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For as long as I can remember, there's been a strong link between the furry fandom and computer/tabletop RPG's. I'm not surprised that the furry culture has gravitated towards these things- I AM surprised that they are almost universally catered to by games and their worlds: For example, Galorion includes the cannon races of cat, rat, monkey, fox people, etc.
I simply want to know if I'm the only one who is annoyed by this.
Why does it annoy you? Isn't it just like firearms or space travel; i.e. if you don't like it, don't include it in your games?
I'm not. Plenty of non-furs wish to play animal races. The issue arises when every character the furry makes is a furry character.
Hm, never really thought about it. The one furry I've ever known is a gamer, but that's not a strong link from my PoV.
Seeing as how I homebrewed him the centaur and talking hawk races, well, no I wouldn't say anthro PCs annoy me. :)
1) What's wrong with furries?
2) Non furries are already catered for. Why shouldn't they also include content for furries
Don't see the problem. Have played with furries, and non-furries, with both types playing across the standard/anthro-animalian lines. I don't see the inclusion of cat-people, et. al., as "catering" to anything but decades of fantasy tropes.
Sorry you find it irritating, but can't help wondering why?
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I'm not irritated.
I wish there was more stuff about shoe sniffing though.
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Something that has always confused me: Does Furry necessarily imply a sexual thing? If not, it seems like it's pretty widespread to begin with . . . I mean, do you hate Bugs Bunny as well?
If so, it doesn't really seem like the animal folk are written up particularly sexually. (Save for some third-party PDF I read about statting up new races that included WAY too much information on heat cycles and mating rituals of animalistic races. They even included Lovecraftian monsters for good measure. Dunno what fetish that caters to.)
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They even included Lovecraftian monsters for good measure. Dunno what fetish that caters to.)
It's Lovecraft, so knowing would likely drive you insane
I think some of it is acceptable.
Admittedly I haven't been caught by an actual group of furrie players so my view could change with some practical experience. I played with a guy in college with an unhealthy vampire fixation that manifested in his gaming, that got tedious after awhile.
To be honest I'm more aggravated by the overload of humanoids in general. They get created and written in to stories with no real thought to the anthropological or ecological niches they occupy. I generally think that some of it is unnecessary why have wererats and ratmen? The only reson is to allow players the rat race without giving them the advantages and drawbacks of lycanthrope.
Anthropomorphic animals have existed in folklore and mythology long before the 'furry' enthusiasts went mainstream. Would it be nice to see some original humanoid races from Paizo's staff? Yeah, but anthropomorphic animals can serve that function as well. None of these annoy me.
What does annoy me is the persistence presence of halflings, gnomes, dwarves, elves, orcs, and/or goblins in every f+~%ing fantasy setting. I despise running into Tolkien fan-service everywhere I look.
Hahaha, it is for that reason that I like gnomes.
The rest I could care less for, they exist that's all I'm gonna give em unless it's really good for a story.
The thing is I like gnomes (Pathfinder's in particular), dwarves, and goblins individually, but not mixed in together the same way every time.
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I don't think anyone's seriously suggesting we're catering to any specific audience with our monster or race offerings, but let me give a bit of background on some of the anthropmorphic creatures in Pathfinder.
In the case of every theriocephalic monster in the Pathfinder RPG that I can think of and that I've had a hand in vetting (which is most) we've drawn off either the traditions of established roleplaying games, fantasy/sci-fi tropes, or world mythology. Wikipedia has some great background on a lot of this.
Lycanthropes in world mythology
Therianthropy in world mythology
Lizardfolk in the history of D&D
Catgirls in anime, video games, comics, popular culture
Wererats in world mythology and popular culture
(Skaven, Splinter from TMNT, Mickey Mouse, and Nezumi all come to mind)
Serpentfolk in fiction and popular culture
Agathions
(Obviously in this case we went the route of animal spirits, paralleling D&D's guardinals)
Jorogumo in Japanese mythology
So many stories from so many varied and distant cultures feature tales about animals with humanistic traits that the Aarne-Thompson classification system used by folklorists to recognize and categorize folktales includes a major category on Animal Tales. With animal characters taking such a prominent role in world mythology, and with anthropomorphism being such a common trope in mythology, art, fiction, and popular culture, including such a pervasive variety of monsters in our Bestiaries has been such an obvious choice. (And if there are people out there who are just as excited about adlets or kitsune as I am about liches or devils, then great that our books are right up their alleys.)
To top things off, here's a list of animal hybrids from world mythology that do not currently appear in Pathfinder offerings, but could (or, in a few cases, likely will) in the coming years.
Inugami
If anyone has any questions about the origins or inspiration behind any animal-headed creature in the Pathfinder RPG, feel free to post your questions here and I'll be happy to share my research or related behind the scenes stories if there are indeed any.
