LotR gets filtered from D&D more with each edition.

[Maxus]

Point the first: Everything K said.

Point the second: I'm still trying to decide whether J_E's whole spiel about the smell of meat-eaters is more or less ridiculous than the time that he went on and on about how human flesh is hyper-addictive and laced with PCP.

Congrats, J_E, for almost managing to top yourself.

..... and the whole point in moot in 95% of life since we all like to bathe and most people have crap senses and there are always masking odors so its super hard to smell anything as faint as a person's personal scent. Its a rare day that even I notice anything.

But this is D&D land. People/things may not bathe.

Also, J_E does have it in place on the Wendigo crap.

http://www.cracked.com/article/80_5-men ... e-earth_p1

The human-meat-driving-you-crazy is very much real, for one reason or another.

Side note:



That picture is SO DAMN COOL I feel the urge to make up something in my games that fits it, just so I can show my players that.

They've already learned to be resigned and a little afraid when I'm looking a little excited about running...

[K]

But this is D&D land. People/things may not bathe.

Yeh, its DnD land where Steve the Crap-covered farmer smells like horse dung. He could be bathing in babies blood during the full moon and he'd still smell like horse crap.

Normal body odor from underarm bacteria probably washes out all scent in DnD land. Leather armor smells like ass and cow flesh. Most armor probably reeks so badly from years of wear that you'd be lucky to smell anything except funk.

People forget just how fastidious the modern world really is. We really are super clean in the 1st world..... in DnD land, I expect most people smell like those crazy vagrants that live in the local park and never bathe or wash and have a smell so strong it needs it own personal name like James the Ass Funk, and not the homeless guys who shower and wash clothes at the shelter a few times a week.

Basically, only the very wealthy and Sorcerers and Wizards might not smell strongly of something that would mask their natural odor. The very wealthy could have guys to wash their clothes and wood for regular bathing, and the mages have Cantrip.

Moderately wealthy people probably just reek of perfume, if history is any indication.

[Prak]

Side note:



That picture is SO DAMN COOL I feel the urge to make up something in my games that fits it, just so I can show my players that.

They've already learned to be resigned and a little afraid when I'm looking a little excited about running...

That's actually from D&D, Monsters of Faerun, to be exact. It's called a Draegloth, and it's what you get when a drow priestess ritually fucks a glabrezu.

[Fuchs]

I would say, in response to Frank's post, that if th DM allows all races, he should let the players pick the races for their PCs, then develop those races' cultures to some more detail, working with the player. That seems to me a better course of actions than reducing all races to forehead aliens with a few special abilities.

[Username17]

I would say, in response to Frank's post, that if th DM allows all races, he should let the players pick the races for their PCs, then develop those races' cultures to some more detail, working with the player. That seems to me a better course of actions than reducing all races to forehead aliens with a few special abilities.

The Star Trek analogy is very apt. Yes, if you have a Trill in the party, you're going to be doing some more fleshing out and characterization of the Trill people as you have more episodes. But until that point you're going to have basically the same amount on Trill as you do on the Ligonians, the Aldeans, or the Mintakans - pretty much enough to do a forehead alien one-shot. Any additional characterization you do will be in the form of retcons and ass pulling. Most importantly, this means that if you go into greater detail on one race or another, that this detail will very likely to be completely incompatible with the additional detail written in on the same race in another campaign.

So for example: Gnoll Knees. Some artists draw Gnolls with essentially human legs, with or without a bunch of extra fur. Other artists draw them with essentially Hyena hindlegs (which is to say that they have a very short "thigh" and high "knee" and an "ankle" that is at about the mid point of their leg, and they actually walk on the balls of their feet and toes, which are extended). Still other artists depict them with some sort of compromise leg functions. And that means that there is no "shared world" between two random games that go into any kind of detail with Gnolls (either using them as major recurring villains, PCs, or even just recurrent NPCs that the players interact with).

