to try to isolate the cause of the trend. Without hard data, extrapolation is the best usable tool. Which is why we come together and discuss. The goal is to better the experience. Identifying trends helps overall. Talking to players and GM's helps for specific cases.

If you have a GM who runs a particularly fun/unfun game, talking about their expectations and interests is relevant.
If you have a player who shies away from/embraces certain roleplaying elements, same.

None of this is ever an excuse to belittle anyone.

I'd largely agree with that, I just got frustrated with what looked like a lot of "well someone who won't play X must obviously have some personal fault" responded to by "no someone who won't play Y must have some personal fault".

Mr Beer
2017-11-26, 10:34 PM
I'd largely agree with that, I just got frustrated with what looked like a lot of "well someone who won't play X must obviously have some personal fault" responded to by "no someone who won't play Y must have some personal fault".

It's one step away from arguing about whether elves are cooler than dwarves, which is childish and ridiculous. Anyway, everyone knows dwarves are cooler.

Lord Raziere
2017-11-26, 10:43 PM
It's one step away from arguing about whether elves are cooler than dwarves, which is childish and ridiculous. Anyway, everyone knows dwarves are cooler.

Absurd.

gorgons are clearly better than both. :smalltongue:

Jay R
2017-11-26, 10:47 PM
I'd largely agree with that, I just got frustrated with what looked like a lot of "well someone who won't play X must obviously have some personal fault" responded to by "no someone who won't play Y must have some personal fault".

Once somebody accepts any form of the notion that "disagrees with me" implies "must have some personal fault", there is no limit to the nonsense it can produce.

Mr Beer
2017-11-26, 11:19 PM
Once somebody accepts any form of the notion that "disagrees with me" implies "must have some personal fault", there is no limit to the nonsense it can produce.

I think it depends on the issue involved, it's not that disagreeing with me means you are a bad person (after all, it's OK to be wrong) but there are some beliefs which are indicative of a personal fault IMO.

Loxagn
2017-11-27, 01:25 PM
Not 100% related, I know, but I can't help but notice a few people complaining that DMs don't read backstories and players don't try to involve them. Is that... usual?
As a player I always try to bring in elements of my character's background, with DM permission, and as a DM I always try to weave my players' backgrounds into the plot because honestly it means less work for me in the long run, and means my players have more fun. Players seem to like coming up with backgrounds for their characters, in my experience. Only time I've had a person who actually had difficulty in that regard had an actual learning disability.

Is this just abnormal?

Tanarii
2017-11-27, 01:50 PM
It's one step away from arguing about whether elves are cooler than dwarves, which is childish and ridiculous. Anyway, everyone knows dwarves are cooler.
But neither are as cool as Gnomes. They're all the best of Elves and Dwarves combined in one small but awesome package.

Except Tinker Gnomes. That abomination should never have been birthed.

Jay R
2017-11-29, 08:36 AM
I think it depends on the issue involved, it's not that disagreeing with me means you are a bad person (after all, it's OK to be wrong) but there are some beliefs which are indicative of a personal fault IMO.

True, but a lot fewer than most people believe. And we've just spent eight pages on guessing what's wrong with people who like different D&D characters.

Bohandas
2017-11-30, 02:02 PM
There are troubling ontological issues with D&D's humans. They're not similar enough to real humans to be called human, especially in games where the differences between real world and fantasy world physics and chemistry are played up. Biologically they must be closer to Star Trek style conveniently human-shaped aliens

Ok, here's a good explanation of the general kind of thing I'm talking about. I think this fellow explains it better.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/hq/universal_fire/

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-30, 03:44 PM
Ok, here's a good explanation of the general kind of thing I'm talking about. I think this fellow explains it better.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/hq/universal_fire/
(http://lesswrong.com/lw/hq/universal_fire/)

That article is another version of why I say that if your story is based on "What if electricity stopped working tomorrow?" then the first answer is, you have no story, all atomic matter in the universe just flew apart.

