The Forge Archives

Archive => RPG Theory => Topic started by: RyuMaou on February 26, 2004, 08:14:04 AM

Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: RyuMaou on February 26, 2004, 08:14:04 AM
I was thinking about this the other day and it occurred to me that I don't know of any surviving, or even dead-but-once-popular, FRPGs that didn't involve elves, dwarves, or some other non-human player-character race.   Oh, wait, make that any non-modern....
Anyway, it got me thinking.  Are they really neccessary?  Can players do without them?  Even one of my favorites, Legend of the Five Rings, added in some fantastical player characters (naga and nezumi).  But, did they have to?  Will players not accept a humans-only FRPG?

Just wondering what you all think.
Thanks,
Jim Hoffman
aka RyuMaou
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Lxndr on February 26, 2004, 08:18:32 AM
I know I certainly would.  There's really a dearth of humanocentric fantasy settings.  I guess the short answer is:  No, there's absolutely no reason why non-human races are necessary.  But they can be, and often are, enjoyable.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Jack Aidley on February 26, 2004, 08:23:20 AM
Ars Magica and Pendragon spring to mind. While Dragon Warriors had non-human races, but they weren't playable.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Loki on February 26, 2004, 08:59:18 AM
This is a tangent, but has anyone ever noticed that the so-called non-human races like Elves, Dwarves, etc are really just humans with exaggerated characteristics? I mean, Elves don't really play like immortals, just humans with certain, quite human traits emphasized (eg they are often portrayed as "cultured" humans, or "nature-loving" humans, etc). Even Orks, the traditional enemy of humans and their cousins, are really just humans with our more brutal qualities emphasized.

So perhaps the real question is "*are* there non-humans in FRPGs?".

As long as I'm hijacking, if anyone is interested in reading some sf fiction that has really non-human races, check out Deepdrive, by Alexander Jablokov.

Okay, I'm returning control of the aircraft to the pilot.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: clehrich on February 26, 2004, 09:20:50 AM
On the main question at hand, I don't see that there's any reason a fantasy game can't be entirely humanocentric.  I haven't read them in years, but wouldn't the Conan books be pretty much like this?  Different races, of course, but not different species.  As to why there are always a fairly stock set of these races, I think you'd have to go back to the tremendous influence of Tolkien.

On Loki's point, Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead went to some lengths to describe an alien species (the Pequeninhos, I think they were called, or piggies for short) who were really very alien.  Not totally successful, but a reasonable stab at it.

On Ars Magica, note that you could play a faerie if you wanted to, but not as a Magus.

I do think that Loki's question, about whether there really are any non-humans, belongs in another thread, but I'd certainly be interested.

Chris Lehrich
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Ron Edwards on February 26, 2004, 09:24:29 AM
Hi there,

Loki, the answer is "Yes." We've beaten that one into the ground pretty thoroughly in the past, although I'd like some help from the veterans in helping me locate threads.

As for the more general question, it's hard to disentangle it from the larger Fantasy Heartbreaker issue. Not only do the FH games have nonhuman races, they have the same profile of races as their source material. But plenty of non-Heartbreaker fantasy games have nonhumans too.

I see them as falling into several categories.

1) A given set of nonhumans offers a specific kind of crisis for player-characters; that's what they're for. Trolls do this in Trollbabe, and I submit that most of the races in Glorantha are similar, especially trolls.

2) A given set of nonhumans serves as surrealistic color for a given setting, emphasizing some thematic element or perhaps just otherworldliness. I suggest that elves play this role in Glorantha.

3) As suggested and previously discussed, a given set of nonhumans provides a template for specific player-character and non-player-character behavior, kind of a shared-agreement or grounding element of play. Dwarves seem to play this role throughout fantasy role-playing games.

I sense some opportunity for several very focused and useful threads about this stuff. This thread might be a good starting point for figuring out what sort of variables and issues should be involved.

Best,
Ron
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Alex Johnson on February 26, 2004, 10:41:45 AM
I do believe that TSR's Conan RPG was humanocentric to the exclusion of other humanoids for player characters.  Certainly it is possible.  I don't know of that many game system/setting publications that were human-only, but I have certainly created a number of settings for existing RPGs that are human-only.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: timfire on February 26, 2004, 12:20:06 PM
While its entirely possible to have a human-centric FRPG, you also have to look at myths and fairy-tales. Many if not most have some non-human element. (Of course, that's my non-expert understanding.)
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: RyuMaou on February 26, 2004, 01:40:16 PM
Quote from: LxndrI know I certainly would.  There's really a dearth of humanocentric fantasy settings.  I guess the short answer is:  No, there's absolutely no reason why non-human races are necessary.  But they can be, and often are, enjoyable.