And the thing is, the moment you have a lot of furries based on quadrupeds, there isn't going to be enough room to give an "official" answer on how all the knees work. Leonals, Nezumi, Ibixians, Armand, Jackalweres, and Lizardfolk are all going to have some knees or other, and there isn't going to be room to talk about it in full. A lot of those are going to end up being drawn only in pants or just from the waste up and not even have a single data point to draw an assumption about. And that's just one piece of costuming detail. What do dwarf poos look like? That's a serious question. Dwarves have some sort of digestive track and some collection of digestive enzymes and absorption surfaces. When a dwarf eats (whatever dwarves eat), some parts will be digested and absorbed, some parts will be digested and expelled, and other parts will just be expelled. And people in the world will be able to make quite a bit of inferences by distinguishing dwarf scat from goblin scat. That would be a major part of tracking. And in D&D I have no basis on which to make that distinction. I have no idea what dwarves eat or how long they take to digest their food or how completely they digest it.

And on and on and on. When you go into detail in a kitchen sink setting you are making shit up, because the kitchen sink setting does not intrinsically have any detail to go into.

-Username17

[Prak]

And the thing is, the moment you have a lot of furries based on quadrupeds, there isn't going to be enough room to give an "official" answer on how all the knees work. Leonals, Nezumi, Ibixians, Armand, Jackalweres, and Lizardfolk are all going to have some knees or other, and there isn't going to be room to talk about it in full. A lot of those are going to end up being drawn only in pants or just from the waste up and not even have a single data point to draw an assumption about.

I'd imagine all quadruped based furries have the same leg structure, and if they don't it's a notable exception with some kind of reasoning..

And that's just one piece of costuming detail. What do dwarf poos look like? That's a serious question.

....God damn it Frank... you just forcibly reminded me of the "Do dragons shit, and what is it like?" thread from wizards many years ago.. and I have no alcohol around to force that memory back down...

Dwarves have some sort of digestive track and some collection of digestive enzymes and absorption surfaces. When a dwarf eats (whatever dwarves eat), some parts will be digested and absorbed, some parts will be digested and expelled, and other parts will just be expelled. And people in the world will be able to make quite a bit of inferences by distinguishing dwarf scat from goblin scat. That would be a major part of tracking. And in D&D I have no basis on which to make that distinction. I have no idea what dwarves eat or how long they take to digest their food or how completely they digest it.

And then you go on to explain why it matters in such a way that almost makes me think it can't be handwaved as a "the ranger recognizes that the pile of shit they just found is dwarf shit" with an accompanying smack upside the head if they ask how that's determined...

And on and on and on. When you go into detail in a kitchen sink setting you are making shit up

literally, apparently.

[Fuchs]

Dwarves have some sort of digestive track and some collection of digestive enzymes and absorption surfaces. When a dwarf eats (whatever dwarves eat), some parts will be digested and absorbed, some parts will be digested and expelled, and other parts will just be expelled. And people in the world will be able to make quite a bit of inferences by distinguishing dwarf scat from goblin scat. That would be a major part of tracking. And in D&D I have no basis on which to make that distinction. I have no idea what dwarves eat or how long they take to digest their food or how completely they digest it.

And then you go on to explain why it matters in such a way that almost makes me think it can't be handwaved as a "the ranger recognizes that the pile of shit they just found is dwarf shit" with an accompanying smack upside the head if they ask how that's determined...

Exactly. Skill systems work like that - if the player doesn't have to know that dwarf tracks smell faintly of mushrooms since dwarves eat so many mushrooms, then the DM doen't have to know or make up that either. The Dm sets a DC, the player rolls, and then he knows, or does not know if the boot tracks he follows are dwarven.

Details are nice, not not needed in every area, and rarely down to the color and consistency of poop - unless you're playing 1E "You can do what you, the player, know" style.

[Username17]

The color and consistency of poop is a small facet of the larger issue of what creatures can and must eat. Different creatures have different dietary requirements. Different media will support different organisms.

Do Dwarves eat a lot of mushrooms and drink a lot of yeast byproducts? If so, is that because they live in caves and that's all there is, or is it because Dwarves need fungal derivative nutrients in order to survive? I mean seriously, Ergosterol could be the equivalent of Dwarf Vitamin C, without which Dwarves will get Dwarf Scurvy. So seriously: it's an important issue when you take a Dwarf above the surface and give him some dried apricots, smoked meat, and clean water for rations, can he live on that?