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Sorta side stepping the topic, but for those who dig anthropomorphic tales. (HA Tales....get it.)
Check out Blacksad. A noir graphic novel that is sheer awesomeness.
Fearful Hunter has some good points, if you don't mind the occasional bit of tentacle thrown into your anthropomorphic tale...
I have never met a furry in my life (i.e. furry as sexual preference/orientation). Yet I have seen lots of animalistic races, I have seen lots of people eagerly playing animalistic races and I like them quite much. In fact I noticed that most of my players love animalistic NPCs.
My self I think we need more settings with more exotic races instead of overabundance of humans, elves, dwarves and halflings. Well, humans should be kept but not necessarily as dominant race. We have plenty of settings with humans being dominant.
Just replace human-dominant regions with Vanara.
:)
Furries only have a bad name because they let some lawn crappers into their hobby who messed it up with the pedophilia art. The furries lost because they didn't realize they should have stopped it when it started.
I love anthro-animal stuff. Gargoyles, TMNT, Bucky O'Hair, Dark Stalkers, and so on and on. My childhood was made out of anthropromorphic animals. It is only natural to want to express the portion of my creativity that grew out of that. I like the animal races. Always have.
Same here! I think we grew up in the same era :)
I grew up being a huge TMNT fan, and many of my early attempts at RPG's included anthropomorphic animal races. It wasn't until several years later I found out what a "Furry" is, and it sort of threw a wrench in my creative process. I am not a Furry, but that's hard to argue when you create entire campaign settings around "animal people."
If someone is a Furry, then I mean no disrespect. But, I simply don't want to be labeled as something I'm not. My interest in anthropomorphicism comes from a mix of 80's cartoons, and Native American folklore, spirit totem association.
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Sorta side stepping the topic, but for those who dig anthropomorphic tales. (HA Tales....get it.)
Check out Blacksad. A noir graphic novel that is sheer awesomeness.
There's Lackadaisy if you also like 20's ganster stories.
If you talk to Furries, they will tell you it's not about the sex, its about feeling a kinship with a specific species and wanting to emulate that species. (while it may be true, it's kind of hard to argue when 90% of the Furry art on your hard drive is pornographic) Those who get very into it will start calling their hands and feet paws, and their mouth/nose a muzzle. Depending on your species, you might be called a Scaley, an Avian, or sometimes even a Mythic (if you choose something like a Gryphon or a Cheshire Cat). If you go so far as to actually believe you are that animal trapped in a human body, then you are a Therian.
"Therianthropy is sometimes viewed as a spiritual counterpart to furry fandom, which is concerned more with imagination than belief. Some furries view therianthropy as "taking it too far," while some therians view furries as frivolous and ignorant of the "true nature" of animals. However, relations are usually friendly, and therians can often be found at furry conventions and other social events."---WikiFur
For more information, the WikiFur
For more fun! (He's actually really funny, even for non-furries)
If you talk to Furries, they will tell you it's not about the sex, its about feeling a kinship with a specific species and wanting to emulate that species.
This is also an unfair exaggeration of what a furry is. Some might just say they like anthropomorphic characters in the same way that some pople like science fiction. It's a genre. There doesn't need to be anything else read into it.
I apologize, the furries I know explained it to me that way, so I took them at their word.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Abandoned Campaign setting idea with ‘cat people’
The planet had the standard fare, (Humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes) It also had cat people, called the Children of Bast.
- Humans, pretty straight forward.
- Elves, They took their names from gemstones. Most elves were Amethyst elves (bluish tint) the eastern caste based elves were ruby elves (red skin, dark hair) the more reclusive scholarly elves were topaz elves (gold skinned, red haired) the wood elves were amber elves, while the drow were obsidian elves. They feuded with dwarves because they believed that when an elf died, his soul rested in gemstones before being reborn. Carving a stone with a soul in it would destroy that stone (strangely their clerics always found that the stones elves wanted to use were ‘free of souls’)
- Dwarves: Shale (normal dwarves) and Granite (duregar) there also were Bassalt dwarves (Using Charduni stats)
- Gnomes hadn’t really fleshed them out yet. They did take after plant names and the like.
- The Children of Bast had 4 types. The Jungle children were proud leonid jungle warriors, and smilodon riders. The sand children were lynx like, living in the deserts and slave traders. The eastern children were leopard like, known for assassins, and the ‘lost’ children called themselves the ‘True children’ and lived in the ruins of the desert.
The truth
Originally there were just the children of Bast (The true children) and the Children of Anubis. The cat people and dog people lived in a tense peace. This changed when the humans came from the stars, their ship crashing into the north. The Children of Anubis allied with the humans and made war on the Children of Bast. The war ended when a massive ritual was used sinking the nations of the Children of Anubis beneath the waves and leaving a dead magic sea in its wake.
