|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I can't claim the credit. I read Terry Pratchet's The Colour of Magic when it first came out (it became the first Discworld novel).
The colour referred to by the title was Octarine, the eighth colour, the colour of magic. Described as 'indescribable' (typical Pratchet!), Rincewind the failed wizard thought it looked like a sort of greenish-yellow purple, IIRC. It's been a long time since I read it, so the details are fuzzy. : )
Pratchett also introduced me to the phrase that perfectly encapsulated what I always wanted out of fantasy races. :)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It is impossible not to think like a human.
You just need to figure the motivations.
http://youtu.be/fM_IQAhvnKQ?t=5m50s
It is impossible not to think like a human. Because you have no frame of reference. And our mind just cannot comprehend something it has never experienced. Not even with all our imagination.
Personally, I disagree. But it's not worth starting an argument about.
|
|
It is impossible not to think like a human. Because you have no frame of reference. And our mind just cannot comprehend something it has never experienced. Not even with all our imagination.Personally, I disagree. But it's not worth starting an argument about.
not to encourage an argument or get in one myself but I'm curious as to what your thoughts are on the matter
Lovecraft never thought like the elder gods and eldritch abominations he wrote about.
It is impossible not to think like a human. Because you have no frame of reference. And our mind just cannot comprehend something it has never experienced. Not even with all our imagination.
Incorrect, he invited the reader to, as the stories went on, look into the truly shadowy and twisted minds and intents of inhuman things. If you didn't realise this, you need to go back and read your Lovecraft again.
Various religions and shamanistic practices have been escaping the narrow limitations of "thinking like humans of the time" for millennium. See Zen and mu (emptiness, a far cry from thinking as an everyday person), shamanic dances and meditation on the nature of animals and nature spirits (leaving the self, being nature). This even applies to animal inspired martial arts, where you no longer fight like a man, you become an animal, move like an animal, think like an animal (mantis, monkey, tiger), strike like an animal as if you had claws or prayer-like fore-limbs. That is to temporarily become the animal, mental change and borrowing, an alien frame of reference adopted.
The idea that we can only be us is incredibly limiting. It is limiting in real life and shamefully restrictive for fantasy games. I say with no malice intended, wake up and be something else. Or try meditation and open your mind to what is beyond the cage you are stuck in. Course, you might think what do ancient cultures and atypical religions matter, and what do I know. I only spent so long looking at ants as a child, so hypnotised was I by their movements and the structure of the nest demonstrated in every single ant of the colony, that I would lose who I was in the viewing. I was not me, but instead quite simply the observing and understanding of ants. I enjoyed witnessing their programming as I let my self briefly melt away. They were my non-human frame of reference.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
not to encourage an argument or get in one myself but I'm curious as to what your thoughts are on the matterIt is impossible not to think like a human. Because you have no frame of reference. And our mind just cannot comprehend something it has never experienced. Not even with all our imagination.Personally, I disagree. But it's not worth starting an argument about.
Really can't add much that DMUTB didn't mention.
|
|
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
I once played with a DM who said that players were not allowed to play PCs of the opposite gender. When I asked why he said it's because men cannot think like women, nor know what it's like to live like one (and vice versa).
I pointed out that he was quite happy for us to play non-human races.
He relented.
Personally not at all a fan of the "all the other races are dying out because HUMANS #%€£ YEAH" trope either.
\
Heh. I love the way you put that!
Also - the only way I'm interested in playing.
HUMANS! #%€£ YEAH!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
@Cmastah you're still not following me.
Thee spiders simply have a different outlook on life, a different primary motivation. Humans can have all sorts of different outlooks on life/motivations, and a human raised in that environment would think the way you described. I know this because you, as a human, put yourself in that situation and imagined what sort of a perspective those environmental factors would create. In other words, you thought about it like a human.
A truly alien intellect wouldn't comprehend the universe in the same way. They would have a different understanding a geometry, logic, everything. If these spiders were truly an alien intellect, their understanding of the universe would be so fundamentally different from ours it would be impossible to describe.