If you take a human under ground and feed him 2000 Calories of fungus and beer a day, he will gradually have all his teeth fall out and go crazy. Because humans are nearly unique in the world of not synthesizing ascorbic acid. That's an important plot point, because it means that humans need to chew on some fucking lemons when on long trips or when living for prolonged periods on stored food. What, if anything, is the equivalent need of a Dwarf? A Halfling? A Hobgoblin?

-Username17

[Prak]

That doesn't mean one needs to know what the hell Dwarf shit looks like though, but it may mean one can infer that from figuring out what dwarves eat and why.

[Username17]

That doesn't mean one needs to know what the hell Dwarf shit looks like though, but it may mean one can infer that from figuring out what dwarves eat and why.

Of course you can. My point was that the entire digestive system of the dwarf and every other race in D&D was a black box including its inputs and outputs. The fact that we have no idea what their poop looks like and no way to infer that information means by definition that we don't know what their diets and dietary requirements are.

Sorry, as a biologist, those statements are completely identical to me. If I was being overly telegraphic I apologize.

-Username17

[Prak]

yeah... um, frank, I'm a culinary arts major and an aspiring novelist. My mind thinks in what goes into the digestive tract, or more specifically, how enjoyable it is, and what goes into the mind.

On the other hand, I'm getting to the point where I can figure out the nuitritional information of Spider Leg Bread, give that to you, and let you figure out what Drow poop looks like.

Um, in other words, I suppose I can understand one half of your train of thought...

[Fuchs]

I am not sure this is something the typical player cares much about. Some may find detailed weapon vs. amor tables enjoyable, others get disappointed if there's no family tree for all the royal and noble families, with gossip reader's digest reaching back 5 years, but for most, a few knowledge or survival checks resp. an attack roll are enough.

I mean it may be important on a world level that dwarves need mushrooms to survive, or get scurvy and die, but so is having enough vitmain C for humans - and how often does the GM actually ask you what's in your rations? Abstract "rations for 10 days" usually cover that, without any player needing to know what exactly is in those rations, and what method to preserve them was used.

[Username17]

I am not sure this is something the typical player cares much about. Some may find detailed weapon vs. amor tables enjoyable, others get disappointed if there's no family tree for all the royal and noble families, with gossip reader's digest reaching back 5 years, but for most, a few knowledge or survival checks resp. an attack roll are enough.

I mean it may be important on a world level that dwarves need mushrooms to survive, or get scurvy and die, but so is having enough vitmain C for humans - and how often does the GM actually ask you what's in your rations? Abstract "rations for 10 days" usually cover that, without any player needing to know what exactly is in those rations, and what method to preserve them was used.

Yes. If you interact with characters simply as units in a tactical wargame, then you are playing at a level that is so fucking superficial that it doesn't matter if a character is a dwarf or an elf, so long as they have a +4 to-hit. And Kitchen Sink settings deliver on that point. However, if you want to do a bit more indepth role playing, of perhaps trying to think of things that your character would say or talk about things that your character finds sexy or delicious, then you need to go more in depth than a kitchen sink setting's survey can.

Which is not to say that you can't do in depth role play in a kitchen sink setting. You totally can. It just requires making shit up as you go along. Maybe you go off on a tirade about dwarven women and their beards, or the strength of dwarven beer thanks to advanced dwarven yeast breeding techniques. Or whatever. The point is that you aren't extrapolating from the setting's information, you are making shit up. Which is fine.

But it means that two games that are ostensibly both set in Greyhawk will have dwarf women with and without beards. They will have dwarves who get sick and uncomfortable eating surface food vs. dwarves who constantly trade the wealth of the mountains for citrus fruits they need and cannot grow under the surface. And so on.

In short: Kitchen Sink Settings aren't really settings, they are sketchy improv prompts. And if you want to rant about goblin societies that you make up as you go along, or don't want to be bothered by interacting with social details at all - that's fine. But if you want two games set in the same city in Mystarra to be recognizably the same planet - that's something a kitchen sink setting cannot deliver.