Talakeal
2017-11-30, 04:54 PM
That article is another version of why I say that if your story is based on "What if electricity stopped working tomorrow?" then the first answer is, you have no story, all atomic matter in the universe just flew apart.

And what if it didn't all fly apart?

As I said in the other thread, fiction is fiction, none of it really happened and all of it is impossible. Tearing down a story because it doesn't meet exactly the right level of realism isn't really helpful.

Lord Raziere
2017-11-30, 05:04 PM
And what if it didn't all fly apart?

As I said in the other thread, fiction is fiction, none of it really happened and all of it is impossible. Tearing down a story because it doesn't meet exactly the right level of realism isn't really helpful.

Yeah if one keeps trying to remain strictly realistic only, the only acceptable story would be real life. we're already living that. I see no need to repeat it.

because even if we did all those "realistic consequence" changes, we need to explain how something like the speed of light got changed at all from our universe, since as far as we know, we can't change the speed of light, therefore some other force must've changed it, therefore we have to figure out how something could change the speed of light, so we have realistically explain how the one unrealistic change even occurred in the first place. since I can't comprehend anything that could possibly change the speed of light, its useless to try and explain how that happened, since it can't be changed.

therefore the only acceptable explanation for ANYTHING fantastic happening by the realistic standards that Max is proposing, is that its all a dream and taking place in someone's mind since none of this can possibly be happening in any real world. since that is the only explanation for how the unrealistic changes could realistically occur in the first place. all fantastic worlds are therefore dreams.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-30, 05:14 PM
And what if it didn't all fly apart?

As I said in the other thread, fiction is fiction, none of it really happened and all of it is impossible. Tearing down a story because it doesn't meet exactly the right level of realism isn't really helpful.


Yeah if one keeps trying to remain strictly realistic only, the only acceptable story would be real life. we're already living that. I see no need to repeat it.

because even if we did all those "realistic consequence" changes, we need to explain how something like the speed of light got changed at all from our universe, since as far as we know, we can't change the speed of light, therefore some other force must've changed it, therefore we have to figure out how something could change the speed of light, so we have realistically explain how the one unrealistic change even occurred in the first place. since I can't comprehend anything that could possibly change the speed of light, its useless to try and explain how that happened, since it can't be changed.

therefore the only acceptable explanation for ANYTHING fantastic happening by the realistic standards that Max is proposing, is that its all a dream and taking place in someone's mind since none of this can possibly be happening in any real world. since that is the only explanation for how the unrealistic changes could realistically occur in the first place. all fantastic worlds are therefore dreams.

I wasn't talking about a fantasy setting -- that should have been clear from the context and phrasing.

The kind of story I was talking about are the nonsense modern-day, totally-mundane, "but here's a twist to take away technology" stories. Literally, "What if electricity just stopped working tomorrow?"

Talakeal
2017-11-30, 05:25 PM
I wasn't talking about a fantasy setting -- that should have been clear from the context and phrasing.

The kind of story I was talking about are the nonsense modern-day, totally-mundane, "but here's a twist to take away technology" stories. Literally, "What if electricity just stopped working tomorrow?"

Right, and the purpose of those stories are, generally, to explore the nature of our society and our dependence on infrastructure.

Yes, you can go into all of the unintended consequences of electricity disappearing, and there would be many, but that isn't the point of the story.

Imagine, for a second, a make up a story about a boy I went to school with named John Smith and how he stood up to the bullies and they never picked on him again. Now, in reality there was no John Smith, its a simple story I made up to explore the consequences of bullying.


But then let's take it a step further, now, John Smith obviously had parents, so I need to make them up to. And they need parents. And they need parents, and so on for the whole course of human history until I decide that John Smith's line branches off from some existing family, and I need to explain why in all these real families had extra kids. Now, all of these people I invented by necessity have to work jobs, live in homes, produce things, have jobs, vote in elections, interact with other people, cause fatal accidents, etc. And if you look at all of the "quantum butterfly" effects that all of these imaginary people have had over the course of human history you would get a modern world which would be hardly recognizable from what we have to do and multitude of changes both subtle and gross that are impossible for anyone to predict.

