| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So I bought Inner Sea Races and read through it. While I appreciate the additional information it provides, I nevertheless feel it was a missed opportunity to really get into the meat of the more neglected peoples of Golarion. This isn't to say all of them are misrepresented. The various 'Blood of X' books covered aasimar, tiefling, skinwalkers/half-weres, elemental-blooded, and dhampirs, and Bastards of Golarion gave us a pretty nice look for half-elves and half-orcs, there's still very little we know about three particular groups, race wise, and they are three of the core races.
Gnomes, halflings, and dwarves.
Now I'm not here to bash on the book. It DOES expand on these and I appreciate it. Nevertheless, I want to know... do these have racial variation? I know the dwarves do, in the form of the Pahmet of Osirion and other desert nations, with their blond hair and dark bronze skin, but beyond them there's nothing. What about dwarves that rose up in, say, jungles? Deep forests? Surely not all of them sprung up from mountains. There's a lot of caves that lead to non-mountainous regions in Golarion, and the Quest for Sky didn't distinguish the end result as 'a mountain'. If orcs appeared in jungles (see: rainkin), then surely the dwarves that pushed them up did as well. The duergar do deserve a mention, but even with this evil cousin species, the dwarves only have three races to their supposedly rich cultural heritage.
Gnomes might have an excuse for being, well, 'racially flat'. Each individual is so wildly colorful and different it might even be hard to say they're all from a single species, but there ARE the svirfneblin of the Darklands, showing that variation can happen over periods of time like any other species. At the same time, though, this very reason gives them the BIGGEST excuse for being racially diverse. Instead of their environment, I could imagine a gnome's race being determined by something a lot more whimsical and arbitrary due to their fey origins, like the time of day, the lunar cycle, the seasons, or some other aspect of nature. This would tie in nicely with the gnomish need for variety and new experience, since it means that no gnomish community is composed entirely of 'red-hairs' or 'dark-skins'. All of them would be every color of the rainbow. A dark-skinned gnome could be born to two light-skinned parents because he just so happened to be born during the shadiest summer day. This would probably lead to a lot of scandalous rumors from non-gnomes who might think all gnomes are unscrupulous with their partners, seeing as none of their babies look completely like their parents!
Halflings would have much the same racial tones humans have. It's not really a tough vision to see their society, so intimately tied to that of their larger neighbors, mimic them in more than mannerisms. The days are hot and sunny, so a people's skin would grow darker to ward it off. So it would be with a halfling. Still, it feels that their biggest, most notable changes would be in two areas: their survival method and their luck. Most halflings seem to be 'city halflings', born into a master society rather than their own. They've adapted to be cheerful, charismatic, optimistic, and lucky. These are the traits highly valued in an urban world. What about a jungle, though? You're not going to charm your way out of a snake. You might need to be faster on your feet, have thicker skin, or your luck might factor into a more focused area, such as resisting poisons, diseases, and other natural hazards. What about domains rich in magic? What about rural realms? What about places where padded feet don't help, but powerful hands do? Pure Steam gives us the Tenderfoot Halfling, who require using shoes but have developed higher manual alacrity. It seems that for the halfling, racial diversity boils to the most basic and simple concept: 'what tools do I need to survive?'
I'd like to see more about them to expand. What do you think would make for suitable ethnic aspects in the races?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think the book really did miss a mark on not including some of the other racial ethnicities like the Pahmet. Or at least should of let ethnicity be applied to all races and not just humans.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
...let ethnicity be applied to all races...
I think the race/class pairing is an unfortunate legacy issue. I'd much prefer it if the game gave us the triple choice of race/class/culture. With race limited to physical characteristics (plus supernatural abilities where that is relevant) and the other stuff usually combined into race instead rolled in to culture.
Unfortunately, that's a pretty significant shift from the D&D/Pathfinder base assumption. Race=Culture has been around for a long time in RPGs.
Perhaps this is the kind of optional thing that could fit into an Unchained 2 at some point.
You know that's a really good idea.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I agree. Racial variety would allow some of the less-common types of race/class pairings to be more palatable and would add an extra layer of color to the world.
The Eberron campaign setting made a little progress, there, with its very culturally distinct Aerenal and Valenar elves. IF I recall, though, it stopped short of actually making any mechanical distinctions.
Pffft, Dragonlance has Elven ethnic differences with mechanical aspects (Kagonesti/Qualinesti).
If a cheeseball setting like Krynn can pull it off...