A lot of people like kitchen sink settings. For one thing, it lets people be incorrigible when they are talking about orcish culture or whatever the fuck. If the game never tells you the first thing about orcish culture, the you can make up anything you want and not be "wrong". And people get used to that. There isn't a fuck of a lot of information about any of the races of D&D, because it is a kitchen sink setting. And people get used to making shit up as they go along. Take this thread, for example. Th amount of information on Goblins in D&D is pretty thin. And yet, at least three people in this thread have described D&D Goblins as being green skinned! They don't have green skin, they have human colored skin. But people are so used to making up whatever the fuck about whatever the fuck, that it didn't even occur to people that something like that might actually have an official answer in the book.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

I am not sure this is something the typical player cares much about. Some may find detailed weapon vs. amor tables enjoyable, others get disappointed if there's no family tree for all the royal and noble families, with gossip reader's digest reaching back 5 years, but for most, a few knowledge or survival checks resp. an attack roll are enough.

I mean it may be important on a world level that dwarves need mushrooms to survive, or get scurvy and die, but so is having enough vitmain C for humans - and how often does the GM actually ask you what's in your rations? Abstract "rations for 10 days" usually cover that, without any player needing to know what exactly is in those rations, and what method to preserve them was used.

Yes. If you interact with characters simply as units in a tactical wargame, then you are playing at a level that is so fucking superficial that it doesn't matter if a character is a dwarf or an elf, so long as they have a +4 to-hit. And Kitchen Sink settings deliver on that point. However, if you want to do a bit more indepth role playing, of perhaps trying to think of things that your character would say or talk about things that your character finds sexy or delicious, then you need to go more in depth than a kitchen sink setting's survey can.

I am not saying you do not need details - I am just saying dwarven poop may not be too interesting for everyone. At least not as interesting as a hobgoblin sword drill method, for example. I don't have much more than one combat, for example, in my game per session, at times none at all, most is spent interacting socially, yet the digestive habits of dwarven never came up because really no one gives a shit about what they poop.

Also, it's not a superficial level of play if you don't want to deal with making balanced rations for your trip to the evil overlord's base because, hey, that's what a level 10+ character would not botch up anyway. It just means you don't want to micromanage your character to that degree in that area.

If you have a player who likes doing that, by all means, go ahead and cater to his tastes, but don't claim it's somehow a tactical wargame just if you're not caring about logistics and vitamins and dwarven shit, but detail the royal lineage and politics, current underworld rumors, and ecological balance of the royal forest for the bard, rogue and ranger in your party because that's what the players want to get into details about.

Which is not to say that you can't do in depth role play in a kitchen sink setting. You totally can. It just requires making shit up as you go along. Maybe you go off on a tirade about dwarven women and their beards, or the strength of dwarven beer thanks to advanced dwarven yeast breeding techniques. Or whatever. The point is that you aren't extrapolating from the setting's information, you are making shit up. Which is fine.

But it means that two games that are ostensibly both set in Greyhawk will have dwarf women with and without beards. They will have dwarves who get sick and uncomfortable eating surface food vs. dwarves who constantly trade the wealth of the mountains for citrus fruits they need and cannot grow under the surface. And so on.

In short: Kitchen Sink Settings aren't really settings, they are sketchy improv prompts. And if you want to rant about goblin societies that you make up as you go along, or don't want to be bothered by interacting with social details at all - that's fine. But if you want two games set in the same city in Mystarra to be recognizably the same planet - that's something a kitchen sink setting cannot deliver.

A lot of people like kitchen sink settings. For one thing, it lets people be incorrigible when they are talking about orcish culture or whatever the fuck. If the game never tells you the first thing about orcish culture, the you can make up anything you want and not be "wrong". And people get used to that. There isn't a fuck of a lot of information about any of the races of D&D, because it is a kitchen sink setting. And people get used to making shit up as they go along. Take this thread, for example. Th amount of information on Goblins in D&D is pretty thin. And yet, at least three people in this thread have described D&D Goblins as being green skinned! They don't have green skin, they have human colored skin. But people are so used to making up whatever the fuck about whatever the fuck, that it didn't even occur to people that something like that might actually have an official answer in the book.

-Username17

I always prefer to take a setting, and make it my own. Kitchen sink settings usually require some reduction too though, in my case.