Which is why Lovecraft never actually described those things, only how they drove people mad, really.
Personally not at all a fan of the "all the other races are dying out because HUMANS #%€£ YEAH" trope either.\
Heh. I love the way you put that!
Also - the only way I'm interested in playing.
HUMANS! #%€£ YEAH!
I get around that by just assuming in the setting I am working on now that there are thousands of worlds, and almost every race has a "homeworld" where they are dominant, if not only species. Some of those worlds I have actually spent a lot of time developing and will eventually appear, and the average inhabitant of those worlds would treat humans in the same way we treat fairy legends.
Earth in our case would be our homeworld, but somewhere out there are world populated soley by elves, dwarves, etc.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Sure, cmastah, and I think you did a good job.
My point wasn't that you failed - I think you did admirably. Similarly, I think Cherryh (and probably Card, in the Ender series from all I've seen) did an excellent job as well.
My point was only that because it's relateable, some would see it as only a very strange variant of humanity.
In fact, I can see both sides of the debate. I'm not certain which "side", if any, I'm on.
On the one hand, I'm going to continue to hold up Cherryh as a shining example of "alien thought", but on the other, I can understand the collapse of all such things as "(possibly unusual) humans in hats/suits".
I would suggest the variance is based heavily on personal preferences, though the thinner the illusion, the easier it is to break.
Thus, many see the RACIAL MONOCULTURE as nothing more than a human stereotype dressed in pointy ears or beard or short. This, then generates frustration on their end and a desire for something further from the ready short-hand normatives that we often use in gaming. This is often because these people are relatively original and creative, as well as those that seek to buck trends or see "something new". This tends to generate relatively original ideas.
On the other hand, many see that as perfectly fine. To them, there is inherently no problem, because they aren't bothered by the thinness the illusion presents. These are often those who have a strong relationship with common tropes and broadly-accepted genre-defining idioms. This tends to generate relatively cliched ideas, but not (inherently) in a negative way (as cliches have become cliches because, at some point or another, they were exceedingly awesome, and thus people emulated it).
On the other, other hand (wait a minute... ALIENS!) there are those that are bothered by the racial monoculture, but cannot help but to see past even the most thickly and excellently lain illusion - their buy-in value and willing suspension of disbelief is low - often because they have a deep understanding, or an intuitive relationship with, the way humans think, or perhaps they simply have a tendency to unravel minor details that lead back to the source. Because of this inability to really buy-in, to them human dominance seems like a natural corollary, or even human exclusivity. Because, ultimately, it doesn't matter - everything is just going to be slightly-odd humans otherwise.
On the other, other, other hand (okay, this is getting out of... hand... wait...) there are those that explore, as much as possible, the limits of Alien-ness and Other style thought. This usually doesn't generate much useful outside of vague warnings of dire concepts and/or apparent gibbering insanity. It does tend to create a very original take on many things.
All of this is highly creative, though bearing varying amounts of originality. None of it is wrong or badly done, though personal preference may lean toward one rather than the other. There is also a substantial amount of overlap between the various groups - a Venn Diagram wouldn't really work very well, because there would be some that would be in various ones to various degrees across the board.
The point is simply, that there are varying levels of "depth of difference" or whatever you want to call it:
- human-only/human-primary
- fantasy cliche (usually including racial monoculture)
- unusual thought patterns
- complete disregard for human elements
Each step away from the human-specific tends to be a little more vague in our understanding, because the work often isn't justified for the pay-out from it. Interestingly, the farther down you go, the more often its intricately described... until you get to the bottom in which you've got Lovecraft going, "Who knows? It's certainly not what you think it is! Instead it's spooooooooooooky and creeeeeeeeeepy and maddening! Weird!" only with a lot more words.
And in any event, despite only having four categories, each category covers a lot of variance within itself. And an identical scale applies to science fiction, for that matter.
