Dragonsfoot Magazine Adventures--Call Out

[Beoric]

I honestly can't tell if you are trolling me a bit, or that's a compliment. I'll assume it's the latter and say "thanks".

...

I feel that players wanting to play non-humans is an attempt at a cheat-code---they are trying to hijack the eldritch strength of the mysterious wild to augment their PC, and wear its mystic aura like a suit of armor. Inside, they will continue to be unavoidably human, but like a shaman wearing a leopard pelt, they cloak themselves in the mysterious and caper about stupidly. If the hobby enables them, then the already frail otherness---something so very, very difficult to evoke---is made mundane (once again). The lights are all turned on, and the menacing shadows are revealed to be just your younger brother with a sheet over his head.

Not trolling you.

I have a different perspective on playing non-humans, or at least I don't think you are right all the time. I think at least some of the time it is because it is the only way to play your character concept. If you want your wizard to wield a sword like Gandalf, or your thief is having survivability problems, you may choose to multiclass, which requires playing a nonhuman.

Taken to extremes, race selection becomes part of the character optimization of later editions. (In 1e, if you wanted to optimize you played a paladin.)

Other times, I think they want to play an archetype that a particular nonhuman race is, or has become, better at expressing. So the devout dwarf cleric (which wasn't an archetype when I started playing, as far as I am aware, but is now), or the elven warrior of the wild ranger, or the halfling thief, or the gnome illusionist, many of which were encouraged by the mechanics of the game. Or, in a less dungeon focussed game, they want to explore what it means to live forever, or at least be very long lived, like an elf, or focus on an aspect of personality that a race has come to represent.

 

[squeen]

I get you. I'm clearly focused on one sort of game...and a fairly hackneyed one too.

So the devout dwarf cleric (which wasn't an archetype when I started playing, as far as I am aware, but is now)...

How the heck did that happen? Missed it.

(In 1e, if you wanted to optimize you played a paladin.)

Ahem brother!
Way, way back...when talking about D&D with someone new, as soon as "my paladin" entered the conversation, I knew we had little more to discuss.

Let's not forget the Bard, too!

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I'm seeing that there is a ton of things I need to learn about anatomy---especially the muscle groups in the arms, legs and back. Learning about lighting through raytracing software has helped, but...

You could use the old TSR trick of tracing over comic books to get the form of the person, and then adding shit like shields and helmets and whatnot.

I feel that players wanting to play non-humans is an attempt at a cheat-code---they are trying to hijack the eldritch strength of the mysterious wild to augment their PC, and wear its mystic aura like a suit of armor. Inside, they will continue to be unavoidably human, but like a shaman wearing a leopard pelt, they cloak themselves in the mysterious and caper about stupidly. If the hobby enables them, then the already frail otherness---something so very, very difficult to evoke---is made mundane (once again). The lights are all turned on, and the menacing shadows are revealed to be just your younger brother with a sheet over his head.

Players wanting to play non-humans could come about for many reasons, but I think in many cases it comes about from a position of plausible realism rather than trying to game the system. I mean, if your party encounters some Lizardfolk (or orcs or gnolls or whatever), and they get to know these Lizardfolk and realize that they are their own society and aren't always mindless attack-on-sight beasts, then the next natural progression of that is "why aren't they mingling with the rest of civilization?", and then onto "what happens if some individual Lizardman wanted to walk around a village and buy stuff at a general store?", and then finally "what if I were one of the Lizardmen too? Don't they have a role in the game world?"

I think the plausibility of monster races as player races in your campaign comes down mainly to how your world is built - for instance, if goblins are used as slaves by civilized people, then it's not weird to see a goblin in a city in your game world, and perhaps used as a character by a player. However if goblins are mythical sprites that eat babies in the night, obviously it would make no sense to have your players use them as a character.

Most "official" monster-races are pretty underpowered anyway - there's not much cheat-code to use, unless your player does some wonky min-max/munchkin combination gaming with the race (which frankly is a player problem, and not really the best reason to outright exclude monster races from play).

 

[squeen]

I think it's possible that the game-system could "equalize" non-human PCs (via level limits, etc.), but the "cheat" to my way of thinking if the theft of mystique. The player gets a hit of "insta-cool-by-association", which inadvertently robs that creature's impact when encountered in the wild.