But that's not the point of the story, its just a little fable about standing up to bullies, and going into all of the "but what about...?"s that could possibly come up totally miss the point.

Bohandas
2017-11-30, 07:12 PM
The matter is ignorable in many cases but is more glaring in the case of D&D humans because they are explicitly of a different substance than real humans (remember the elemental planes) and furthermore have, in some cases, different biological traits. The latter is relatively easily waved away by positing hybridization with various supernatural species by distant ancestors but the former issue, being explicitly of a different substance than real humans, remains intransigently glaring and problematic.

Mechalich
2017-11-30, 07:41 PM
The matter is ignorable in many cases but is more glaring in the case of D&D humans because they are explicitly of a different substance than real humans (remember the elemental planes) and furthermore have, in some cases, different biological traits. The latter is relatively easily waved away by positing hybridization with various supernatural species by distant ancestors but the former issue, being explicitly of a different substance than real humans, remains intransigently glaring and problematic.

Being of a different substance - meaning the lack of atomic elements - applies to everything in the D&D multiverse. If you have a problem with accepting this situation - which is quite typical for fantasy and not unique to D&D - that's fine, but you have to accept that fantasy storytelling and the balance of people who read fantasy stories don't care. The default assumption is that, whatever the underlying physical principles, in practice it works exactly like it does in the real world except when it specifically does not - which is magic. If the magic is not consistent and doesn't provide believable verisimilitude then you have a problem, otherwise it's fine. The only other case where this is a real problem is when you have people within the setting that are capable of investigating the theoretical underpinnings of their fantasy world and a justifiable motive to do so, because then you have to delve into alternative physics and it almost never holds up. However this is rare, because it is highly unusual for the demands of a fantasy story to require anyone in a setting to display knowledge of core sciences beyond what a fourteenth century philosopher would have known.

Bohandas
2017-11-30, 11:11 PM
Being of a different substance - meaning the lack of atomic elements - applies to everything in the D&D multiverse. If you have a problem with accepting this situation - which is quite typical for fantasy and not unique to D&D - that's fine, but you have to accept that fantasy storytelling and the balance of people who read fantasy stories don't care. The default assumption is that, whatever the underlying physical principles, in practice it works exactly like it does in the real world except when it specifically does not - which is magic. If the magic is not consistent and doesn't provide believable verisimilitude then you have a problem, otherwise it's fine. The only other case where this is a real problem is when you have people within the setting that are capable of investigating the theoretical underpinnings of their fantasy world and a justifiable motive to do so, because then you have to delve into alternative physics and it almost never holds up. However this is rare, because it is highly unusual for the demands of a fantasy story to require anyone in a setting to display knowledge of core sciences beyond what a fourteenth century philosopher would have known.

What about wizards and clerics?

Cynthaer
2017-12-01, 11:26 AM
What about wizards and clerics?

I mean, even they aren't usually spending their campaign time performing experiments or asking questions that would require the DM to devise a complete and self-consistent system of physics with significant granularity.

Consider the number of players who have played wizards who, in-universe, have learned enough of the arcane secrets of the universe to shoot a cone of fire from their hands. Now consider the number of players who have ever asked what those secrets actually are.

Just because the character technically knows something about the universe's physics doesn't mean the story requires them to actually demonstrate that knowledge in a concrete form.

Jay R
2017-12-01, 12:47 PM
The matter is ignorable in many cases but is more glaring in the case of D&D humans because they are explicitly of a different substance than real humans (remember the elemental planes) and furthermore have, in some cases, different biological traits. The latter is relatively easily waved away by positing hybridization with various supernatural species by distant ancestors but the former issue, being explicitly of a different substance than real humans, remains intransigently glaring and problematic.

Willing suspension of disbelief is necessary to many kinds of stories. It was first identified by Coleridge 200 years ago. Farmer MacGregor defending his crops in Peter Rabbit is the bad guy. The farmer defending his crops in Little House on the Prairie is the good guy. There's no explanation for the difference; if you want to read these stories, you need to accept it.