In any event, as I said, I love your spider-critters. Nifty, and extremely well done. :)
EDIT: Also, Malachai, I know of Discworld. Does that count?
*dodges all the slings and arrows because of his heresy*
|
| 11 people marked this as a favorite. |
I've lived and worked among fellow humans all my life. When I play a *fantasy* game, sometimes I like to explore stuff that isn't my day to day life, which includes whacky stuff like non-human intelligences, magic, monsters, spaceships, superpowers, aliens, other dimensions, ghosts and goblins, etc. etc.
As for the notion that I shouldn't play an elf or a Vulcan because they are just 'humans in rubber suits,' I don't think the idea that something isn't perfect, or that someone has 'done it wrong' in the past, is a valid reason why *I* shouldn't attempt it.
Lots of people have car wrecks, and I don't let that stop me from driving. Just because there is bad sex, doesn't mean I'm going to throw my hands up and never have sex. Just because the last couple movies with a strong female superhero lead were pretty bad (Catwoman, Elekra), doesn't mean we should assume that nobody can ever make that work and give up on every trying to make another superhero movie with a strong female lead.
So yeah, I don't get that logic. "Some people have gotten it wrong, so nobody should ever try again!" (Particularly when 'gotten it wrong' ends up equating to 'did it in a way that I didn't like.')
Lots of people may 'play elves wrong' or 'play vampires wrong' or 'play aliens wrong' (by some arbitrary standards I may not agree with, like that an alien *must* be utterly incomprehensible to a human, despite evolving in the same physical universe, subject to the same laws and forces...), but that's not gonna stop me from playing elves or vampires or aliens.
And if someone with impossible standards doesn't think I'm 'playing it right,' they can go slap bogdash green, or whatever incomprehensible gibberish they think would be 'right.'
I tend to agree with that.^ :)
@Cmastah you're still not following me.
Thee spiders simply have a different outlook on life, a different primary motivation. Humans can have all sorts of different outlooks on life/motivations, and a human raised in that environment would think the way you described. I know this because you, as a human, put yourself in that situation and imagined what sort of a perspective those environmental factors would create. In other words, you thought about it like a human.
A truly alien intellect wouldn't comprehend the universe in the same way. They would have a different understanding a geometry, logic, everything. If these spiders were truly an alien intellect, their understanding of the universe would be so fundamentally different from ours it would be impossible to describe.
Which is why Lovecraft never actually described those things, only how they drove people mad, really.
Geometry and logic are actually two of the things that a truly alien intellect wouldn't have a different understanding of, if they had the capacity for abstract reasoning. I would love to experience some alien art though; that junk could be bananas!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I've lived and worked among fellow humans all my life. When I play a *fantasy* game, sometimes I like to explore stuff that isn't my day to day life, which includes whacky stuff like non-human intelligences, magic, monsters, spaceships, superpowers, aliens, other dimensions, ghosts and goblins, etc. etc.
As for the notion that I shouldn't play an elf or a Vulcan because they are just 'humans in rubber suits,' I don't think the idea that something isn't perfect, or that someone has 'done it wrong' in the past, is a valid reason why *I* shouldn't attempt it.
Lots of people have car wrecks, and I don't let that stop me from driving. Just because there is bad sex, doesn't mean I'm going to throw my hands up and never have sex. Just because the last couple movies with a strong female superhero lead were pretty bad (Catwoman, Elekra), doesn't mean we should assume that nobody can ever make that work and give up on every trying to make another superhero movie with a strong female lead.
So yeah, I don't get that logic. "Some people have gotten it wrong, so nobody should ever try again!" (Particularly when 'gotten it wrong' ends up equating to 'did it in a way that I didn't like.')
Lots of people may 'play elves wrong' or 'play vampires wrong' or 'play aliens wrong' (by some arbitrary standards I may not agree with, like that an alien *must* be utterly incomprehensible to a human, despite evolving in the same physical universe, subject to the same laws and forces...), but that's not gonna stop me from playing elves or vampires or aliens.