[Kaelik]

But this is D&D land. People/things may not bathe.

Also, J_E does have it in place on the Wendigo crap.

http://www.cracked.com/article/80_5-men ... e-earth_p1

The human-meat-driving-you-crazy is very much real, for one reason or another.

You should probably read the actual thread before you go saying stupid shit like that.

[Username17]

I am not saying you do not need details - I am just saying dwarven poop may not be too interesting for everyone. At least not as interesting as a hobgoblin sword drill method, for example. I don't have much more than one combat, for example, in my game per session, at times none at all, most is spent interacting socially, yet the digestive habits of dwarven never came up because really no one gives a shit about what they poop.

What they poop is what they eat. Definitionally. What a Dwarf gains sustenance from, and what sustenance a Dwarf needs is the basis for their entire civilization. Do Dwarves need hematite to survive? Ergosterol? Putrescine? Ethanol? Vitamins for humans are entirely fucking arbitrary. It's just a list of chemicals that we happen to use in our life processes that our bodies don't make (or don't make enough of). Any other sapient species would have similar arbitrary and highly specific demands.

What a Dwarf needs to eat will influence what tastes good to them and also what they will barter for and what they will not barter away. If Dwarves need hematite to survive, they will not accept a peace that involves them losing access to the water that runs off of the iron mines. If Dwarves need Ethanol to survive, they'll treat distilled liquor like candy for children. And so on and so forth. Heck, if they need an amount of Ergosterol to survive, you might be able to keep the village of Dwarves going in a siege for months on a shipment of oats and a casting of create food and water every day. Poof some needed fungus into being and divide it up among the people to keep Dwarf Scurvy at bay and have people get their primary calories from oats.

If you don't know what the biological needs and desires of the races are, then very time you rescue a caravan, you're rescuing an MMO sprite labeled "caravan" and nothing more. Because you don't know what the Dwarves (or any other race) would want or need to import from elsewhere.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

If you don't know what the biological needs and desires of the races are, then very time you rescue a caravan, you're rescuing an MMO sprite labeled "caravan" and nothing more. Because you don't know what the Dwarves (or any other race) would want or need to import from elsewhere.

-Username17

And that is perfectly fine if no one really cares about what exactly is being shipped, but only about how this ties into the plot to overthrow the dwarven merchant-prince who has hired the PCs, and may be trying to use them as scapegoats in his attempt to corner the wood market by sicking the hobgoblins on the last tribe of the forest elves.

You do not need detailed eating habits of dwarves. You don't even need detailed reasons what the humans do with the wood they buy from the dwarves who get it through hired loggers, as long as no one cares about the reasons for the demand.

You can run a political game without delving too deep or at all into biology.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I agree with Fuchs here. Conservation of Detail is key, especially if you're not running a game for fanbois.

Now while having dozens of races like D&D currently has violates CoD and could certainly stand a trimming down to some sane amount (whether 4 or 12), there's no point in filling up books with worthless bullshit like a dwarf's favorite food or trade relations with githyanki. Honestly, things like that shouldn't get more than a sentence or two such as dwarves need a limited amount of ethanol to survive and also eat the same foods as human but can derive sustenance from metamorphic rock.

Once we pare down the race size to a reasonable number, I support sketching them better than 3E/4E currently does. I don't know whether the optimum amount of races we can get to on the same page is 4 or 20 (I'm betting it's low), but I do know that if we settle for a low number we shouldn't fill up the space with anything but what's absolutely necessary to get people on the same page--racial history, deities, key figures, key cities, diet if it's that important, and key physical differences from humans. This honestly shouldn't take up more than 2 or 3 pages per race, 4 or 5 if you count the pictures.

[Username17]

If you don't know what the biological needs and desires of the races are, then very time you rescue a caravan, you're rescuing an MMO sprite labeled "caravan" and nothing more. Because you don't know what the Dwarves (or any other race) would want or need to import from elsewhere.

-Username17

And that is perfectly fine if no one really cares about what exactly is being shipped, but only about how this ties into the plot to overthrow the dwarven merchant-prince who has hired the PCs, and may be trying to use them as scapegoats in his attempt to corner the wood market by sicking the hobgoblins on the last tribe of the forest elves.

