Mixed Blood World

[virgil]

There were two races, humans and another (elf, orc, fiend, whatever); and they were capable of intermingling. Then, every pure-blooded non-human is wiped out (or leaves) for some reason, leaving only humans and humans with varying degrees of other-blood. Is it a good idea to restrict the races of the setting to such a degree? Can you get away with just excising all of the race choices except for two, human and the halfbreed? Or would you do better making a selection of races (human, half-elf, quarter-elf, etc)?

This is presuming an otherwise regular D&D setting.

[deaddmwalking]

If the only elf is a half-elf, there's no reason not to call them elves.

It doesn't really matter if dwarves are short humans (half-dwarves) and elves are pointy-eared humans (half-elves) if there is nothing to distinguish them from.

If your version of 'elf' is what a 3.x half-elf is, and your 'half-elf' is the quarter-elf, that works just fine until/unless you introduce a 'full-blooded elf'.

There's no reason I can think of to tell people that they can't be 'an elf' if they want to, even if your version of elf is just a very slightly different human.

[Kaelik]

You have to ask what Races are actually doing for you. If you want there to be only one race for setting or gameplay reasons, that's fine, and if you want lots of races for the same thing that's fine.

What it sounds like is you want multiple races for one and not for the other? That's odd. The only gameplay reason to have races is to provide customization options in a package that is less complete than classes and more complete than nothing.

So I guess my main question is, since you are apparently at least setting agnostic, and probably setting opposed to multiple races, is that a thing you want to do badly enough to seemingly contradict the most divergent aspect of your setting?

Though I could plausibly see a collection of half fiends that are all different, and it not particularly conflicting with setting.

[virgil]

That's kind of my question - does the setting restriction mean it would be better to just have genetic variation be a matter of fluff, cutting out the race selection option entirely in character creation? Or does an otherwise generic D&D setting/ruleset necessitate a 'package' analogous to race?

[hyzmarca]

Generic D&D does not require races, as demonstrated by Basic where Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling were classes.

[spongeknight]

Well people like races in their fantasy. There are very few successful fantasy games that feature only humans, so there's a reason to include races right there.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Talking about half-elves is kind of questionably tasteful already, and if you start going on about being one-quarter elvish, your text is going to be straying uncomfortably close to 19th-Century talk about quadroons. I think you're much better off going the two-race route: there are people who have magic ancestry, and people who don't.

[deaddmwalking]

That's kind of my question - does the setting restriction mean it would be better to just have genetic variation be a matter of fluff, cutting out the race selection option entirely in character creation? Or does an otherwise generic D&D setting/ruleset necessitate a 'package' analogous to race?

Race can be a matter of fluff. Writing 'elf' on your character sheet can be mechanically identical to writing 'dwarf' on your character sheet, which is mechanically identical to writing 'human' on your character sheet. Since it is a game of the mind, you'll have people that have no problem claiming that their 'sword, basic' is a 'fine rapier forged by Montoya the elder before being slaughtered by the six-fingered man' but you'll have others that can't think of it as anything other than a basic sword.

If you're looking to provide a satisfying experience to your players, I think you'll find that most expect mechanical differences between the race and they'll be dissatisfied if it is a completely meaningless distinction.

Now, I think "how much mechanical difference is required to satisfy the majority of players" is a worthy question and that's obviously going to vary from one individual to another. I don't think you'll need much. But not having any differences is sufficiently unsatisfying to enough people I don't know why you'd opt that direction.

If human is really the only race, then some humans could be distinguished by taking 'magical ancestry' as a background talent with whatever options that gives them. I wouldn't define the specific background too finely - especially if whatever that background could be a mix of various races (demons, elves, fey) and none of the constituent parts require mechanical definition (since they are no longer part of the setting).

[Kaelik]

That's kind of my question - does the setting restriction mean it would be better to just have genetic variation be a matter of fluff, cutting out the race selection option entirely in character creation? Or does an otherwise generic D&D setting/ruleset necessitate a 'package' analogous to race?

There is basically nothing good about races in 3e D&D. They give you a bonus to whatever stat you care about, and that limits racial class choice. They give you some small minmax abilities in a package, but honestly, most of those are meaningless, and the ones you would actually want aren't spread across races. Practically everyone has Darkvision, and that's essential, but also duplicable at worst by 12,000gp. You wouldn't object to a racial bonus to saves from dwarf or halfling if you can find a way to get those races to give you a bonus to the one stat that rules your character, but basically everything else is so minor compared to stat bonuses and Darkvision that you don't even care.

In F&F races have no stat mods, and each race gives a language, a skill, a movement mode, and a sensory mode. And all of those are supposed to be roughly balanced against each other (with the people with the best sense getting the worst movement mode, and the best movement mode getting the worst sense, to even the edges). But that's only because I feel that the setting is improved by races, not because that particular gameplay design is something essential to a D&D game, since it mostly isn't true of any current D&D game.

It sounds like if you don't want setting races, there is no reason at all for game mechanical differentiation between what amounts to a pile of half elf sub races.

