The Gaming Den

*Rumples brow* Why do certain fantasy races tend to pick up certain real world country traits when we pick them up? The best example I can think of off the top of my head is how several fictions seem to make dwarves sound and somewhat act like pseudo-scots.

Dwarves == Drunks
Scottish == Drunks

Dwarves == Stout men and women
Scottish == Stout men and women

Now, is this because the Dwarves are a Scottish stereotype or because they have similar stereotypes?

THEN WHO WAS PHONE?

You've got a fair point, though it's still a little strange. When I think of dwarves, if I -had- to assign them a nationality it'd likely be some sort of german. Then again, I may be biased, because my german grandfather was a stout drunk who once punched a horse in the face so hard it dropped where it stood. Regardless, german or nordic makes more sense to me.

Also theres the Highlands / Mountains connection and the idea of living in clans. The old Shadow of the Horned Rat had the Dwarves be Yorkshire, presumably becaues of the mining connection. (For non English people Yorkshire is reknowned in England for its coal mines)

Well, most of the folklore about dwarves comes from the edda.
Scots are strong willed, proud and have been a fierce warrior type in history. Also, their smiths supposedly made good weapons.
Sounds dwarvish enough to me O.o

because in the very original D&D stuff, the pamphlets and boxes and all that, each race was really just a thinly veiled, vaguely-extremely offensive racial stereotype as a short cut to creating actual cultures.

Elves=Asians and native americans
Dwarves=Scots with some viking and ever so little bit of jew thrown in
Gnomes=The rest of Jew
Halflings=French and gypsy, with writers who actually understood LotR writing them as more english
Orcs=Blacks. seriously.

Agrinja wrote:because my german grandfather was a stout drunk who once punched a horse in the face so hard it dropped where it stood.

...your grandfather was MONGO!?

In "Hero's Call," I had it thusly:

Elves == Muslim
Orks == Native American / Aztec
Dwarves == Norse/German

No halflings or gnomes

Prak_Anima wrote:

Agrinja wrote:because my german grandfather was a stout drunk who once punched a horse in the face so hard it dropped where it stood.

...your grandfather was MONGO!?

I'm probably going to regret asking this for many reasons, including having my rights to the internets revoked, but who the hell is Mongo? Also, to elaborate more, was an aggressive cart horse named Prince who harassed the hell out of my mom by trying to pin her against a tree. He got tired of her bitchin', so he punched the horse. In the face. He also wasn't a dwarf, he was more...particularly solid for average height.

Mongo is a character from the Mel Brooks's movie Blazing Saddles. He wasn't very smart, but was very strong. He also punched a horse in the face and knocked it out.

here is the clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8cDfnQD0ws

I had always seen it as:
dwarves=german
Elves=french (a bit of a stretch)
Illithids=russian
EDIT: that las one may take some explaining, it's not actually the cultures but the geo-politics. it makes sense that the surface dwellers would support the dwarves as a bulwark against the mindflayers (germany as a bulwork against russia), plus the illithids extensive use of thralls could (as an extreme stretch) be paralelled to russia's dominance of the ukraine and the baltic

When I was in the habit of throwing on real-world languages to sub for languages the PC's didn't speak, I used bad German for dwarfish.

Elvish was bad Finnish, Halfling was Scots, Gnomes spoke broken Dutch, Giants spoke a crude form of Swedish, and Goblin was represented by poor Welsh.

(Note that none of those languages I could actually speak, I just have a knack for picking up a few random words in languages, just not enough drive to learn a second language fluently. I don't think the PCS ever figured out that the traditional elvish greeting was "It won't taste like grape when it's up your butt").

Count Arioch the 28th wrote: (Note that none of those languages I could actually speak, I just have a knack for picking up a few random words in languages, just not enough drive to learn a second language fluently. I don't think the PCS ever figured out that the traditional elvish greeting was "It won't taste like grape when it's up your butt").

I'd like to suggest that they did know, and were just being polite enough not to asked how you learned it.

That was....incredible. You should totally have dwarves running around calling people jelly donuts if they're speaking bad german.

I've always disliked mapping RL cultures onto fantasy ones and visa versa. It always seemed like a failure of imagination.

I mean, it's really easy for me to assign some attributes I find interesting and then draw logical conclusions about a race/culture from there. It doesn't really take a big leap to say "hey, they are from an island, so they are probably a bit xenophobic."

Failure of imagination or just intelligently efficient?

Cultures are incredibly complex and vast subjects. They are built from the surrounding environment, historical events, and make up of the biological organism that lives in the culture. Trying to build one from scratch is a wasted effort.

Not only will it consume a lot of your time, but ultimately one or more of your players will be more efficient and simply map it to existing cultures that we all understand.

K wrote:I've always disliked mapping RL cultures onto fantasy ones and visa versa. It always seemed like a failure of imagination.

I mean, it's really easy for me to assign some attributes I find interesting and then draw logical conclusions about a race/culture from there. It doesn't really take a big leap to say "hey, they are from an island, so they are probably a bit xenophobic."

Mostly how I felt when opening the thread, though I do wonder how interesting it'd be to see some mapping that's done a little less....typically. Like making dwarves [not in accent] hopefully, some sort of insular asianesque society.

Agrinja wrote:That was....incredible. You should totally have dwarves running around calling people jelly donuts if they're speaking bad german.

Then they'd need a Boston accent.

krainboltgreene wrote:Failure of imagination or just intelligently efficient?

It's a failure of imagination.

Cultures are incredibly complex. They are so complex that "cultures that players understand" are really just "cultures that players have preconceptions about that are mostly wrong, and totally different from each other." With that being the end result, you might as well create a culture from whole cloth because it's actually easier to portray something actually foreign than it is to contradict several stereotypes about a particular culture.