I've often wondered if this was driven by designers or players.  Are designers afraid that players won't play FRPGs that don't have elves, dwarves, etc?  I suspect that a lot, not all, but a lot, of FRPGs are trying to copy the success of Dungeons and Dragons, and include the non-humans because they were "in the original".  I haven't any real proof, of course, but I've often speculated on that.  OTH, it could be that everyone is so heavily influenced by Tolkien that they include them for that reason.

Quote from: clehrichOn the main question at hand, I don't see that there's any reason a fantasy game can't be entirely humanocentric. I haven't read them in years, but wouldn't the Conan books be pretty much like this? Different races, of course, but not different species. As to why there are always a fairly stock set of these races, I think you'd have to go back to the tremendous influence of Tolkien.
and
Quote from: Alex JohnsonI do believe that TSR's Conan RPG was humanocentric to the exclusion of other humanoids for player characters.  Certainly it is possible.  I don't know of that many game system/setting publications that were human-only, but I have certainly created a number of settings for existing RPGs that are human-only.

Conan is an excellent literary example.  And, that was the kind of thing I was thinking of, frankly.  There's so much great swords and sorcery literature that has nothing to do with elves and such that it's a wonder to me how it slipped past designers!  And, of course, that made me wonder if there was a reason.

So, is it still a marketable idea do you think?  Obviously, it was at one point in time, but is it still?

Thanks,
Jim
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Zak Arntson on February 26, 2004, 03:15:31 PM
Different design goals produce different results.

* Based on Literature - Here, the reason is easy. Does the literature have non-humans? Conan (Robert E. Howard) and Dying Earth (Jack Vance) are examples literature and subsequent games with only humans. Things get muddled if the game is based on literature based on gaming. Dragonlance comes to mind, being fiction based on plain vanilla D&D, subsequently turned into a game.

* Based on D&D - Let's face it, most fantasy rpgs are based on D&D, not Tolkien (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/20/). And that's what fantasy heartbreakers are all about; for the most part, their choice on races is because it's an assumed part of fantasy gaming.

I agree with Ron's assessment where, barring heartbreakers whose reasons are tied to the parent game, you have races emphasizing design goals. Tying into the third category, you have races representing an exaggerated aspect of humanity. Does this ties into the suspension of disbelief? Can players can more readily accept a violent barbarian if he's a half-orc? Or an aloof mage if he's an elf? Does it help the social contract if the player constantly stealing from the party is a kender, and expected to do so, rather than a human thief?
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Mike Holmes on February 26, 2004, 05:53:40 PM
If a game is a fantasy game it has to be about something fantastic to qualify, doesn't it? I mean, several of the games mentioned - Ars, Pendragon, etc - do have fantasy creatures in them. So there's two questions here, does the game have fantastic races available for play, and does the game have fantastic races at all?

Because I think that fantasy games that don't have fantastic races at all are near nonexistent.

The other element of fantasy tends to be magic - I'd have a hard time thinking of what to replace magic and races with and still call something fantasy at all. Sure one could just have magic, but magic, if it's to be anything like real life mythology seems to be tied up in belief systems that include fantastic races. Basically it's hard to avoid.

Not impossible, but difficult. The real question isn't so much if a game like that could exists, but what it would be about. Not problematic either, what I'm saying is that "not about non-humans" isn't a goal, it's just a specification in a larger design. I mean if you don't replace something like this you have less of a game than even the Fantasy Heartbreakers. Less isn't more unless there's something else to be focused on.

Mike
Title: Deryni
Post by: J B Bell on February 26, 2004, 06:36:27 PM
Grey Ghost publishes a game based on Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels. To my recollection, there are no fantastic creatures, though there might be angels (I don't remember seeing that, but I only read the first two trilogies).

--JB
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Mr. Sluagh on February 26, 2004, 08:11:08 PM
What about Exalted?  I mean, it has beastmen, Fair Folk and Lizard Kings, but those aren't really at all emphasized, especially not as PCs.  Non-human races are there, but human (albeit extraordinary ones with potent gifts from the gods) are still central to the setting.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Lance D. Allen on February 26, 2004, 09:04:18 PM
Even Conan had Fantasy creatures, if not necessarily whole races of them. Demons, dragons, giant serpents and bizarre magic-crafted creatures which lurk in the depths of dungeons.

It's beginning to seem that Fantasy creatures, if not races or available as player characters, do seem to be pretty essential to the definition of Fantasy. However, it isn't necessary to follow the same paradigm as DnD when using them, a mold which TRoS has mostly avoided, Shadowrun twists neatly, and Conan-type games avoid entirely.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Zak Arntson on February 26, 2004, 09:48:07 PM
We need to have a common definition of race, so we can exclude fantasy monsters, as used in a fantasy RPG. I'll try:

Race in a fantasy roleplaying is a species of which a player character or non-player character can belong.

