Thaluikhain wrote:Out of interest, what's the appeal of playing a non-human that is within human ranges for stats and culture? I mean, I get the appeal of elves, being smart and good looking and long lived and just better. Drow get spiders to attack people with and an excuse to be naked.
Dwarves, gnomes, halflings...people play them, so there is clearly some appeal, but I'm not seeing it myself. What's being lost by having human (or close enough) be one thing, and your other options being something really weird?
Avoiding charges of racism and cultural insensitivity for one.
Many players want to play something that's
different from themselves. We've already talked about how many players want to have some facet of their character be directly analogous to a facet of themselves and that there is therefore a perceived need for characters to be "part human" even when their entire sales pitch is about their nonhuman aspects. But that pendulum can swing too far, and there isn't much
point in role playing if the character isn't meaningfully distinct from the player. Yes, there are games where you roleplay "literally yourself, but in a weird situation" but most RPGs we concern ourselves on this board revolve around players selecting avatars that are something other than simple standins for themselves.
But it's also boring to roleplay characters who have no faults. Sometimes players want to play characters that are gluttonous, alcoholic, senselessly mercenary, lecherous, vain, cruel, or whatever. In many circles, choosing to play characters with such faults is considered
better roleplaying. If you play a human with those traits, you're making a statement, and if you play a fictional alien with those traits, you're making far less of one.
Consider Quark from Deep Space Nine. He's a Ferengi, and a number of people have asked whether he represents an anti-Semitic stereotype. It's a reasonable question to have, and we won't get deep into the weeds of the various arguments pro and con (of which there are many) but simply leave it at the fact that the answer to that question is open to debate. But imagine if instead of being a Ferengi it was just Armin Shimerman, noted New Jersey Jewish actor, playing a human with all the same traits. That would be... very racist. Having a Jewish man playing a human who was obsessed with capitalist enrichment and constantly scheming for currency would not be
arguably anti-Semitic, that would be
obviously anti-Semitic.
When you say things about fictional groups of non-humans in a fantasy setting, that is automatically
less racist and insulting than if you'd said the same things about groups of humans. The thing from
Complete Halflings and Gnomes where it goes off on a ant about how the dark skinned Gnomes are stupid and steal shit is kinda racist. But if you made essentially the same rant about dark skinned
humans there wouldn't be any "kinda" about it.
Making your statements about Elves and Gnomes doesn't make things automatically not racist - but it does make things
less racist. There are demonstrably things you can get away with for your Orcs and Dwarves that absolutely would not fly with humans of varying skin tones.
-Username17