These "civilized" monsters result in Bryce's frequent admonition of "Why not just use human bandits here?"

I get that other milieu may want to explore non-traditional gaming tropes/situations. That's fine, but to me these are all "What If?" scenarios. (Implications of one nasty little city with goblin-slaves sounds cool...but it doesn't belong codified in a Rule-Book). I'm just preaching about consequences when using exotic (PC/NPC) races in a vanilla D&D world. Hell, I'm even dumping on venerable products like City State of the Invincible Overlord (maybe Greyhawk City too?) for having shops run by ogres, fairies, etc. You've flattened the palette, and it's gonna be hard not to have it seem like everything is just "peoples", and the game you are playing is called RPG Politics.

Which, again, is fine---if that's your bag. (...but sucks if you are trying to make your dungeons scary)

It's like when Daleks all of a sudden show up in a Dr. Who episode. Long-time viewers think, "oh, crap!....this is gonna be good.".
Not the same effect if they saw Daleks every week. Now replace Daleks with Drow.

Call it a Theory of Scarcity. Supply and demand. A zero-sum game with cool-factor.

(Dwarves and Halfings non-withstanding...these are essential just short humans anyway. Not much mystique there to steal.)

EDIT: Bringing home Beoric's point, I do the same with paladins! You can encounter them...but you can't be one. Although I do (grudgingly) allow wood elves, they are pretty rare in civilized areas--attracting a lot of attention---and my players get super-excited when they encounter one. Also, you can't roll up a High Elf, they're reserved for NPCs too.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

The player gets a hit of "insta-cool-by-association", which inadvertently robs that race of it's impact when encountered in the wild.

Depends... if a player is using a Lizardfolk character, for example, I should think that meeting other Lizardfolk would be his time to shine. It's not as though there's a shortage of races in D&D so that some other race can't become "the mysterious one".

Hell, I'm even dumping on venerable products like City State of the Invincible Overlord (maybe Greyhawk City too?) for having shops run by ogres, fairies, etc. You've flattened the palette, and it's gonna be hard not to have it seem like everything is just "peoples", and the game you are playing is called RPG Politics.

I have my own problems with CSotIO (yes, I own a copy and have used it) - everything is so fucking zany there all the time, it kills the immersion for me and my group. "Uh oh, a gorgon is rampaging across the park turning people to stone, and an ogre mage is running down the street polymorphing people into sheep, and an army of skeletons has just burst through the main gate... oh well, just another day in the City-State!". But that's more of a "why the hell would the average person ever choose to live there?" type-problem (coincidentally, the same question I ask myself every time I see a reference to Gotham City), less so about different monster NPC races co-mingling.

Again though, it's all irrelevant if everything in your world is congruent from the get-go. If people mingle with monsters regularly in your campaign world, sure you pull some fantastical races off the table, but the world never gets so full that you can't add in another race or faction. You block off only one of many, many avenues to generate mystique.

For what it's worth I don't know many groups who are ever "wowed" by a monster race... individual monsters, sure, but the races rarely seem to invoke wonder. Running afoul the mysterious Jabberwock is much more exciting and wondrous than meeting a village of vegepygmies. Most of the fun of meeting weird races comes from the amateur anthropological attempts to connect with them, not so much in finding out about how radically different they are from standard races. Neat, sure, but "mystique"? I don't know. To me, there's no need to shut down someone who wants to play an orc in a world where you've already decided that orcs can mingle with society without being killed on-sight; there's enough mystique remaining to be generated from amazing places, dangerous situations, wondrous characters, freaky monsters, and clever plots instead.

 

[squeen]

As a player we had a few "Dalek" races (the drow, some particular goblins, the telepathic gnolls, etc.) that would cause us to poop our pants just a little bit whenever we encountered them. It was cool.

In Star Trek, the Borg have lost almost all impact due to over-use. The Klingons have also become kinda a joke from normalization too.

Anyway, you've heard my cautionary tale. Toss it around in your mental D&D salad as you see fit.