But we are also running disparate discussions. Should this thread be closed to start new ones? Right now, we have a poll on which games have what races, a discussion on what makes a fantasy game fantastic, and the role of races in a fantasy roleplaying game.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Doctor Xero on February 26, 2004, 10:56:34 PM
Quote from: Zak ArntsonShould this thread be closed to start new ones? Right now, we have a poll on which games have what races, a discussion on what makes a fantasy game fantastic, and the role of races in a fantasy roleplaying game.
I don't know about closing this one, but I've started a new one on the role of fantasy races in FRPGs.

Doctor Xero
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Shreyas Sampat on February 26, 2004, 11:23:17 PM
FWIW, I think we can exclude Exalted from the discussion, Mr. Sluagh; the funny-looking people there are, for the most part, pretty much described explictly as "men in funny suits". The really unhuman types are (if the pattern holds) defined by their pattern of abilities, rather than any kind of description of their social behaviors.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: RyuMaou on February 26, 2004, 11:55:08 PM
Quote from: WolfenEven Conan had Fantasy creatures, if not necessarily whole races of them. Demons, dragons, giant serpents and bizarre magic-crafted creatures which lurk in the depths of dungeons.

It's beginning to seem that Fantasy creatures, if not races or available as player characters, do seem to be pretty essential to the definition of Fantasy. However, it isn't necessary to follow the same paradigm as DnD when using them, a mold which TRoS has mostly avoided, Shadowrun twists neatly, and Conan-type games avoid entirely.

Yeah, I meant fantasy humanoids that could be player characters.  An intelligent dragon is, basically, a god and doesn't count, in my mind.  

But, it is an interesting point.  If one removes the elves and dwarves and such, does there need to be compensating strangeness for the FRPG feel to be maintained?  And, one could argue that the sorcers in Conan weren't quite "human" any more either.  Remember the witch in the movie?  She was definately supernatural!

But, I also agree with the idea that someone else shared about a game being human-centric as A design goal, not the only design goal.  That's not enough to make a real, long-term game.

Very interesting input from everyone!  I may not have a definitive answer, but I have some things to think about!!
Thanks,
Jim[/i]
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: M. J. Young on February 27, 2004, 12:51:45 AM
My reaction is to cite Legends of Alyria. The characters are always human, although some have become deformed or empowered through mutation (yet still remain human) and others have been culturally dehumanized. It contains dragons and unicorns, and in a sense these are "characters" (there are no NPC's; any entity that is part of the action is a character), but they're really the gods of the scenario, and not the characters in the stories. However, this is best characterized (as Seth recently did elsewhere) as Technofantasy, so it probably doesn't fit. (Also, it allows for the possibility that there might be non-human intelligent races, providing the example of the Digger Paladins, a race of intelligent aardarks, as an option.)

I've done a number of fantasy settings for Multiverser; a few might be worth examining.

The Dancing Princess is essentially the old fairytale. The villains are demons in a parallel realm, but otherwise everyone is human. It's high magic fairytale stuff, definitely fantasy, and it plays extremely well without any fantasy races.

Sherwood Forest is much closer to realistic medieval, alternate historic. That may be part of why you don't see much "fantasy" without strong magic and magical creatures--at some point you cross the line and become "alternate historical". I'd think of Sherwood that way, even though there is a very low magic presence within the setting (so low it's possible to get through the game without ever realizing it's there, but it is).

I mention Bah Ke'gehn because it is clearly fantasy, highly magical, and sort of turns the question on its ear. The only humans here come from outside this world--the player characters being among them, a few others who arrived the same way the player characters did also present. It makes the humans the equivalent in this world of demons in our world, alien beings from another dimension who use evil technology instead of magic to do things. However, the beings here are the Bah, a race completely different from anything elsewhere, perhaps best described as a generally benevolent magical race most resembling demons in appearance.

The Farmland, in one of its two forms, admits a bit of magic and has nothing but humans in it. However, it's usually moving toward a climactic witch burning (the player character doesn't know it, but he's the witch), so magic is definitely not popular here.

Orc Rising turns things around quite a bit. I tend to describe it as a post-fantasy setting. There's very little magic (although in running playtests I've had to empower the elves just a bit to make them feel elfish, and provide a bit more holy magic to my clerics than I'd initially envisioned). Elves, dwarfs, and men are moving into modern civilization, and the issues spring really in large part because players expect humans, dwarfs, and elves to be the "good guys" and orcs to the "evil", and wind up in a situation in which the good guys (who really aren't evil and have good reasons for their actions) are oppressing, enslaving, and disenfranchising the supposedly evil villains, and then getting upset that the orcs fight against this. The good races are oblivious to the fact that their own treatment of the orcs is driving the orcs further toward violence, and the destruction of their culture and people is destabilizing them. Thus the fantasy tropes are used largely to create a situation for a premise which if presented as various Europeans and East Africans running slave trade out of West Africa (or any other historic slaving situation, such as existed in northern Europe or Asia or South America or anywhere in the world, really) might be too laced with personal feeling to be terribly playable.

You can do fantasy without the fantasy races.

So what's Tolkien's influence?