Yes, in virtually any fantasy or science fiction story, most of what goes on is impossible. And lots of people (my father was one) won't read them for that reason. OK, fine, some people cannot suspend disbelief.

But accepting some of the impossible while complaining about the rest of it is not consistent. If you're going to accept magic at all, then you have to accept that the laws of physics have been told to shut up and sit down.

Person A: Whatcha reading?
Person B: A Superman comic.
Person A: What's it about?
Person B: A guy who can fly, lift mountains, shoot heat beams from his eyes, see through things, and disguise himself with a pair of glasses.
Person A: That's dumb. Nobody can disguise himself with a pair of glasses.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-01, 01:09 PM
Willing suspension of disbelief is necessary to many kinds of stories. It was first identified by Coleridge 200 years ago. Farmer MacGregor defending his crops in Peter Rabbit is the bad guy. The farmer defending his crops in Little House on the Prairie is the good guy. There's no explanation for the difference; if you want to read these stories, you need to accept it.

Yes, in virtually any fantasy or science fiction story, most of what goes on is impossible. And lots of people (my father was one) won't read them for that reason. OK, fine, some people cannot suspend disbelief.

But accepting some of the impossible while complaining about the rest of it is not consistent. If you're going to accept magic at all, then you have to accept that the laws of physics have been told to shut up and sit down.

Person A: Whatcha reading?
Person B: A Superman comic.
Person A: What's it about?
Person B: A guy who can fly, lift mountains, shoot heat beams from his eyes, see through things, and disguise himself with a pair of glasses.
Person A: That's dumb. Nobody can disguise himself with a pair of glasses.


First, "impossible in our world" does not automatically mean "impossible in the specific fictional world".

Second, beware the "But Dragons!" Fallacy (see also, Kitchen Sink Syndrome). Fantastic element A does not automatically open the door to fantastic elements B through ZZZ.

Third, "It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead. "

Knaight
2017-12-01, 04:47 PM
But accepting some of the impossible while complaining about the rest of it is not consistent. If you're going to accept magic at all, then you have to accept that the laws of physics have been told to shut up and sit down.

Person A: Whatcha reading?
Person B: A Superman comic.
Person A: What's it about?
Person B: A guy who can fly, lift mountains, shoot heat beams from his eyes, see through things, and disguise himself with a pair of glasses.
Person A: That's dumb. Nobody can disguise himself with a pair of glasses.

It's totally consistent. Genre fiction usually requires specific breaks from reality, which are accepted going in. That doesn't necessarily excuse other breaks with reality, particularly when they're only there because of exceptional laziness.

Superman is a good example of this. The foundational breaks for superhero fiction are that there are a few rare people who have a set of superhuman powers, which they use to do heroics. The general population being so face blind that essentially nobody can tell that someone has the same face when they put glasses on? That's a secondary break, and being willing to accept the first break doesn't mean being willing to accept the second.

Cynthaer
2017-12-01, 05:44 PM
Anyway, regarding the actual thread topic:

I'm one of those players who never plays a human. And in casual conversation, if you asked me why, I would probably answer with something like "I'm a human all the time; why would I want to play a human? Humans are boring."

Now, the reason I would say this is because it's the most concise way of expressing the feelings I personally have about playing a human character. Here's what I am not saying when I say this:

Nobody wants to play a human
Nobody should want to play a human
There are no good reasons to want to play a human
Other people's human characters are boring
People who play humans are boring
I can't make an interesting human character
Playing a non-human automatically make my character interesting
Now, that's just me—other people who say the same thing I do might also hold one or more of these opinions.

My point is that when you ask people why they play the way they do, you should expect to get a personal, emotional response, and not a universal statement of formal logic. Going over the implications of statements like "humans are boring" will often take you down a pointless road, because usually people just mean to say "the ability to play a non-human being specifically appeals to me as a player, and it offers an experience I find appealing and interesting in a way that merely playing a different class does not".