The gods were so outraged at the actions of the Children of Bast that they revoked their divine mandate from them, and freed their servitors, as well as the servitors of the Children of Anubis who survived.
The True Children then did not have divine magic, Anubis became the god of the dead, to be with his people. The servitor races of the True children (who also became known as the ‘Children of Bast) were the other cats the True Children had magically uplifted into humanoid form.
The elves, dwarves, and gnomes were all constructs of the Children of Anubis. Originally nothing more than constructs of gem, stone, or wood, later constructs were intelligent and somewhat free willed. The gods after the destruction of the nations of Anubis, granted them true life and the ability to reproduce (picture Galatea on a planetwide scale). Out there (and used by the True Children) are ancient constructs that were not changed, either the mindless ones or a few sentients still bound by ancient commands. The Obsidian elves were created by the True Children, and now fight a war with the proud survivors in sunken ruins in the desert of coals. This also explained why the True children saw the other races as nothing but property. After all, that’s all they were originally.
Gnomes weren't really a Tolkien thing, though, were they?
No, but they tend to get shoehorned into a lot of settings that include the standard triad (dwarves, elves, halfings).
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I simply want to know if I'm the only one who is annoyed by this.
You've complained about Bards, Rangers, Children playing the game, game costs, Elves, Girlfriends, and now Furries.
Would it kill ya to start a thread that's not griping about something for once?
I simply want to know if I'm the only one who is annoyed by this.You've complained about Bards, Rangers, Children playing the game, game costs, Elves, Girlfriends, and now Furries.
Would it kill ya to start a thread that's not griping about something for once?
Wow.
Okay, I'm with Orthos. Is there anything about Pathfinder the OP actually likes?
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Maybe he's the Andy Rooney of the Paizo boards...
I while back I was running a L5R setting. The party was ruling a city and while attempting to protect it from an evil spell, opened a rift. Once through, they found a parallel world of animal people. It was ruled by a Rakasha who had other tiger men, bird men, rhino soldiers, and so on. He had deer people slaves and ate sentient animal people for dinner. The whole thing was so "not cute" that no one thought to bring up furies.Did you have any lucky with your animal setting?
Yeah, it all ran well when I was writing for it full time. We had actually moved past it and on to D&D by the time the term Furry had become known.
Around the same time, we got a hold of the Savage Species book for 3e, and it has a table in the back for anthropomorphic character races. I piped up that it'd be a great way to transfer our old characters to D&D, and someone chimed in that it sounds like a Furry game, which gave me a complex about it, so we've never revisited that setting since.
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I simply want to know if I'm the only one who is annoyed by this.You've complained about Bards, Rangers, Children playing the game, game costs, Elves, Girlfriends, and now Furries.
Would it kill ya to start a thread that's not griping about something for once?
But I thought you wanted griping!!!
MM, that's some good shiznit right thurr.
Regarding the topic, I've no problems with furries. I know only one, but the others I've met seemed to be normal people.
Be careful what definitions you take from people saying they are furries. There's not even agreement within the furry community what a furry is.
Basically, there's a whole lot of 'true Scotsman' going on, with some saying that others aren't really furries because they are not in deep enough.
Others will say that everyone that has ever liked a character for their animal themes is a furry (which probably includes everyone that has ever enjoyed the Lion King).
But what is a furry? It's a difficult question, because furries are impossible to describe. One might ask the same about birds. What are birds? We just don't know.
I can agree with that. The definition I got seemed to be what that particular group of furries thought of themselves as. They also seemed to abhore the furry episode of CSI, saying it portrayed them as a bunch of sex fiends.
I think it all starts with this dichotomy:
[url]http://youtu.be/O2djHEIxPVs[/url]
But what is a furry? a difficult question, because furries are impossible to describe. One might ask the same about birds. What are birds? We just don't know.
Name me one bird without wings, feathers, and a beak.
But what is a furry? a difficult question, because furries are impossible to describe. One might ask the same about birds. What are birds? We just don't know.Name me one bird without wings, feathers, and a beak.
I stand corrected.
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Be careful what definitions you take from people saying they are furries. There's not even agreement within the furry community what a furry is.
Basically, there's a whole lot of 'true Scotsman' going on, with some saying that others aren't really furries because they are not in deep enough.
Others will say that everyone that has ever liked a character for their animal themes is a furry (which probably includes everyone that has ever enjoyed the Lion King).
But what is a furry? It's a difficult question, because furries are impossible to describe. One might ask the same about birds. What are birds? We just don't know.
It's like that in a lot of subcultures I had a goth friend who would say things along similar lines. I ended up believing your not a real goth unless you have sacked Rome.
I think the problem most people have with Furs comes from various crime shows where they are depicted as nothing more than sexual deviants who wear costumes. So, like, maybe 5% of teh community if Wikipedia is correct.