And if someone with impossible standards doesn't think I'm 'playing it right,' they can go slap bogdash green, or whatever incomprehensible gibberish they think would be 'right.'
You had me at 'have sex' :D
Geometry and logic are actually two of the things that a truly alien intellect wouldn't have a different understanding of, if they had the capacity for abstract reasoning. I would love to experience some alien art though; that junk could be bananas!@Cmastah you're still not following me.
Thee spiders simply have a different outlook on life, a different primary motivation. Humans can have all sorts of different outlooks on life/motivations, and a human raised in that environment would think the way you described. I know this because you, as a human, put yourself in that situation and imagined what sort of a perspective those environmental factors would create. In other words, you thought about it like a human.
A truly alien intellect wouldn't comprehend the universe in the same way. They would have a different understanding a geometry, logic, everything. If these spiders were truly an alien intellect, their understanding of the universe would be so fundamentally different from ours it would be impossible to describe.
Which is why Lovecraft never actually described those things, only how they drove people mad, really.
We're getting off topic here but that's assuming that all of our axioms about the universe are, in fact, true.
|
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I have no problem with humanocentric settigns, and non-humanocentric settings. It all depends on the story being told, and if there is an "in" for the audience. The Dark Crystal doesn't have any humans in it, but the characters are relatable.
I want to do a setting that's entirely anthropomorphic animal races ala Mouseguard, Redwall and Blacksad. If I did put that setting together I'd want the players to really play up those stereotypes about animals (foxes are tricky, snakes are liars, lions are brave, rabbits are hobbits (!), apes are savage). That's at the heart of the setting.
I also like settings with only humans and no other races, and really play up cultural differences between human nations etc.
There is no "One True Way", no matter what anyone tells you.
Well, that's why they're called axioms. :P
Edit: Oops, that was to you, Ellis.
Well, that's why they're called axioms. :P
Edit: Oops, that was to you, Ellis.
I think Ellis means, for example on the Geometry side - what if that race's vision perception worked like a fairground hall of mirrors - that race's perception of geometry just wouldn't work in the same way. I mean, how do you judge a right angle when you can't perceive it? ;) Distance and direction concepts go straight out of the window. Imagine what their buildings look like!
Or, what if their minds worked in such a way as to distort their perception of time?
"What do you mean I'm two weeks late? What do these 'week' and 'late' words mean?"
In fact, how *would* a race that doesn't perceive time in the same constant manner (although still in a linear fashion) handle making meeting arrangements? That's the kind of question some people want to answer when making a completely "alien" race.
That's why I threw in the bit about abstract reasoning. Once you can conceive of a circle, the discovery of Pi's inevitable. It might take you a couple of millennia, and rather than 3.14 or 22/7, you may notate it as Av{ili}vA, but you'll have the concept.
Your example about the perception of time is an interesting one, but to me it shows that thinking like a (admittedly, fictional) non-human requires creativity, rather than that it's impossible because no human being on earth can think outside their biology.
I think creativity is always an escape from what you are. Can't have escapism without creativity!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There's a major leap between visualizing yourself as a package of gimmicks, (laser eyes, whatnot, and tentacles) and actually portraying a character that's more than just the package of weird add-ons. Unfortunately too many mistake the gimmicks for characterisation.On humanocentric settings: They bore me after awhile. Especially since I am not limited in my imaginings to just being a human.
I can be a flying octopus that shoots lasers from its tentacles. Why can't I play one in a game and have it interesting?
Sadly, this is far too true.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
What is thinking like nonhuman?
Is that having different senses, culture, language or biology?
Are blind, foreigner, another gender or feral human impossible to play?
Would playing elf, goblin, catgirl or mindflayer really so much different?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Playing a catgirl is easy, nyah. Just add nyah at the end of ever sentence, nyah!
;)
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
What is thinking like nonhuman?
No one knows. That's the problem. We can't see the outside of the box from inside it.
Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one's arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and dawn catching insects in one's mouth; that one has very poor vision, and perceives the surrounding world by a system of reflected high-frequency sound signals; and that one spends the day hanging upside down by one's feet in an attic. In so far as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task. I cannot perform it either by imagining additions to my present experience, or by imagining segments gradually subtracted from it, or by imagining some combination of additions, subtractions, and modifications.
Is that having different senses, culture, language or biology?
Yes.
Would playing elf, goblin, catgirl or mindflayer really so much different?
Yes. Just focusing on "elf," for a moment.... can you imagine yourself at age 70? Can you really envision how you're going to behave? I rather doubt it.
I doubly doubt you can imagine yourself at the age of 270.
Have you ever heard of the sociological imagination?
The answer is yes, we can imagine ourselves at 70, and flip our gender, ethnicity and change key events and decisions in our life and consider the outcomes of that too.
If we have pets for years and grow close to them, we really can imagine what life is like from their perspective. Look into their eyes, see how they respond to environmental stimuli, determine what they can and cannot see.
We can move on to thinking far outside the box and consider what it is to not be human. It has been done, so I am a bit annoyed champ that you say it cannot be done. Why just last week I was watching Himitsu, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himitsu_%E2%80%93_Top_Secret) and in one episode they presented what looking into the brain of a dog might be like. It's limitations and its beyond human capabilities, e.g. following scents to what was hidden from typical human eyes. In this case, it was about incredibly strong companionship and the pure joy of serving the master as a friend (it was through the eyes of a guide dog). Good anime, recommend it.
Can be done, has been done in fiction and fantasy. Please don't say it hasn't and that our imaginations are limited to humans because we are human.
the different fantasy races aren't an issue, i want to see more. even if it is merely things like hybrids. but my issue with humanocentricy, is that if humans are the dominant species, and all the others races are dying out because 'lol hoomuns'. why are they still playable?
i'd love to see flourishing communities of nonhuman races, and not in the steriotypical form, as well as unique hybrids involving more than merely the human's innate ability to breed with everything.
i'd like to see such things as half-elf/nymph crossbreeds, halfling/pixie or dwarf/orc.
I agree. It is hard to think outside of box, but some of us do have experiences of more than one type of boxes. And even only human, there is lot of different boxes.
Even an occupation gives person nearly unimaginable senses and skills. Archealogist or geologist can see treasure in something I mistake trash. Wouldn't two members of same occupation but different race have more common than two members of same race but different occupation?
Then there are people, who fully understand animal minds and can talk to them in way they understand. Are you saying that even those can't imagine nonhuman mind even when they become one?
I say senses and languages and the things we perceive as racial differences are mostly tools. The perception of oneself changes constantly. When I ride bicycle, the way I perceive my surrounding change so much, that I think the bike is part of me. I can feel the road with tires as easily than in my bare feets.
Then Orfamay said age. Won't our personal differences gives us more variety than being member of another nonhuman humanoid race? So can dwarf actually think like nonhuman? And is it that even important?
Why? Chimeraic freaks aren't inherently more interesting, they're just gimmicks. If you don't have anything interesting about the character past the gimmicks, you're not only no better off than you started, you're considerably worse.the different fantasy races aren't an issue, i want to see more. even if it is merely things like hybrids. but my issue with humanocentricy, is that if humans are the dominant species, and all the others races are dying out because 'lol hoomuns'. why are they still playable?
i'd love to see flourishing communities of nonhuman races, and not in the steriotypical form, as well as unique hybrids involving more than merely the human's innate ability to breed with everything.
i'd like to see such things as half-elf/nymph crossbreeds, halfling/pixie or dwarf/orc.
the freaks aren't inherently more interesting, but they offer a piece to start to design your character's backstory from and develop interest from there.
they aren't inherently more interesting, but they offer hooks that can be used to construct something interest from there. a character is more than just a gimmick, but maybe, as an example, i will use the dwarf/orc idea
born from the result of an orcish raid on the Dwarven fortress of Bronzeheim, Brother Bronze, like many of his peers born from the same raid, was a reject of dwarven society, a symbol of the shame that befell Bronzeheim in recent years, he lived a lonely solitary life, like many of his peers, upset, that he was abandoned as a symbol of dwarven shame.
while many offspring of this shame died of starvation, one truly understanding blacksmith of the mithril order accepted him, his strong arms and hardy condition proved excellent for the forge, after a decade long apprenticeship. the once nameless halfbreed creature recieved his current name, brother bronze, named after the events of Bronzeheim's collapse.