Jay R
2017-12-01, 11:21 PM
It's totally consistent. Genre fiction usually requires specific breaks from reality, which are accepted going in. That doesn't necessarily excuse other breaks with reality, particularly when they're only there because of exceptional laziness.

Superman is a good example of this. The foundational breaks for superhero fiction are that there are a few rare people who have a set of superhuman powers, which they use to do heroics. The general population being so face blind that essentially nobody can tell that someone has the same face when they put glasses on? That's a secondary break, and being willing to accept the first break doesn't mean being willing to accept the second.

Disguises work to move the story along. If you cannot accept that in Superman, then you aren't old enough to read Shakespeare, or Plautus, or the medieval poem Sir Orfeo, any of the other great authors who use the same trope.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-02, 12:42 AM
Disguises work to move the story along. If you cannot accept that in Superman, then you aren't old enough to read Shakespeare, or Plautus, or the medieval poem Sir Orfeo, any of the other great authors who use the same trope.

Nice ad hom. "If you don't agree with me, you're not sophisticated and mature enough to understand". Really? :smallconfused:

Anyway...

It's not a disguise, it's a pair of glasses and a change of clothes, somehow fooling people that he encounters in both "personas" on a regular basis.

Sure, it "advances the plot (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotPlot)"...

Mechalich
2017-12-02, 03:35 AM
It's not a disguise, it's a pair of glasses and a change of clothes, somehow fooling people that he encounters in both "personas" on a regular basis.


It is a disguise, it's just a terrible one. The principle that superman - or any number of other heroes - conceal their identity either to stay out of legal trouble or simply to maintain their sanity by utilizing a disguise and/or costume change when switching from one persona to another is quite valid. Hardly anyone question's the validity of Batman doing roughly the same thing, simply because Batman's disguise is better - it covers most of his face, there's a significant change in voice and mannerisms, and Bruce Wayne goes out of his way to both dress and move in a way that conceals how ridiculously ripped he happens to be (admittedly the overall believably varies).

Superman and many other comic characters have bad disguises because there is an alternate force at work - dramatic tension in comics needs facial expressions to work with. Characters who are in full face coverings or wearing actual helmets can't emote properly (notable example of splitting the difference: Rorschach of Watchmen was the special power to have his mask emote on his behalf). This happens in media all the time - it's why none of the actors running around on the ice in Iceland filming game of thrones are wearing hats even in shots where the characters they portray are literally dying of hypothermia. The pathetic nature of superman's disguise is a deliberate choice to sacrifice verisimilitude for the sake of greater ability to convey drama.

Which, to circle back to the original point of the thread, is also what is being done by the inclusion of non-human species in most TTRPGs. These species are rarely realistic either as human variants or aliens and they tend to damage the verisimilitude of the worlds they create - long-lived elves and dwarves demand technological stasis, romance fans demand pseudo-humans that are both broadly physically attractive and capable of mating with humans (the most commonly appearing alien species in Star Wars media is the Twi'leks, which is also the species with the highest female:man ratio). Non-humans are generally offered as trope shorthand or to please a specific kind of fandom, not out of any sincere desire to truly present a world inhabited by aliens and to consider what that would mean, and when they are offered serious - like the Thri-Kreen example I noted initially - then tend to be impossible to actually play.

Lord Raziere
2017-12-02, 04:18 AM
Which, to circle back to the original point of the thread, is also what is being done by the inclusion of non-human species in most TTRPGs. These species are rarely realistic either as human variants or aliens and they tend to damage the verisimilitude of the worlds they create - long-lived elves and dwarves demand technological stasis, romance fans demand pseudo-humans that are both broadly physically attractive and capable of mating with humans (the most commonly appearing alien species in Star Wars media is the Twi'leks, which is also the species with the highest female:man ratio). Non-humans are generally offered as trope shorthand or to please a specific kind of fandom, not out of any sincere desire to truly present a world inhabited by aliens and to consider what that would mean, and when they are offered serious - like the Thri-Kreen example I noted initially - then tend to be impossible to actually play.