EDIT: One last stray thought on Orcs --- if certain monsters aren't always evil by nature, then what is left? Mad wizards, extreme cultists/secret-societies (of any race), and undead. I'm not saying that doesn't work...but it does explain their increased use in both D&D and movies.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

One last stray thought on Orcs --- if certain monsters aren't always evil by nature, then what is left?

Key word is "certain", which implies a narrow band in the great spectrum of all monsters that be.

Though I think the general issue is the over-homogenization of monster-races - if all orcs are evil in your campaign, so be it, but if not, then what's to stop the appearance of "good" orcs, or even player-character orcs?

I guess I don't like painting entire monster-races with one broad stroke, because to me that's what differentiates a race from an animal. You can expect the same interactions/intentions from animals over and over, but sentient beings with thoughts and feelings and agendas? Just seems too simplistic to me to have them all be evil dicks all the time, you know? Maybe if their whole spiel is being "animalistic", then OK, but otherwise it's a bit unrealistic. To paraphrase Bryce, humans are just as capable of committing horrific atrocities as any fantasy race, so why not just stick with humans for that stuff?

 

[squeen]

I was most musing on the recent rise of "evil cultists" (a.k.a. Nazis-stand-ins) as fictional villains across all mediums.

 

[The Heretic]

I was most musing on the recent rise of "evil cultists" (a.k.a. Nazis-stand-ins) as fictional villains across all mediums.

Recent?

 

[TerribleSorcery]

Yeah Lovecraft died in 1937. Evil cultists have been around a long time, and not sure where the Nazi stand-in idea came from.

 

[Beoric]

Let's not forget the Bard, too!

Hey, remember this intro to “Singing a New Tune” in Dragon #56?

(A conversation of a DM with two NPCs; Jake Armageddon, a half-orc fighter/assassin, and Jake’s brother Alphonse, a cleric/assassin.)
DM: Guys, I’m glad you could come. I want your opinion on a particular subject.
Jake: Go ahead, boss. Whatcha wanna talk about?
DM: Urn . . . bards.
(The two valiant half-orcs immediately run into the nearest corner, cowering and whimpering.)
Alphonse: Ach, sss, it hurts uss. It hurts usss, nasssty DM.
DM: Don’t worry, I’m not going to bring one here right now. I just wanted to talk about them.
(Jake and Alphonse apprehensively come back from the corner.)
Jake: Boss, bards are just plain mean! Me and Alphie will probably be in the runnin’ for guildmaster pretty soon now, but these bard guys could lick the tar out of both of us.
DM: Which ones are worse, the old-type bards or the newer- type ones?
Jake: Well, I’ll tell ya, I’d rather run into a division of Sherman tanks than one of the old ones, and the newer ones are just as bad ‘cept nowadays there sure are less of ‘em, ‘cause it takes them so long to become one.
Alphonse: Ach, sss, nasssty bardsses.
DM: Jake, where did you learn about Sherman tanks? . . .

These "civilized" monsters result in Bryce's frequent admonition of "Why not just use human bandits here?"

I get that other milieu may want to explore non-traditional gaming tropes/situations. That's fine, but to me these are all "What If?" scenarios.

I was most musing on the recent rise of "evil cultists" (a.k.a. Nazis-stand-ins) as fictional villains across all mediums.

These kind of drive home the point of why I do like not-automatically evil humanoids.

I have never seen an orc, or any other humanoid, written in a way that makes then even as scary as a real life human can be. Depraved-style orcs are, at best, like human reavers of various types – in fact they come across as less evil because they aren’t doing these things to their own people.

I do agree that if you are using a humanoid you need to be doing it for a reason, and those humanoids need to be (at least) culturally or (preferably) psychologically different from humans. The ingrained militarism of hobgoblins is an example. They are a chance to create societies that might not be plausible if you did it with humans.

(Speaking of plausibility, I hate standard pulp-fiction style cultists, because generally humans don’t approach their religions like that. Humans generally rely on religion to convince themselves they are good people, and pulp cults generally include a lot of peons engaging in behavior that no amount of denial could justify. Nazis don’t behave like pulp cultists, their mooks try to convince themselves of the whole master race thing. That is harder if you are feeding your own people to an aboleth.)

When my players choose to run demihumans or humanoids, I like to make them have a lot of contact with NPC demihumans or humanoids, so they have lots of examples of culture and behaviour. It is then up to the player to decide if they are going to roleplay the culture or be some sort of humanlike aberration.