People who want to play in a fantasy game often want to do so because they like Tolkien and want to be in a world like his. Certainly D&D tropes are distinct from Tolkien tropes in a lot of ways; but they are recognizably similar, and playing a D&D elf is close to playing a Tolkien elf. To a lot of people, that's one of the main attractions of a fantasy game: playing one of those races. Take that out, and you lose part of your target audience. Pendragon is a great game, but you don't see a lot of D&D players jumping to it. Part of that is marketing, certainly. Part of it is the inability to play wizards and thieves. Part of it is the absence of such races. Why did OAD&D release the Arcana, the Oriental Adventures, and the Dragonlance materials? Why did AD&D2 offer so many settings with so many races, including the Planescape materials (in which a wealth of planar creatures were player character materials) and the space setting (permitting Illithids to be player characters)? It seems the more options you offer your players, the more players will sign up for your game. Maybe you'll only ever have one Minotaur Barbarian, only one Halfling Psionicist/Thief, only one Hengeyokai Kensai--but that's one more person who was interested in playing the game a little longer because there was something he hadn't tried before.

That's part of it, I'm sure.

--M. J. Young
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: contracycle on February 27, 2004, 04:08:33 AM
Quote from: M. J. YoungIt seems the more options you offer your players, the more players will sign up for your game. Maybe you'll only ever have one Minotaur Barbarian, only one Halfling Psionicist/Thief, only one Hengeyokai Kensai--but that's one more person who was interested in playing the game a little longer because there was something he hadn't tried before.

Hmm, but this also tends to produce the "random bunch of misfits and social outcasts" phenomenon, which then militates against any kind of character investment in the setting as setting.  I think a huge amount of Heartbreaker-type work is aimed at focussing this blunderbuss-style approach so that the weird and fantastic is still present, but thematically and aesthetically organised.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: hitsumei on February 27, 2004, 05:25:44 AM
Ironically, I've often found fantasy games with non-human races as, still, too humanocentric in their geopolitics...

Allow me to explain : if a majority of fantasy games have non-human races, you'd notice that, among them, a tiring (to my taste) majority have humans standing highest on the podium. Humans, not elves, dwarves or whathaveyou, are almost always _dominant_ : in number, hence in area colonized, in politically scheming/clashing realms. Naturally, this also gives them the most diversity in cultures, politics, religions, magic, while I bet that a steampunk _elven_ technomancy or some dwawish shamanistic-seafaring religion do not spring readilly to game designers' mind (just exemples, you see what i mean)... Wouldn't a game setting in which humans would be the _reclusive_ (or newcomers) ones not be fantasy? Does elves have to stitch to their forests, dwarwes to their mountains and orcs to their cave and/or more "original" non human races still be "somewhere on the borders of (CIVILISED) world"... generally not far from the "monsters".

Then, speaking of definition, do you really think that this word, "humanocentric", just imply games without non-humans...? ;-)

Are humans really necessary in a fantasy setting?

(As a side note : Im not sure this thread should have been split so early in the discussion... as my reply could have find its place in "the role of...."), but i hope you'll pardon my dilemna...)
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Scourge108 on February 28, 2004, 02:53:12 AM
I guess what I wonder is not why nearly all FRPGs have non-human races, but why do they nearly all have the same non-human races?  If it's a fantasy game, you can bet it's got elves, dwarves, goblins/orcs, and some kind of gnome/hobbit/kender thing.  Why was everyone so afraid to branch out?  I liked the weird races in Planescape, and even the different versions of the standard races in Changeling: the Dreaming.  I think Dwarves, Elves, and Hobbits have been done to death.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Doctor Xero on February 28, 2004, 06:18:50 PM
Quote from: Scourge108I guess what I wonder is not why nearly all FRPGs have non-human races, but why do they nearly all have the same non-human races?  If it's a fantasy game, you can bet it's got elves, dwarves, goblins/orcs, and some kind of gnome/hobbit/kender thing.  Why was everyone so afraid to branch out?

Because AD&D provides a common vocabulary for the gaming community.  

Because it pioneered our hobby, because it was once so widespread that it became known even to non-gamers, and because its initial races were very primal, AD&D races are better known than the races of any other fantasy gaming system.

Even gamers who have never played AD&D have a baseline understanding of the major races in that system.  So when gamers gather -- at conventions, at gaming stores, at university clubs -- they make reference to that system's game world.  For example, when I've talked about playing a Runequest elf with a gamer who's never played Runequest nor AD&D, I've had to explain to him what a Runequest elf is by pointing out how it differs from an AD&D elf.  I've never had to define an AD&D elf is by pointing out how it differs from an elf in some other system!  AD&D races are the baseline races in FRPGing.

I'd wager that more people who have never played AD&D nor read Tolkien know more about AD&D elves than they do about The Professor's vision of elves.