Brother Bronze was a compassionate and understanding warrior and follower of the mithril order, proving great prowess in fighting the fiends of the darklands, and through his orcish taint providing him strength where it once provided shame, he paved the way for acceptance for others of his kind.
he redeemed himself in the eyes of Bronzeheim and paved the way for proof, that the 'orc-blooded' could still show the stony dwarven resolve and were useful. at his request. the offspring of his few remaining survivors were trained by and accepted into the mithril order. this new breed of dwarves, they called "the Boar-Hearted" after the ferocity they showed in combat.
I have been gaming for a long time and lived through the "I am an emo dark elf ranger" or I am a half fiend lolbeast who can eat lava. It was interesting and to a point fun but it got overdone and for a time I couldnt sit down at a gaming table without half the party being Drizzt clones or some absurd race/class/template combo. It is refreshing and inspiring to see the focus on something a little more mondane which in turn makes the unusual and fantastic well... unusual and fantastic.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I might be wrong, but I think catfolk count as Mammalian, I get what you're saying though.
It would be interesting to explore this from a outsider aspect - as in, outer planes.
Not so much the creatures that have a direct correlary with life on the prime -such as Angels or Demons, but creatures that have no direct connetion to the prime - they were never really born, nor do they have anything in common with life as we understand it - such as the Qlippoth. In PF they have been assigned human emotion/revenge style motives but I kinda of feel it sells them short and is a mistaken direction. Those things are chaos and insanity manifest, getting into the mindset and motivation which is so extreme it would be alien - even for those who understand evil, chaos and madness.
|
|
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Part of raising and training animals as a kid might give me a biased perspective (as well as being a boy raised by women, or a white kid living on a reservation, or whatever), but the idea that someone could not learn to empathize with / put themselves into the place of someone (or, in the case of animals, some *thing*) that has very different experiences or senses or circumstances than oneself, or than one is even capable of experiencing (such as the life of a handicapped person or a retarded relative) seems odd to me.
It's kind of the core of sentient, self-aware behavior to be able to look at the Other and recognize it as something other than Self (and not a reflection in a mirror, or some sort of solipsistic construct), and to imagine what it would be like to be the Other.
We all, in this world, have to deal with people (and animals) whose thoughts and beliefs and situations are pretty 'alien' to us.
Alien doesn't *have* to mean incomprehensible, and if you portray a monster or an alien or an evil character (or a woman, or a black person, or a foreigner, or a person with very different beliefs, or mental attributes, or an animal) as behaving in *comprehensible* (if not necessarily smart or rational!) manner, you aren't 'doing it wrong.'
I remember lots of films from my childhood where the protagonists discovered a lost civilisation. It was either dead, or the protagonists helped to destroy it! I always wished that the filmmakers had made a film about this civilisation at its height!The old 'magic is rare and wonderful' thing is boring. With the rules as is, with magic being reliable, reproducible and predictable, it's hard to imagine it not being as all-pervasive as technology! I once did another campaign where magic was as ubiquitous as tech, with crystal ball relay stations manned by apprentice wizards (instead of telegraph stations), continual light was everywhere, etc. etc.
Ever read Terry Brooks' Shannara series? Essentially it was our world (although he's recently written novels to bridge his Sci-Fi world so it's not quite our world, with Shannara) but the "Last Great War of Man" (pretty much always sounded like World War III to me) basically destroyed the world. Humans survived, but the elves and dwarves and all such races that were in hiding came back. In that setting humans aren't dominant, they are mostly equal with everyone until the second trilogy where the elves retreat again.