 

[squeen]

Recent?

Been watching quite a few movies from the last 10-15 years because the kids are home --- seems like the most ubiquitous villains are groups of hidden-in-plain-sight fanatics with a twisted agenda that the protagonists mows through. I compare this to 35 years ago when most villains were some overt or disguised version of the Soviets, or 50+ years ago when everyone were actual WWII German Nazis.

The difference being perhaps that the latter two had heavy accents and couldn't blend in very well unless they were some sort of double-agent. Also, modern-cultists (in cinema at least) seem to have a less well defined ideology that is usually hand-waived. The Soviet/Nazis cuckoos were at least plausible, and never had to explain themselves because the audience just knew they were against us...like orcs.

 

[The Heretic]

Been watching quite a few movies from the last 10-15 years because the kids are home --- seems like the most ubiquitous villains are groups of hidden-in-plain-sight fanatics with a twisted agenda that the protagonists mows through. I compare this to 35 years ago when most villains were some overt or disguised version of the Soviets, or 50+ years ago when everyone were actual WWII German Nazis.

That makes sense. My comment was made in the context of D&D, where this trope has been used to death for ages.

I don't watch movies so I wouldn't have noticed what you've described. The last movie I watched in the theatre was, *ahem*, the Force Awakens

 

[Beoric]

The last movie I watched in the theatre was, *ahem*, the Force Awakens

Ok, but when was the last new movie you watched?

I remember after we watched SWtFA, my daughter turned to me and joked that we should at least give them credit for recycling.

 

[squeen]

The Sith Temple in the last Star Wars movie (Rise of Skywalker) was visually pitch perfect for a D&D "Dark Citadel".
It was just breathtaking to see one's imagination come to life like that.

 

[The Heretic]

Ok, but when was the last new movie you watched?

I remember after we watched SWtFA, my daughter turned to me and joked that we should at least give them credit for recycling.

Lol, there is truth to that.

The last new new movie I saw was probably Noah. I'd have to think hard about that. I'm just not a movie person.

 

[Beoric]

last Star Wars movie

If only there could be such a thing.

 

[The Heretic]

If only there could be such a thing.

Ah, but they'll all be TV shows now.

 

[TerribleSorcery]

I do agree that if you are using a humanoid you need to be doing it for a reason, and those humanoids need to be (at least) culturally or (preferably) psychologically different from humans. The ingrained militarism of hobgoblins is an example. They are a chance to create societies that might not be plausible if you did it with humans.

In a way, I do the opposite. I was thinking about this the other day.

Several of my players often say things like "that's ridiculous" or roll their eyes at the weird lizardmen and their dumb religions (for example). Meanwhile I am over here making every effort to include only cultural attitudes that I can find some precedent for among human beings on Earth! So I guess you would call it "humans in green drag" or whatever.

But even though the NPCs think things that (as far as I can tell with my DM-level reading list) real humans did think once - since they don't share the players' own 21st-century worldview, they're assumed to be idiots! It seems like a lack of any kind of broad-mindedness (or ability to put oneself in another's shoes, maybe). Sure you could say "uhhhh just get new players dude" but the fact is that not everyone reads books.

Would it be better if my lizardmen were nothing like humans had ever been? I don't know, maybe. Worth a try next time I suppose.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Would it be better if my lizardmen were nothing like humans had ever been? I don't know, maybe. Worth a try next time I suppose.

Whenever I include a monster race that I want my players to find "alien enough", I make them speak in a language that can't be understood without magic.

Non-verbal communication does some serious heavy lifting in terms of delineating between the familiar and the bizarre - for example, as the monsters point to player helmets and then to their own heads, they leave PCs to wonder "Does he want this? Does he know what it is? Is he scared of this?"... then when they hand over the helmet, the monster starts to eat it and it freaks the players out, or it gets angry and starts pulling it's own hair out, or whatever weirdness. You have them do weird things in groups, like join hands and chant, and then when players try to do what they think is expected, you throw a twist their way and make the monsters suddenly not-cool with their actions, and so the party worries about how not to offend, or how best to win trust, etc. . It all makes for some great roleplay.