I think this is one problem 3E has.  They've tried to make the races more sophisticated, but in some ways they've lost that primal simplicity so that 3E elves are just one more variant off AD&D elves in the public eye.  That may be why, even today, people reference AD&D races more than 3E races.

Doctor Xero
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: neelk on February 28, 2004, 07:12:46 PM
Quote from: WolfenIt's beginning to seem that Fantasy creatures, if not races or available as player characters, do seem to be pretty essential to the definition of Fantasy. However, it isn't necessary to follow the same paradigm as DnD when using them, a mold which TRoS has mostly avoided, Shadowrun twists neatly, and Conan-type games avoid entirely.

Have you read Ellen Kushner's novel Swordspoint? It has no magic in it and no nonhuman creatures (aside from animals we would find on Earth), but is still quite obviously a fantasy novel. I'd probably use a very similar setting for any game in which I wanted swashbuckly action but didn't want to stick to historical referents.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: RyuMaou on February 28, 2004, 09:46:55 PM
Quote from: neelkHave you read Ellen Kushner's novel Swordspoint? It has no magic in it and no nonhuman creatures (aside from animals we would find on Earth), but is still quite obviously a fantasy novel. I'd probably use a very similar setting for any game in which I wanted swashbuckly action but didn't want to stick to historical referents.

For something similar that includes fantasy races, you might try Goblin Moon and The Gnome's Engine by Teresa Edgerton.  If you can still find them in print, that is.  She shows the several non-human races in very NON-AD&D ways.  They're both quite good.

But, somehow, I don't think that an FRP game that doesn't include significant doses of magic, of some kind, is really a fantasy role-playing game.  Of course, YMMV.

Thanks,
Jim
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: talysman on February 28, 2004, 10:39:22 PM
here's my take on the question.

yes, non-human races are necessary in FRPGs. my explanation is similar to Mike Holmes, but I'm looking at it from the viewpoint of the history of fantasy literature.

there were basically two 19th century ancestors to modern fantasy: otherworldly fantasy, including fairy tales, and occult fiction or horror. occult or mystical fiction, as well as horror, was just regular literature with a supernatural gimmick. thus, things like William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki stories, Dracula, Varney the Vampire, and so on were stories about ordinary people in contemporary times (or occasionally recent history) who experience extraordinary events or meet an extraordinary character.

otherworldly fantasy, in contrast, was about extraordinary places. the template for this style of writing was the fantastic travel stories, for example the writings of Cyrano de Bergerac about his journey to the sun and moon. a large chunk of otherworldly fantasy actually involved an ordinary person who travels to an extraoridary place, either in an unexplored region of the earth, in fairyland, or in some other world entirely. think: Alice in Wonderland, The Worm Ouroboros, or the Barsoom novels of Burroughs.

now, the point of fantastic travel stories is to show how otherworldly this other place is. almost every example includes otherworldly people; the greeks, for example, had stories about the land where people had their faces in the bellies, or where people had only one leg. it's part of the tradition.

the one exception would be stories set in the legendary past, such as H. Rider Haggard's The World's Desire, which was about the further adventures of Odysseus. as long as the story was about a time and place that an educated person could be expected to have heard of, writers felt no need to make the main character an ordinary 19th century person.

thus, in the early part of the 20th century, we still see C. S. Lewis doing normal-kids-go-to-Narnia or historical-character-in-the-myth-of-Psyche, but we don't see him use both extraordinary main characters *and* and extraordinary location. Tolkien starts to bend this rule, but he does this by making his fantastic settings as close to a Dark-Ages-mixed-with-European-myth setting as possible, so his readers wouldn't get lost. we first see truly otherworldy settings with main characters that belong to that setting in the pulps, starting with stories about atlantis or other legendary locations. modern fantasy developed this style into a pure otherworldly approach with no ordinary elements.

T. S. Elliot made a comment that you can have an ordinary character in an extraordiary setting (Alice in Wonderland,) or an extraordinary character in an ordinary setting (Dracula,) but you can't have everything be extraordinary at the same time, because then the reader has no point of reference. I was pretty annoyed when I heard this; I was certain he had to be wrong. still, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to be true.

so how does fantasy literature get away with this? by having races. at least one race is as close to what the reader is familiar with, despite being part of the extraordinary setting. they are the yardstick against which the reader can compare and contrast the other races. and if you have a more unusual race that you want the reader to identify with, then you have to have something *even weirder* to make the unusual race seem more ordinary by comparison.

so: you need non-human races (or humans with extraordinary features) because it's part of the tradition, but this only seems weird because of the presence of more ordinary humans -- who are there to provide a sense of familiarity.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: clehrich on February 28, 2004, 11:13:40 PM
John (talysman) makes some excellent points; I have a couple minor quibbles and a follow-up.
Quote from: talysmannow, the point of fantastic travel stories is to show how otherworldly this other place is. almost every example includes otherworldly people; the greeks, for example, had stories about the land where people had their faces in the bellies, or where people had only one leg. it's part of the tradition.
A quibble: If you look at the 16th-18th century utopian stuff, from More to Bacon (New Atlantis) and so on, it's not at all uncommon to see completely human "others", not uncommonly based rather loosely on tales about American Indians (in the 16th century) or Atlantis or whatever.  If the strong difference that's supposed to be interesting is a radically different political setting, it's quite common to find the "others" entirely human and familiar but living in a situation that is utterly extraordinary.