Pretty much.

you want a serious alien race, they will not be playable or appealing to anyone who actually want to play non-human. you want them to just play humans? that will never happen. they prefer the advantages the races give them. humans simply don't give them what they want, and neither does True Aliens.

I know my interest in such non-human races have never been about "actually" exploring an alien mindset or anything, and I also know that no matter how much someone says humans are better for whatever- I'm simply not interested in humans. At least, not humans as I see them. to me, humans ARE the baseline, and baselines ARE boring, they are SUPPOSED to be boring so that you can design something more interesting to contrast the boring baseline with. before you can explore the interesting situations that make this all worth it, you need some boring consistent normal state that you can look at and say "yeah thats normal life, for better or worse."

so the other races become a question of "what if we went THIS direction, what if this was true instead? what if this race met normal humanity? how would they react? what if humans tried to emulate them? what would the difference be between an elf and a human acting like one?" its questions like these that make me roll my eyes at the people who proclaim it all "hat races" because there is so much potential in humans interacting with them and trying to put on the hat as well only to not exactly by the same.

like you could have four possibilities instead of two:
-the nonhuman race
-the human race
-the humans trying to act like the non-human race and not getting it quite right....because they are human.
- the nonhumans trying to act like humans.....and not getting it quite right because they are nonhuman.

simply put, you can't go somewhere cool without starting from a boring place to compare it in relation to. its why superhero stories have the whole secret identity thing: so that they can compare the hero life with the normal life. thus non-human races are there to compare the human life with their nonhuman life.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-02, 09:32 AM
It is a disguise, it's just a terrible one. The principle that superman - or any number of other heroes - conceal their identity either to stay out of legal trouble or simply to maintain their sanity by utilizing a disguise and/or costume change when switching from one persona to another is quite valid. Hardly anyone question's the validity of Batman doing roughly the same thing, simply because Batman's disguise is better - it covers most of his face, there's a significant change in voice and mannerisms, and Bruce Wayne goes out of his way to both dress and move in a way that conceals how ridiculously ripped he happens to be (admittedly the overall believably varies).


Yeap, the validity of the functional disguise questioned less than the validity of the ridiculous disguise.

What about this is a defense of the silly trope?




Superman and many other comic characters have bad disguises because there is an alternate force at work - dramatic tension in comics needs facial expressions to work with. Characters who are in full face coverings or wearing actual helmets can't emote properly (notable example of splitting the difference: Rorschach of Watchmen was the special power to have his mask emote on his behalf). This happens in media all the time - it's why none of the actors running around on the ice in Iceland filming game of thrones are wearing hats even in shots where the characters they portray are literally dying of hypothermia. The pathetic nature of superman's disguise is a deliberate choice to sacrifice verisimilitude for the sake of greater ability to convey drama.


And yet characters in half masks manage to emote just fine via other means.

Also, I'd rather have the characters in the blizzard wearing some sort of hat (not that I specifically care all that much about the figurative torture-porn that is GOT).




Which, to circle back to the original point of the thread, is also what is being done by the inclusion of non-human species in most TTRPGs. These species are rarely realistic either as human variants or aliens and they tend to damage the verisimilitude of the worlds they create - long-lived elves and dwarves demand technological stasis, romance fans demand pseudo-humans that are both broadly physically attractive and capable of mating with humans (the most commonly appearing alien species in Star Wars media is the Twi'leks, which is also the species with the highest female:man ratio). Non-humans are generally offered as trope shorthand or to please a specific kind of fandom, not out of any sincere desire to truly present a world inhabited by aliens and to consider what that would mean, and when they are offered serious - like the Thri-Kreen example I noted initially - then tend to be impossible to actually play.


Your experience must be different from mine on this front.

