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

[souran]

One of the things that has been ignored a little bit here is the fact that in a fantasy setting you are allowed to have explanations that are supernatural in origin. In a sci fi setting its probably consideradably more important, but you can still hand wave it with the only consequence being that you have shifted a notch closer to space fantasy and a taken a step away from hard sci fi.

If the dwarves we have been considering are quite litterarly stone made flesh by the diety moradin, then dwarves might need to only to eat and drink because moradin wills it so because he desires that his creations mimic the actions of the creations of Corelian or Pelor. Men might only need to eat because they were given the gift of touch, taste, and smell from a diety of sensuality and then in a jelous fit the diety of gluttany and sloth and avarice cursed men that they must eat rather than just being able to.

These explationions are the sort of ones that we would attribute to a lack of understanding of the physical world. However, if your game world has real and active dieties who grant spells it becomes a lot harder to dismiss the "the gods did it" hypothesis.

It would be very hard to develop a scientific world view in a place where when a volcano errupts or you see a shooting star in the sky if you have to go literarly go and ask every wizard, dragon, spell caster, and diety if they did it before you started investigating a "natural" cause.

[RandomCasualty2]

Th thing is: any race can become common just by some player getting screen time. Ensign Ro is a member of the Bajorans. Before she gets some screen time, no one has heard of them and no one cares. They are just a race with a Wisdom bonus and some nose wrinkles in the long list of races with nose wrinkles and stat mods. But eight episodes with Ro Laren later, Bajorans are now a major race in the plot, and all the players have immediate reactions to seeing new Bajorans.

Yeah, but this also takes DM work too. Note that the DM has to develop up bajorans by having you meet NPCs. Before DS9, the Farengi were just a bunch of eccentric aliens with big ears, but that series actually let us go to their homeworld, and encounter people within their culture. In effect, because there was a PC, the Farengi became a noticeable force in the story.

Now if your DM is willing to incorporate minotaurs or whatever you are into the story, then it can work. There's really no reason that any race can't be a major race. The only thing is that many DMs may not want to do that. Unlike in Star Trek, distances aren't arbitrary (prior to high magic plane travel anyway). If there exist cities for your race, they have to exist somewhere, and there need to be a good explanation of why we haven't heard from them before. In many ways, it's the equivalent of adding a new country to a map of Europe.

Don't you see how you just picked he perfect counter example? Data is a Sungian Android. In the entire history of the galaxy, there have been like ten of those things. Data is a major character and because of that, Sungian Androids are important.

The difference here though is that Data has something the universe is interested in, sentient artificial life. So naturally even though he doesn't necessarily have a society, he's still of interest to people. A minotaur on the other hand is literally just a big strong dude, and if people don't treat him differently, he's no different than a strong human, and thus no more interesting. He's also capable of doing weird robot shit that other crewmen can't.

Being Data alone is sufficient for people to treat him differently, so it works.

Again, you couldn't be more wrong: the Trill are literally and specifically a one-shot race you've never heard of unless you were in that one adventure of TNG where they encounter a grand total of two of them. However, once DS9 starts, we put a Trill in command of one of th Players, and then she starts making up Trill culture and mating habits and stuff. And a lot of it is totally discontinuous with the original adventure with Trill as one-shot NPCs, but we're cool with it because Dax's player is pretty awesome at telling her brain bug stories.

I'm not saying that this can't happen, I'm saying that it has to happen with approval from your DM, because he has to be willing to make this an active part of the world.

Odo goes even farther. His player opted to be not only a unique species, but also to have amnesia so he didn't need to write a cultural backstory. And then eventually the DM got sick of it and retconned in an evil empire of shapeshifters that he was nominally from. But since his character was fun, that was totally OK.

Odo is like Data, unique enough that he can get by purely by being a shapeshifter, at least early on. He's got a bunch of crazy powers that nobody else has, and that makes him interesting. Simply being unique just doesn't cut it if you don't stand out in some way.

The problem with monster PCs is that they really don't have any of that. While you can (and probably will be ) the only goliath in the campaign world, you don't actually do anything that's notable to people. You could just replace your character with a half-ogre and nobody would even care, despite slightly changing your description.

And having a bull head or being some weird goliath race might work, if the world treated you somehow different for it. The problem is that once you adapt the "We don't give a fuck" Sigil mentality, then you have basically taken away the guy's only claim to fame.

Exactly wrong. If one of the players rolls Minotaur, then the Minotaurs will get focused on. And a lot of the Minotaur culture will be player generated. Maybe the player moos a lot. Or maybe he acts really brash, or contemplative, or kind, or cruel. Whatever it is that the player does, wherever they go with that character, that is the Minotaur that players will remember.

The problem is that a lot of players don't really do that. If PCs actually played up the fact that they were minotaurs it could work, but most of the time, being a monster race is just an excuse to get a +6 to strength or whatever the fuck.

Really it's often more trouble than it's worth.

[A Man In Black]

The problem is that a lot of players don't really do that. If PCs actually played up the fact that they were minotaurs it could work, but most of the time, being a monster race is just an excuse to get a +6 to strength or whatever the fuck.

Odo got a +10 to one of his main job skills and for about half the series that's all he got out of his funny hat, and his backstory was as lazy as possible.

Sometimes, yes, people are going to take a monster race for the +1 to a thing. If they're not completely obtuse and incapable at roleplaying, eventually the monster race itself is a good hook for people to go on and do cool story things. If the player is completely obtuse and roleplaying-incapable, being human wasn't going to help.