At the same time, this fits Eliot's description: Our contemporaries (ordinary) in an alien situation (extraordinary), whether the latter is inhabited by alien people or by human people in an alien environment.  So, just a slight fillip; otherwise fine...
QuoteT. S. Eliot made a comment that you can have an ordinary character in an extraordiary setting (Alice in Wonderland,) or an extraordinary character in an ordinary setting (Dracula,) but you can't have everything be extraordinary at the same time, because then the reader has no point of reference.
One important exception has come up long since Eliot, in what might rather dubiously be called postmodern fantastic literature.  Gene Wolfe's New Sun series admirably fits what Eliot describes as impossible, but it is precisely the point that we can't figure out what the hell is going on and it bombards us with alienness --- just as we begin to discover how it's not as alien as it looks.  Cool stuff, which among other things marks an actual difference between postmodern and modernist (i.e. Eliot).
Quoteat least one race is as close to what the reader is familiar with, despite being part of the extraordinary setting. they are the yardstick against which the reader can compare and contrast the other races.
Here I'd like to go a step farther.  I think Tolkien is cleverer than you implicitly give him credit for (although I know you were only covering him in passing), in that the identification race isn't human -- it's hobbits.  The humans are, let's face it, rather annoying as actual people, but just fine for heroic fantasy, i.e. Malory/Beowulf sort of stuff.  We can accept this and enjoy it precisely because the hobbits are like us, and they tell us how we should take the apparent pomposity and grandeur of, for example, Gondor.  When we find that the hobbits are both awed and slightly scornful, we know just where we stand, and can enjoy the grandiose high fantasy from within.  And then, at the end, Tolkien makes us see this whole fantasy at a level more like our (suburban English) lives, when we get to the Scouring of the Shire.

So do you need fantasy races?  Not necessarily, no, but bear in mind the many things they're good for.  If you wanted to do really interesting exploration with them, you might try having the humans be really exactly like us (i.e. boring middle-class folks who work 9-5 and so on) and then make the fantasy races very complicated, interesting, exciting, and dramatic.  Make us seem boring and tedious, and seduce us into wanting to be other.  Then turn it around and reveal how the other would really like to be us, because we don't have to put up with crap like destiny and gods walking around causing trouble and the fate of the universe and dragon-pee killing the roses.

Just a thought.

Chris Lehrich
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: RyuMaou on February 29, 2004, 01:44:51 PM
Quote from: talysmanhere's my take on the question.

yes, non-human races are necessary in FRPGs. my explanation is similar to Mike Holmes, but I'm looking at it from the viewpoint of the history of fantasy literature.

there were basically two 19th century ancestors to modern fantasy: otherworldly fantasy, including fairy tales, and occult fiction or horror. occult or mystical fiction, as well as horror, was just regular literature with a supernatural gimmick. thus, things like William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki stories, Dracula, Varney the Vampire, and so on were stories about ordinary people in contemporary times (or occasionally recent history) who experience extraordinary events or meet an extraordinary character.

Well, first, I disagree with this basic premise.  I think there were quite a few more potential origins of modern, Western fantasy.  Keep in mind, that is what you're talking about.  The view you present is a very, very Eurocentric one.  That being said, how does Beowulf fit in?  What is Grendel, really?  For that matter, what about so many of the Brother's Grimm fairy stories?  Where are the non-human races in, say, the Swan Princess?  Or the Frog Prince?  Or Sleeping Beauty? Or Tom Thumb?

Quote from: talysmanso: you need non-human races (or humans with extraordinary features) because it's part of the tradition, but this only seems weird because of the presence of more ordinary humans -- who are there to provide a sense of familiarity.

But, how does that fit with, say, Asian mythology and fantastic literature?  I don't think it does.  Unless, of course, you count demons and other divine or semi-divine spirits as "other races".  OTH, I suppose if you define anything broadly enough, it's included in, well, everything.  
Take, as an example, the Journey to the West.  It features the Monkey King, who is not a "race" per se, but a very unnatural and unique being.  He travels through a fairly "normal" landscape meeting quite a few other, unique, supernatural beings like himself.  Clearly a fantasy, which has been retold in fairly modern times.  There was a movie done based on this story as few as three years ago.  I remember seeing it in Las Vegas on my honeymoon in 2001.

So, basically, I disagree with the "requirement" of fantasy races in fantastic literature.  Which, incidentally, is not the same as a requirement in a game.  I'm still not sure that it's not a requirement of a FRPG, no matter the setting.