[kzt]

It's my opinion that you can create sufficient differences to make people who are not attempting to break your game happy without going to different races with magical abilities and odd mechanical advantages. The differences in appearance, background, skills and worldview between a 15th century Samurai, a 15th century Kalahari San tribesman and a 15th century Spanish soldier are pretty major.

But whatever makes people happy.

[Mechalich]

In D&D race mostly commonly functions as a sort of broad proxy for culture. This is kind of stupid, but it seems to be what people expect. It also is a lot less likely to trip racism landmines when you're functioning solidly in the land of fantasy racism/speciesism rather than dealing with proxy cultures. Everyone hating the elves for behaving like a dickish bunch of imperialists who believe they're the 'master race' is so much safer than everyone hating the blond and blue-eyed human culture that behaves the same way.

In the same vein, if you what different types of characters to have different ability score bonuses/penalties at creation, you need races - because while people except that different species have different traits (D&D races blur the line between species and subspecies but its not really important) you can't go around saying that about different human subgroups.

[Josh_Kablack]

Talking about half-elves is kind of questionably tasteful already, and if you start going on about being one-quarter elvish, your text is going to be straying uncomfortably close to 19th-Century talk about quadroons.

I almost thought virgil was going this way on purpose in order to highlight the ways D&D races are uncomfortably close to.parts of real world 20 the century racism.

[erik]

I'd rather treat "half" elves as anyone who has noticeable elven heritage, then give them elf traits minus the cultural stuff like weapon proficiencies.
Basically you are binary either human or another race for purposes of game mechanics.

Doing this you could make every race an offshoot of humanity. A halfling has a human some where in their family tree, and occasionally a halfling couple may wind up having a human child.

If everyone is human to some extent and able to interbreed then you'll get mixes of everything from what happens if you have half-elves and half-orc pairings and so on. I suppose you could state that semi-humans are only viable with other humans or semi-humans of their same type. So family trees could still criss-cross if a halfling couple above has their human child who then mates with a dwarf or something, but then those kids are either dwarves or humans.

[Username17]

Historically, Humans haven't brought much to the table as far as character background goes in Dungeons & Dragons. Being a Dwarf or a Halfling comes with various rules and expectations, but writing "Human" on your character sheet basically says absolutely fucking nothing. It's a non-choice, which if it does anything at all in the edition you are playing it is generally to not prevent you from taking various other character options that might be somewhat interesting.

As such, I can't really see the impetus to make everyone some flavor or another of Human.

-Username17

[erik]

Concur. "Human" is totally boring and the only reason I ever choose it is because I am starved for feats/skill pts. I should say that this sounds like a terrible concept, but if it's one Virgil is sold on, then my prior recommendation is what I'd do since it renders humans a bit less boring as they may have non-human families.

[OgreBattle]

There were two races, humans and another (elf, orc, fiend, whatever); and they were capable of intermingling. Then, every pure-blooded non-human is wiped out (or leaves) for some reason, leaving only humans and humans with varying degrees of other-blood. Is it a good idea to restrict the races of the setting to such a degree? Can you get away with just excising all of the race choices except for two, human and the halfbreed? Or would you do better making a selection of races (human, half-elf, quarter-elf, etc)?

This is presuming an otherwise regular D&D setting.

You can look at the Conan RPG on how it defines different playable races by the cultures they grew up in, so Cimmerians are good at running about, Afghanis can see in the dark due to their night raid fighting style, Khitai grow up with familiarity with sorcery, Hyrkanians are born on the saddle, and so on.

If you want to go down the "special bloodlines" then "my great great grandma was a stout bearded miner" isn't particularly exciting.

It'd feel more special if the bloodlines were more monstrous like...

-Fey blooded: faint traces of fey blood make you elfy
-Giant: faint traces make you grow longer pointy teeth and
-Badger blooded: faint traces make you stout, grow a lot of body hair, and dig well

Or you could go the Legend of Zelda route and having pointy ears or being short and stout with a beard are just physical descriptions associated with folks from certain parts of the world. Mechanically you can let people pick out some abilities/bonus skills with recommendations of "if you picked a bonus to perception you may have pointier ears".

[schpeelah]

I have to say this thread disappointed me. Usually when someone brings up a world of half-breeds, they mean crazy hybrids like mer-gnolls.

Generic D&D does not require races, as demonstrated by Basic where Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling were classes.

Your ears grow pointier with each level of Elf. You are considering multiclassing into Dwarf so you can grow a beard.

[Eikre]

Though I like humans, playing as humans, and setups where all the residents of the world are some manner of human, this particular method of humanizing everyone sounds really lame and hackish. Hackish in the "repulsively untalented" sense of the word, not the "cleverly improvised" sense. You're blowing away what I would tentatively recognize as the essential upshot of the whole racial conceit ("I am a dwarf! Woah! I'm not a human, but I'm just as smart as one??!?!?") while retaining the worst part of it ("I'm an orc! My dark skin, broad facial features, and ethnic propensity not to settle large urban centers all are characteristics which mark me indelibly as a sub-intelligent savage who exists, largely, to be killed, by you, a fair-skinned elf with superior material wealth, as is proper.")