Elves, dorfs, humans don't have 'nuff meaningful distinction

[Neurosis]

Idk about the entire premise of this thread honestly. I find that Dwarves, Elves, humans, etc. are sufficiently differentiated in my Dees 'n Dees, both mechanically and conceptually.

[silva]

Great, except the actual settings for DnD (like Forgotten Realms) cover that too. Even with obscure, poorly fleshed-out races like the Imaskari, let alone major things like Waterdavians.

I found the Deep Imaskari interesting enough to adapt them for play in a stats-light non-D&D game, so I think you may be giving D&D characterization short shrift. Yes, the writeups in the PHB are pretty sparse, but apples to oranges here: the PHB is a generic toolkit. Having extremely detailed cultural writeups would actually detract from its main mission -- compare with RuneQuest, which is portraying a world and not making any pretensions to genericism. (Unless you count the Fantasy Earth stuff in the Avalon Hill editions, I suppose.)

I would say the crux of the matter goes beyond fluff or mechanical weight: it goes to the heart of each game design goals, what each one tries to accomplish as a game. RuneQuest and Pendragon were designed with cultural exploring in mind. These games are setting-driven as much as rules-driven. The same cant be said about D&D, and thats the real difference. Your D&D group can give enough meaning to race and culture as you wish, but then its YOUR doing, not the game´s. What the GAME D&D do is treat "race" as a gamey construct for dungeon crawling or monster bashing and nothing else. Perhaps the most important proof is the reward cycle of each game: character advancement in RuneQuest is dependent on cult services and deeds (which in turn is dependent on culture, which in turn is dependent on setting ) while character advancement in D&D is dependent on getting XP through dungeon looting (older editions) or monster bashing (newer editions). The conclusion is that RuneQuest is inherently merged to setting in a way D&D is not. In fact, D&D doesnt even need a setting for play: you could have some minis and a mat in some random dungeon and you would still be playing D&D in his wholefulness, with his reward cycle intact.

[Foxwarrior]

Are you saying that RuneQuest represents races better and more intelligently than D&D because you level up by being a "credit to your race"?

If you had to stat up the race that all the characters in Paul Graham's Essay shared, what attributes would you give it?

[flare22]

Humans and many other races can interbreed in dnd IE half orcs, half dragons and half elves. This and the general similarity between species of the humanoid sub type both in size and shape makes me think that all humanoids in DND are in the same animal family. in my games the species are biological similar enough that can can they interbreed but only for one generation like mules after that the half breeds are sterile.

[silva]

Are you saying that RuneQuest represents races better and more intelligently than D&D because you level up by being a "credit to your race"?

Yup, more or less that. ( the fact the fluff was created by a researcher as a vehicle for his studies on myth and anthropology - instead of created by comitee by a gaming company - also helps a little bit. )

[Scrivener]

I can accept elves and dwarves as they are (Final Fantasy XI had a neat take on their Elves... but longevity wasn't one of their traits), I'm just thinking out loud about how I'd do my own setting. I like bug people*, so for my fantasy heartbreaker setting the elf-dorf-human design space is consolidated to make room for bug people, lizard folks, and perhaps robots too.

I hadn't thought of that. I like the concept now, you don't have an uncomfortable amount of races and you don't have PCs whining they can't play traditional race X. It's actually the most elegant solution to that I've seen.