Thanks,
Jim
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Itse on February 29, 2004, 04:11:10 PM
I see many reasons for the status quo. Fantastic races are damn handy the way they are.

Fantastic races are not obviously analogical to actual human races, and people often don't see them as such. This is very handy for fiction, since it helps a great deal in handling cultural differences. Not only are the sides more easily identifiable and clearly separate when they are made somewhat fantastic, but it also helps to concentrate on the actual issue. If the reader/players connects the two races with realworld races, he will propably start adding things to the setup which are not meant to be there. In other words, fantastic races are somewhat succesful in dodging the potential problem of realworld racial prejudices dripping over into how the players see the fictional world. Also, fantastic races are an easy way to go around political correctness. These days you just can't have the bad guys be the ones with black skin, unless they are orcs or something similar, obviously non-human.

Creating cultures which are both credible and different from existing ones is very difficult. It's also hard to get the reader to understand that there are very fundamental differences. Making a race fantastic helps. It makes the point of "these guys are not like us" very apparent, and you can also create totally new premises for a culture. "These people don't get sick or die. That makes their culture different."  Creating fantastic races which the reader will believe and understand is extremely difficult, so it's safer and easier to go with the established ones and just tweak them for your own needs. It also saves a whole lot of work.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: contracycle on March 01, 2004, 04:54:10 AM
Hmm, I still disagree, I ave felt for many years now  that fantasy races are at best supurfluous and at worst pernicious.  I disagree that they make tyhe handling of cultural differences easier and more explicit, because they obviate the issue precisely becuase its a race property, not a culture property.  I disagree that they allow RW racial issues to be dodges, rather IMO they allow such stereotypes to be projected under the guise of 'fantasy'.

Further, I think characters like Monkeyt, which are arguably divine, and the sundry glopblins and fairies that inhabit mythology, are not the same as FRPG races at all.  This is because those creatures usually inhabit a speciif, and often metaphoric, morally meaningful, place in the worldview of the culture in question.  They are not just funny looking strangers with strange customs, even if they are the stock villain.

I think that if the game is meant to deal with issues of cultural relatavism or similar, making the characters in it it nonh-human only undermines the attempt.  If I want to address such cultural issues, I think it is easier and more worthwhile to present human cultures.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Doctor Xero on March 01, 2004, 02:31:13 PM
Quote from: RyuMaouThe view you present is a very, very Eurocentric one.  That being said, how does Beowulf fit in?  What is Grendel, really?  For that matter, what about so many of the Brother's Grimm fairy stories?  Where are the non-human races in, say, the Swan Princess?  Or the Frog Prince?  Or Sleeping Beauty? Or Tom Thumb?
Quote from: RyuMaouBut, how does that fit with, say, Asian mythology and fantastic literature?  I don't think it does.  Unless, of course, you count demons and other divine or semi-divine spirits as "other races".
Quote from: contracycleI think characters like Monkey, which are arguably divine, and the sundry glopblins and fairies that inhabit mythology, are not the same as FRPG races at all.  This is because those creatures usually inhabit a speciif, and often metaphoric, morally meaningful, place in the worldview of the culture in question.
In the actual text, Grendel is definitely depicted as a creature of a nonhuman species (to use modern wording).  The various faerie stories of The Brothers Grimm, Perault, Lang,  d'Aulnoy, Anderson, et al. are filled with otherworldly creatures and anthropomorphic animals which would all function well as FRPG races.  To state that they do not count as fantastical races merely because of singularity or obvious thematic niche is to ignore how much The Professor's hobbits, elves, and dwarves function in precisely the same fashion!

As for Asian mythology, a simple Google search will reveal that Japanese and Chinese mythology/folklore is filled with fantastical races which would function quite well as FRPG races, including dragon kings and noblefolk, fish people, the kappa, and the over-used kitsune.  Similar fantastical races can be found in the non-Eurocentric mythology/folklore of the various Native American and African tribes.  The Middle East is not Eurocentric, either, and fantastical races can be found in the mythology/folklore surrounding the three Abrahamic faith traditions (such as the race of giants of which Goliath was a member).

Doctor Xero
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Doctor Xero on March 01, 2004, 02:39:57 PM
Quote from: contracycleI disagree that they allow RW racial issues to be dodges, rather IMO they allow such stereotypes to be projected under the guise of 'fantasy'.
I agree.  The racism in the second STAR WARS trilogy was not mitigated by the use of fictional alien races.  (Nor was it entirely unintentional according to an interview with the actor who played JarJar Binks and who claimed he had done a Jamaican caricature as a joke without considering how it might come across as racist.)

On a purely personal level, I'm not comfortable with using my campaigns as real world dodges of serious racial issues (or other serious issues) which threaten our current real life.  YMMV

Doctor Xero
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: RyuMaou on March 01, 2004, 05:38:59 PM
Quote from: Doctor XeroIn the actual text, Grendel is definitely depicted as a creature of a nonhuman species (to use modern wording).  