[Just another user]

Well, it still depends on the setting.

everything in this argument depend on the setting and this make the whole discussion more pointless than the average internet discussion.

in some campaign an ogre, an illithid and a fiendish half-dragon(black) could walk into a tavern without a single brow being raised, in another a standard gnome could get weird looks from all the passerby and attire a crowd of curious people that wonder what kind of weird creature is (assuming they let him in)

[RandomCasualty2]

everything in this argument depend on the setting and this make the whole discussion more pointless than the average internet discussion.

in some campaign an ogre, an illithid and a fiendish half-dragon(black) could walk into a tavern without a single brow being raised, in another a standard gnome could get weird looks from all the passerby and attire a crowd of curious people that wonder what kind of weird creature is (assuming they let in)

To some degree, yes. If for instance, your setting honestly doesn't have any threatening monstrous looking things, then people may not be scared of that look. But as soon as you've got stories circling around about how Bob's nephew was eaten by trolls and Mary lost her baby to harpies, you gradually learn to fear things that are monstrous and ugly.

Hell even by default sociology/psychology, people react more negatively to ugly and unaesthetic people than they do to attractive ones. People also have a natural tendency to be afraid of things that are different from them. I mean seriously, you see the stupid racisms that spread about humans with different skin colors. Now just imagine if you have a giant menacing looking furry like a bugbear. Reasons for keeping it out may range from "it's ridden with disease", "it's not potty trained" to "it might eat me or my kids." are going to go around.

The modern world, as progressive as it tries to be, is plagued by racisms and all that crap. Imagine the medieval style world, before the internet, before colleges and modern education... where wild fears and superstitions ruled the day. Unless the human race in the campaign world is vastly different from the human race in the real world, I really can't see them being this open minded.

[CatharzGodfoot]

People allow large dogs into their homes, and those hardly look human at all. People are totally willing to live with bestial predators in their own homes, provided that the beasts are familiar.

It may be that people are far less inclined to trust sapients and peers that look different, but I'd be willing to give D&D characters the benefit of doubt. If only for the sake of the game.

[Just another user]

everything in this argument depend on the setting and this make the whole discussion more pointless than the average internet discussion.

in some campaign an ogre, an illithid and a fiendish half-dragon(black) could walk into a tavern without a single brow being raised, in another a standard gnome could get weird looks from all the passerby and attire a crowd of curious people that wonder what kind of weird creature is (assuming they let in)

To some degree, yes. If for instance, your setting honestly doesn't have any threatening monstrous looking things, then people may not be scared of that look. But as soon as you've got stories circling around about how Bob's nephew was eaten by trolls and Mary lost her baby to harpies, you gradually learn to fear things that are monstrous and ugly.
[
Hell even by default sociology/psychology, people react more negatively to ugly and unaesthetic people than they do to attractive ones. People also have a natural tendency to be afraid of things that are different from them. I mean seriously, you see the stupid racisms that spread about humans with different skin colors. Now just imagine if you have a giant menacing looking furry like a bugbear. Reasons for keeping it out may range from "it's ridden with disease", "it's not potty trained" to "it might eat me or my kids." are going to go around.

The modern world, as progressive as it tries to be, is plagued by racisms and all that crap. Imagine the medieval style world, before the internet, before colleges and modern education... where wild fears and superstitions ruled the day. Unless the human race in the campaign world is vastly different from the human race in the real world, I really can't see them being this open minded.

As I have said, it depends on the setting, in some campaign bugbears could be civilized enough and the people familiar with them enough that they let enter in their city freely, heck in some setting bugbear and goblinoids could be respected citizens of the empire and while having their own culture they have the same rights of humans or elves.

And then in some setting there is a reward of 100 gold pieces for every pair of bugbear's ears you bring in to the captain of the guards.

It depends on so many factors, not last gm's whim that generalization is , as I've said, pointless (and that include the "everybody should just let enter everybody in their village/town/city" generalization).

[Fuchs]

People allow large dogs into their homes, and those hardly look human at all. People are totally willing to live with bestial predators in their own homes, provided that the beasts are familiar.

It may be that people are far less inclined to trust sapients and peers that look different, but I'd be willing to give D&D characters the benefit of doubt. If only for the sake of the game.

So-called "Fighting dogs" are not tolerated that much in some places. Some areas here even made them illegal.

[Judging__Eagle]

Btw, Souran, Pelor is a fiend, that hates undead. Pelor is also a high end Diety in Oerth (Greyhawk planet), but he's a fiend first.

He didn't create humans.

[mean_liar]

Btw, Souran, Pelor is a fiend, that hates undead. Pelor is also a high end Diety in Oerth (Greyhawk planet), but he's a fiend first.

He didn't create humans.

Source?

[Akula]

His ass, probably.

[Prak]

it's a meta-joke about... well, a lot of things... but mostly Pelor's portrayed attitude. It also points to art, like the PHB picture of Jozan, a cleric of Pelor, casting Symbol of Pain (or something), an evil spell, and the sample Malconvoker.

The standard portrayal of Pelor is as a colossal asshole who just happens to hate Undead.

[Utterfail]

the original "Pelor the Burning Hate" thread can be seen here: http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/ ... rning_Hate

I think it's pretty funny.

[Prak]

I've actually used it in game, when one of the players was playing a normal cleric of Pelor. The look on his face was priceless.

[Koumei]

In FR, humans are one of the Creator Races, which means no god made them, but they may have made any number of gods. Yeah, you elves don't feel so big in the pants now, do you?

And in 4E, Pelor is the god of gardening good harvests. Hence the "Balls of Pelor" artefacts.

[Funswoggle]

Good thing.

I like my fantasy wierd...the less Tolkien the better.