How does it tie into the plot to overthrow the dwarven merchant prince? If you don't know what is being shipped or why the goods are desired, that is a question you cannot answer.

To know how it would tie into the plot to overthrow the merchant prince, you'd need to be able to find out what would happen if the goods did not arrive. And if you don't know what the goods are or why anyone cares about them, that's the end of that line of inquiry. The thing you said you cared about (how stopping the caravan affected the dwarven merchant) is in fact a piece of information derived from what dwarves poop.

You can run a political game without delving too deep or at all into biology.

No you can't. Politics is just applied biology.

-Username17

[A Man In Black]

I think this is fascinating and all, but I would never, ever notice the lack of specific dietary descriptions without having them pointed out to me. I'm fairly sure I'm not alone in this.

I don't think you can reasonably expect for RPG writers to be Renaissance men with unending wells of wordcount to cover everything to this level of detail even when races are pared down, and moreover I don't think the vast majority of readers really give a crap. To fully appreciate the impact of dietary needs on a world, I'd need a greater science education than I currently have, and I suspect I'm not the only RPG gamer in my shoes. Even with the science education I have, my enjoyment of a game isn't impaired by an Underdark which violates fundamental rules of thermodynamics, and I value the rules of themodynamics only insofar as they serve to make for an interesting story.

I realize that interesting-stories-by-way-of-applied-science is part of the Den house style, and I like that. However, I don't expect it of every RPG book I read, nor do most readers. That it is difficult to do something most readers do not demand - or even expect! - is not much of a deficiency in a game design decision.

[Fuchs]

If you don't know what the biological needs and desires of the races are, then very time you rescue a caravan, you're rescuing an MMO sprite labeled "caravan" and nothing more. Because you don't know what the Dwarves (or any other race) would want or need to import from elsewhere.

-Username17

And that is perfectly fine if no one really cares about what exactly is being shipped, but only about how this ties into the plot to overthrow the dwarven merchant-prince who has hired the PCs, and may be trying to use them as scapegoats in his attempt to corner the wood market by sicking the hobgoblins on the last tribe of the forest elves.

How does it tie into the plot to overthrow the dwarven merchant prince? If you don't know what is being shipped or why the goods are desired, that is a question you cannot answer.

To know how it would tie into the plot to overthrow the merchant prince, you'd need to be able to find out what would happen if the goods did not arrive. And if you don't know what the goods are or why anyone cares about them, that's the end of that line of inquiry. The thing you said you cared about (how stopping the caravan affected the dwarven merchant) is in fact a piece of information derived from what dwarves poop.

You can run a political game without delving too deep or at all into biology.

No you can't. Politics is just applied biology.

-Username17

No you do not need to know what is shipped, not even to know why it is desired. Merchant A wants the cargo from the caravan to pay his debts. If he cannot pay his debts he has to marry his daughter off to a rival of the dwarven mechant prince, who will then lose some influence at court, and may lose his post as cancelor.

Really, you do not need to know what is being shipped if all that is important is how much it is worth, and who gets the profit. The key is knowing how much detail you need for your players. And I wager that not many players really want to know about dwarven poop, even if they want to know what the dwarves use to get their beer that strong.

It does tie into mechanics as well - we have skills such as survival so I, the player, do not need to know how to hunt, do not need to describe how to hunt, how to skin a deer, and what kind of berries would supplement the diet so I survive. We have skills such as knowledge royality so I, the player, do not need to know all 13 pretenders to the throne. And we can use a track check to find out if a poop is dwarven or elven without the GM having to decide what color it is.

And frankly, I'd rather not play in a game where the DM routinely describes dwarven poop, and where knowing its consistency is important.

[Username17]

I think this is fascinating and all, but I would never, ever notice the lack of specific dietary descriptions without having them pointed out to me. I'm fairly sure I'm not alone in this.

I don't think you can reasonably expect for RPG writers to be Renaissance men with unending wells of wordcount to cover everything to this level of detail even when races are pared down, and moreover I don't think the vast majority of readers really give a crap. To fully appreciate the impact of dietary needs on a world, I'd need a greater science education than I currently have, and I suspect I'm not the only RPG gamer in my shoes. Even with the science education I have, my enjoyment of a game isn't impaired by an Underdark which violates fundamental rules of thermodynamics, and I value the rules of themodynamics only insofar as they serve to make for an interesting story.