Tanarii
2017-12-02, 11:38 AM
and when they are offered serious - like the Thri-Kreen example I noted initially - then tend to be impossible to actually play.
Certain psychological differences will make an alien race impossible or very difficult to co-exist with general humanity. Anything that's generally morally repugnant to human society (in the in-game world) is likely to do that, make them appear 'monstrous' to any potential human party members. And enjoying eating humans is usually one of them. So thri-kreen, lizard men, and athasian halflings all meet that criteria.

But also other traits anti-human-social just won't fit unless you're an all {race} party, or have a unique party with a unique outlook. Kender! Gully Dwarves, and Tinker Gnomes are all pretty good examples of that.

Bohandas
2017-12-02, 01:46 PM
Willing suspension of disbelief is necessary to many kinds of stories. It was first identified by Coleridge 200 years ago. Farmer MacGregor defending his crops in Peter Rabbit is the bad guy. The farmer defending his crops in Little House on the Prairie is the good guy. There's no explanation for the difference; if you want to read these stories, you need to accept it.

Yes, in virtually any fantasy or science fiction story, most of what goes on is impossible. And lots of people (my father was one) won't read them for that reason. OK, fine, some people cannot suspend disbelief.

But accepting some of the impossible while complaining about the rest of it is not consistent. If you're going to accept magic at all, then you have to accept that the laws of physics have been told to shut up and sit down.

Person A: Whatcha reading?
Person B: A Superman comic.
Person A: What's it about?
Person B: A guy who can fly, lift mountains, shoot heat beams from his eyes, see through things, and disguise himself with a pair of glasses.
Person A: That's dumb. Nobody can disguise himself with a pair of glasses.

It is acceptable for the action of a story to not follow the rules of our world; what isn't acceptable is for the action of the story to not even follow the rules of it's own world

Bohandas
2017-12-02, 01:55 PM
I mean, even they aren't usually spending their campaign time performing experiments or asking questions that would require the DM to devise a complete and self-consistent system of physics with significant granularity.

Consider the number of players who have played wizards who, in-universe, have learned enough of the arcane secrets of the universe to shoot a cone of fire from their hands. Now consider the number of players who have ever asked what those secrets actually are.

Just because the character technically knows something about the universe's physics doesn't mean the story requires them to actually demonstrate that knowledge in a concrete form.

You know, I kind of want to play a spelljammer campaign that's full of Star Trek-esque technobabble except of a mystical bent...

"Captain, crystal energy is down to 50 percent!"
"Divert pyramid power!"

Knaight
2017-12-02, 02:14 PM
Disguises work to move the story along. If you cannot accept that in Superman, then you aren't old enough to read Shakespeare, or Plautus, or the medieval poem Sir Orfeo, any of the other great authors who use the same trope.
Shakespeare, Platus, and any number of other great authors were good enough at their work to be able to describe or suggest a character wearing a disguise without overtly depicting one that's totally useless. To use perhaps the most obvious example Romeo and Juliet meet at a masquerade ball in heavy costume including masks. Glasses were around in Shakespeare's time (albeit in their technological infancy); he could have chosen to use them. On the other hand, Shakespeare appears to have been generally aware of the basics of facial recognition.

Or, more pithily - being unwilling to accept someone failing to implement a motif doesn't mean that one must be unwilling to accept someone successfully implementing the motif. It's not the motif I'm objecting to, it's the failure to implement it well.


It is a disguise, it's just a terrible one. The principle that superman - or any number of other heroes - conceal their identity either to stay out of legal trouble or simply to maintain their sanity by utilizing a disguise and/or costume change when switching from one persona to another is quite valid. Hardly anyone question's the validity of Batman doing roughly the same thing, simply because Batman's disguise is better - it covers most of his face, there's a significant change in voice and mannerisms, and Bruce Wayne goes out of his way to both dress and move in a way that conceals how ridiculously ripped he happens to be (admittedly the overall believably varies).
The principle is entirely reasonable, and to a large extent the idea that superheroes are a secret identity of a civilian is another foundational point in the genre. This is a large part of why superheroes (and other vigilantes, outlaws, etc. e.g. Zorro) are routinely depicted with masks; Superman's glasses are an anomaly.