Players don't need a lot of depth for a fantasy culture. You find a homeland, and draw conclusions from there. Then you add in a few industries, and draw conclusions from there. Then you add in some enemies or lack of enemies, and draw conclusions from there. Add in some major cultural events, and there you go.

So let's use this method to recreate a race we know well: the githyanki.

They don't have any industries because they live on the Astral and don't need food and there are little to no materials to work with. This means they have a lot of free time on their hands so would have to focus on art or war or science or religion. With resources so limited, they produce masterworks with what goods they do produce, and they are super-secretive and protectionist about those goods (silver swords).

They were enslaved by the mindflayers, so they place a high value on defense. Combined with their free time, this means they focus on war probably.

Being defensive, they live in large groups in virtual islands on the Astral. This means they are probably xenophobic.

Now, details we can infer:

-Seeing as they don't eat on the Astral, they probably favor very simple foods when they are not on it. They have no native cuisine or rituals based on communal eating. This is also why they are so skinny.... they forget to eat when not on the Astral until very hungry.

-Being a militaristic culture with lots of free time and growth rate dependent on gaining chunks of non-Astral real estate, their culture is deeply militaristic and structured. This also leaves little room for religion and art.

-Being effectively immortal on the Astral, they have ancient and hidebound commanders offset by fresher junior officers being killed in combat a lot. This means they are a strictly traditional culture with a strong emphasis on elder worship and hierarchy.


See? It's not that hard.

See? It's not that hard.

But this wasn't about difficulty. While that wasn't hard was it worth the effort? How about when your players just equate them to being Korean/German mixes?

krainboltgreene wrote:

See? It's not that hard.

But this wasn't about difficulty. While that wasn't hard was it worth the effort? How about when your players just equate them to being Korean/German mixes?

It took me five minutes, and most of that time was spent typing. So yeh, it was worth it even when I really can't look into my player's heads and figure out which mistaken notions they have about races (especially considering that they have different mistaken notions).

I mean, wtf is up with Korean/Germans? I can think up a few traits because I've had a friend who was Korean and I've seen a few WWII movies, but I honestly don't even know what to expect if someone walked up to me and said "they are a Korean/German hybrid."

I mean, half the things I could attribute to Korean/Germans are racist stereotypes from fifty years ago, so if someone told me in a game that some race was Korean/German I'd look back to my history and assume that this culture commits race-crimes on a nearby neighbor (which is totally not reflective of current Germans or Koreans) .

And that's what most people will do. It's a lot easier to just take the five minutes and start from scratch without the baggage.

K wrote: And that's what most people will do. It's a lot easier to just take the five minutes and start from scratch without the baggage.

But I think that's kind of his point...starting from scracth won't avoid that baggage. Because people will tend to associate almost any race with whatever stereotypes or historical models they are familiar with from real life.

You really can't describe a "proud warrior race" without someone associating it with the Japanese, or the Cherokee, or whoever. If necessary, they will do "the Japanese crossed with the Cherokee crossed with Australian Aborigines crossed with crocodiles". While you don't know where dude is coming from on the Korean/German thing, someone undoubtedly does hear the capsule description of your homebrew race and think "yeah, Korean/German hybrid, that's close enough". Because people will generally try to wrap the unfamiliar in a familiar package, so they can get a grip on it.

Not everybody does this, granted. But I'd wager most people do. We live in the real world, and we bring that real world baggage with us.

PoliteNewb wrote:
Not everybody does this, granted. But I'd wager most people do. We live in the real world, and we bring that real world baggage with us.

Yeh, but I'd rather have the player assign his baggage rather than have me assign some labels and have five different sets of baggage come into my game.

So if I said "German", then which German? The city-state Germans of Faust, the East Germans pre-Wall, the Nazi Germans, or the perfectly lovely modern Germans. How about the barbarian Germans that ate the Roman Empire? Hell, you could even do some clockwork German-engineering Germans and it'd still be German.

So I just start from scratch and some people take that without assigning their preconceptions. Some other people bring their closest preconceptions and then delete or add things as more details about my race filters in. It takes me five minutes to make a culture that makes sense and I save time not having to unravel misconceptions.

So, K, would having say, I was using Frank's Fantasy Kitchensink, and the game setting is "like Earth" (aka. this Hearbreaker campaign setting I've the past), the Hobgoblins in different parts of the world; look like the local 'organized' armies? While, in places that don't have organized armies; Hobs tend to look more like....I'm not sure.

Single weapon masters; or part of the local militias.

Maybe only more savage Hobs live away from other Hobs? While Orcs live more savagely, but it's not like there can't be an Ork General or Tribune.

So, each species has tendencies; and in different parts of the world, you see the species fulfilling these tendencies the best they can; and if not viable for them, they will shift around. The structured and logical Orc commander could very well have been born in Gaul, or among the Goths or Norse. However, he left there, and went to Rome.

Judging__Eagle wrote:So, K, would having say, I was using Frank's Fantasy Kitchensink, and the game setting is "like Earth" (aka. this Hearbreaker campaign setting I've the past), the Hobgoblins in different parts of the world; look like the local 'organized' armies? While, in places that don't have organized armies; Hobs tend to look more like....I'm not sure.

Well, the reason that all Hobs have a similar militaristic culture is because they would have had a diaspora at some point. So at some time there was a great Hob army and they were defeated and various units wandered around the world until they found places to live.

Orcs are barbarians because they have various homelands where they literally only war with each other and don't have contact with other cultures, and those homelands are resource poor so developing technology or culture is almost impossible. Hence, we have orcs in mountains and wastelands.

"Racial tendencies" is actually pretty racist, but cultural history and environment can explain present culture.