I realize that interesting-stories-by-way-of-applied-science is part of the Den house style, and I like that. However, I don't expect it of every RPG book I read, nor do most readers. That it is difficult to do something most readers do not demand - or even expect! - is not much of a deficiency in a game design decision.

See, what you did was make the completely unjustified assumption that Dwarves (and all the other sapient races) had dietary needs that were "basically the same as human ones." Which is actually an important thing to consider. What that means is that every minor or major detail of a race that is not spelled out explicitly is just going to be filled in with human stuff. In short, when you have a lot of races and a short survey of distinguishing traits for your races, you have a bunch of forehead aliens and nothing more.

Seriously, if you don't spell out organ functions, dietary requirements, immune systems, litter sizes, mating periods, life phases and so on for Dwarves, all that information is just going to be filled in with human derived stats. In short, every single part of the body that you don't show the viewer the forehead makeup on is going to be assumed to be essentially human like. The assumption is that every single sapient race, and I mean every single one has themselves some external male genitalia.

And there is nothing wrong with that. Except for the fact that it means that none of the races are actually very alien at all. They can't be, because all of their basic information is being filled in as "humanlike unless stated otherwise."

A Shadowrun Ork is actually a homo sapiens and is exactly and specifically a human being. And it is nevertheless more different from a regulation human than a D&D Orc is because it has basic data written up about basic biological functions.

-Username17

[Koumei]

I think the main problem is that nobody wants to hear about dwarf/orc/nymph/dragon/pseudonatural-half-celestial-mind flayer shit. Everything else there is valid, it's just that when it comes to shit, nobody wants to know about it and I don't blame them.

Dietary stuff is interesting. Lifecycles (mating seasons, gestation, gender differences, puberty, how they get old) are interesting and more important than a little "You die at age ___" chart. How the culture developed, thus what traits ended up being part of how they think and act (such as how humans basically have "fight or flight" bred into us so that we're really susceptible to "Quick, act now, do you support the Patriot Act or do you want terrorists roaming our streets!") is also good. All sorts of things. The very moment someone mentions use of the lavatory, however, it's no deal.

I'm guessing this is similar to your views on dragon cock: it's great to know, biologically speaking, how they reproduce. But any day that you don't get told specifically about someone fucking a dragon is by definition a good day.

[RandomCasualty2]

I don't think the whole dietary thing is even that big a deal. If we assume that most races are omnivores, like humans are, they can live on a variety of things. Seriously, humans themselves have very varied diets. You've got vegans, you've got heavy meat eaters, you've got some people even on fluid diets, and you've got everything in between.

Now it'd be okay to once in a while throw in certain things that's poisonous to dwarves for whatever reason, but I don't think it's necessary to come up with entirely new and exotic dietary needs.

[Username17]

But any day that you don't get told specifically about someone fucking a dragon is by definition a good day.

This is true. But it's also a two pronged question. See, everything you don't spell out for the races of your game world defaults to human standard. Which means that if you don't specify something, those dragon men are going to have some sort of biologically compatible wang that they can fuck human maidens with. In short: if you don't devote a little bit of text to dragons fucking other dragons, you're going to be bombarded with fanfiction about dragons fucking elves, and horses, and whatever else.

This isn't even an exaggeration. Dragonborn women have breasts and nurse their young. Because 4e didn't bother to talk about how Dragonborn might reproduce and grow to adulthood without being placental mammals, they ended up being placental mammals by default. Under the scales they apparently have the same ovaries and uterus as a human woman, because no one could spare the space to do them up any different and that's what comes standard.

This becomes rather gross on many levels when you contemplate it a bit. For example: Elves almost certainly eat their own shit. They are often portrayed as vegetarians who eat raw food. But they default to the same simple digestive tract of humans, which means that as lifestyle they would have to live like mole rats and eat all their food twice.

We do our sanity no favors by giving races simple and dramatic differences from humans and allowing human traits to fill in everything unspecified.

-Username17