Lord Raziere
2017-12-02, 02:31 PM
The principle is entirely reasonable, and to a large extent the idea that superheroes are a secret identity of a civilian is another foundational point in the genre. This is a large part of why superheroes (and other vigilantes, outlaws, etc. e.g. Zorro) are routinely depicted with masks; Superman's glasses are an anomaly.

Or more accurately, a bad prototype, since Superman is the first superhero of his kind, he is the first attempt doing what a superhero is ever, therefore it stands to reason that he gets some things done wrong that others correct. but then again there is all those heroes who wear domino masks to hide their identity. :smallamused: Hi Robin, Green Lantern, Mr. Incredible, Green Arrow, probably many more....

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-02, 03:37 PM
Or more accurately, a bad prototype, since Superman is the first superhero of his kind, he is the first attempt doing what a superhero is ever, therefore it stands to reason that he gets some things done wrong that others correct. but then again there is all those heroes who wear domino masks to hide their identity. :smallamused: Hi Robin, Green Lantern, Mr. Incredible, Green Arrow, probably many more....

There were "pulp" characters who would be or blur the line with "street level superheroes" in modern parlance created before or around the same time as Superman, and they wore outfits/disguises to hide their identity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Pimpernel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman

Jay R
2017-12-03, 12:23 PM
Shakespeare, Platus, and any number of other great authors were good enough at their work to be able to describe or suggest a character wearing a disguise without overtly depicting one that's totally useless.

Yes, Romeo meets Juliet at a masked ball, but that isn't one of the usual examples given of the principle I'm discussing. In Twelfth Night, Viola is not wearing any head covering at all. In As You Like It, Rosalind, with nothing on her head but dressed like a man, is not recognized even by the man who loves her while he is seeking her. Eventually, she agrees to play "Rosalind" so he can practice flirting with her, and he still doesn't recognize her. In King Lear, the banished Earl of Kent dresses as a servant to serve the king he has served all his life, but who doesn't recognize him.

Besides - they don't "suggest" a disguise. Shakespeare and Plautus wrote plays. They are enacted on stage. In every production I've ever seen, I could recognize that Viola was a woman, and that her brother, when he appears, was a different person, while Olivia, much closer to them, could not. In every production I've seen or performed in, I've always recognized the actress playing Rosalind, even when she was dressed as Ganymede. [And I'm sure that in Shakespeare's time, the audience could recognize that the actors playing the women's roles were all boys.]

The disguise "suggested" by Shakespeare in As You Like It is her own height, man's clothes, two weapons, and a swagger. [And the height should not help hide her from Orlando, who obviously knows that the woman he's seeking is exactly that height.]

Were it not better,
Because that I am more than common tall,
That I did suit me all points like a man?
A gallant curtal-axe upon my thigh,
A boar-spear in my hand, and in my heart
Lie there what hidden woman’s fear there will,
We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside—
As many other mannish cowards have
That do outface it with their semblances.
The disguise suggested in Twelfth Night is even less.

Conceal me what I am, and be my aid
For such disguise as haply shall become
The form of my intent.

One final point. This is not my invention. The fact that implausible disguises are part of Roman comic theater (Plautus) and Renaissance theater (Shakespeare) is well-documented and pretty generally accepted in literary analysis. I've certainly not seen it questioned in any literature course, undergraduate or graduate.


“But in the majority of cases in early modern drama to this point, no one, however familiar with a disguised character, is in danger of exposing him or her. Moreover, when all is revealed, no one feels the need to give a realistic account of why they were fooled. Most disguises in the early modern theatres simply work.”

Bridget Escolme, “Costumes, Design and Self -display”, Shakespeare’s Theatres and the Effects of Performance, edited by Farah Karim Cooper and Tiffany Stern

Getting back to the thread topic. As we are demonstrating here, people don't agree about things. So it's perfectly reasonable for some people to not want to play a human, or make any other choice that appeals to them but not to you.

Bohandas
2017-12-03, 01:00 PM
Wait, wasn't Lear insane though?