Part of raising and training animals as a kid might give me a biased perspective (as well as being a boy raised by women, or a white kid living on a reservation, or whatever), but the idea that someone could not learn to empathize with / put themselves into the place of someone (or, in the case of animals, some *thing*) that has very different experiences or senses or circumstances than oneself, or than one is even capable of experiencing (such as the life of a handicapped person or a retarded relative) seems odd to me.
It's kind of the core of sentient, self-aware behavior to be able to look at the Other and recognize it as something other than Self (and not a reflection in a mirror, or some sort of solipsistic construct), and to imagine what it would be like to be the Other.
We all, in this world, have to deal with people (and animals) whose thoughts and beliefs and situations are pretty 'alien' to us.
Alien doesn't *have* to mean incomprehensible, and if you portray a monster or an alien or an evil character (or a woman, or a black person, or a foreigner, or a person with very different beliefs, or mental attributes, or an animal) as behaving in *comprehensible* (if not necessarily smart or rational!) manner, you aren't 'doing it wrong.'
very true, everything is comprehensible in some way, as in, everything has a pattern. adventuring with the sylph street magician could give you insight on how to negotiate with a sylph caravan. or a variety of other similar nomadic cultures. as an example.
i'd like to see such things as half-elf/nymph crossbreeds, halfling/pixie or dwarf/orc.
Halforc can be other thing too than halfhuman. One of my friend played always dwarf paladin/exterminator so I once threated him that I would make a character who would be his son, with orc mother who owns liquor store.
|
I don't hate ti so much that it's getting stale, repetitive and overdone. At the very least if the rpg settings had a good in game reason or fluff as to why humans are always the predominat race I would not mind it as much. Usually it boils down to humans being more powerful well because for no other reason.
i'd like to see such things as half-elf/nymph crossbreeds, halfling/pixie or dwarf/orc.Halforc can be other thing too than halfhuman. One of my friend played always dwarf paladin/exterminator so I once threated him that I would make a character who would be his son, with orc mother who owns liquor store.
yeah, but it doesn't feel right when a dwarf blooded half orc is exactly the same as a human blooded half orc. plus i want to see what one could do with the offspring of a halfling and a pixie, or a half-elf and a nymph. humans and nymphs, or elves and nymphs, tend to be already established in 3rd party material, but a lot of it requires rebalancing to work.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Why? Chimeraic freaks aren't inherently more interesting, they're just gimmicks. If you don't have anything interesting about the character past the gimmicks, you're not only no better off than you started, you're considerably worse.the different fantasy races aren't an issue, i want to see more. even if it is merely things like hybrids. but my issue with humanocentricy, is that if humans are the dominant species, and all the others races are dying out because 'lol hoomuns'. why are they still playable?
i'd love to see flourishing communities of nonhuman races, and not in the steriotypical form, as well as unique hybrids involving more than merely the human's innate ability to breed with everything.
i'd like to see such things as half-elf/nymph crossbreeds, halfling/pixie or dwarf/orc.
And that's my real problem with a lot of 'give us more more more races!" They aren't interesting, they are a collection of gimmicks rather than a society and people. As a one shot critter, sure a half-squidfolk half-mudperson might be interesting, but as a playable race that there are presumably more of and have become something more than a cross-bred nightmare they seldom make sense.
|
wait you mean my Catfolk Samurai cant find him a Nice Ulfen Shieldmaiden and raise adorable little half fuzzy kids? Im heartbroken. No really i might cry.
On a lighter note, I like D'orcs. Ive let them in any game i run in fact im more of a if its humanoid there might be a way to crossbreed because this is a game of fantasy... pretty high magical fantasy at that. I can have wizards that stop time, drop heavenly fire and obliterate dragons, but your dwarf cant breed with a nymph? Seems a bit silly to me. But im strange that way i suppose
oh and as another poster said Nyah I guess?
Silence tends to add 'yes yes' to the end of a lot of sentences instead