Okay, I'll buy that.  But, is Grendel unique or an entire sub-species?  I was always under the impression that Grendel was unique, at least after its mother was killed.

Quote from: Doctor XeroThe various faerie stories of The Brothers Grimm, Perault, Lang,  d'Aulnoy, Anderson, et al. are filled with otherworldly creatures and anthropomorphic animals which would all function well as FRPG races.  To state that they do not count as fantastical races merely because of singularity or obvious thematic niche is to ignore how much The Professor's hobbits, elves, and dwarves function in precisely the same fashion!

Yes, they would function well in that regard, but do they in the literature?  I don't think so.  Perhaps we see the "singularity" issue as different.  Elves are certainly a race of people, as are hobbits and dwarves.  But, the Swan Princess is a human, under a curse.  Tom Thumb is unique and, therefore, not a race.  As is the Frog Prince.  They might make quite nice fantasy races, but that's not how they are presented.  Ergo, fantastical races are not neccessary to fantasy literature.  Fantastical beings, which, of course, those all are, might be a requirement.  But, you're talking apples and oranges to the original question.

Quote from: Doctor XeroAs for Asian mythology, a simple Google search will reveal that Japanese and Chinese mythology/folklore is filled with fantastical races which would function quite well as FRPG races, including dragon kings and noblefolk, fish people, the kappa, and the over-used kitsune.

Okay, you're right about the kappa and the kitsune, but I wasn't counting divine beings.  In my mind, they fall under the category of "gods", which are a whole different kettle of fish.  Dragon kings are, in one sense, a "race", but only in the sense that angels are a "race".  Similar, but different.  Which I think is fairly obvious when you follow those links from Google.

Quote from: Doctor XeroSimilar fantastical races can be found in the non-Eurocentric mythology/folklore of the various Native American and African tribes.  The Middle East is not Eurocentric, either, and fantastical races can be found in the mythology/folklore surrounding the three Abrahamic faith traditions (such as the race of giants of which Goliath was a member).

Again, based on what I know of Native American myhology, those are arguably divine beings.  I'm not sure about the African reference, but then, this is the first time it's been mentioned.  And, as for Goliath being a member of a "race" of Giants, I seem to recall he was a Philistine, who happened to be a giant.  Not the same thing as being a member of a self-perpetuating race.

The rest of the examples that have been mentioned, however, were Eurocentric.  I'll admit that I forgot about the two Japanese examples that you used, but I've been reading Chinese mythology lately, so that was where I was focused.  
And, of course, the question of whether or not fantasy races are required for a game is still up in the air, as far as I'm concerned.  All other arguments aside, I'm not sure that enough people would buy it to make it a viable game.  I'm talking break-even business models here, BTW.  And, I'm just not sure there's enough of a market for a game with out the "standard" fantasy races.

Thanks,
Jim
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Shreyas Sampat on March 01, 2004, 06:06:06 PM
I don't think you're going to get anywhere by positing an arbitrary distinction between "divine" beings and others, particularly since the conception of divinity varies so widely between cultures.

The distinction between races and unique beings looks much more interesting to me, and I'd like to know what you make of that in the context of RPGs.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: RyuMaou on March 01, 2004, 08:01:00 PM
Quote from: Shreyas SampatI don't think you're going to get anywhere by positing an arbitrary distinction between "divine" beings and others, particularly since the conception of divinity varies so widely between cultures.
Perhaps not, but I feel that it's an important difference.  How about this, if the race is effectively immortal and has power far beyond anything the players would have, it's not the same thing as, say, a community of beings that might generate "heros" who adventure in the world.    A different order of magnatude, if you will, that remove such beings from being considered for players or NPCs.

Quote from: Shreyas SampatThe distinction between races and unique beings looks much more interesting to me, and I'd like to know what you make of that in the context of RPGs.
Well, unique beings are just, heros with power.  They may, or may not, be supernatural.  But, they are fundamentally different than a community of beings that have similar characteristics.  A group of players that are uniquely "gifted"  are different than a group of similar people with different specialties.

OTH, my wife had an idea about a game based on specifically that.  A group of people who all start out more or less "normal" but develop mutations or supernatural "oddities" as the game goes on.  The goal is to accomplish a task or tasks while learning to live with these sudden changes, some of which are good and some of which are not so good.  I might have to develop that, actually.  It seemed like an interesting idea.

Thanks,
Jim
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Bill Cook on March 01, 2004, 11:14:23 PM
There was a hard-bound, one volume game that I used to have.  And I just loved it!  Can't remember the name.  On the cover, it had a devil rising out of a pentagram behind an alchemist at his desk.  Anyway, it was ingenious.  Every line.

And I seem to remember it making the point that the first generation of fantastic beasts were mix-a-matches of existing creatures.  An unconvincing example would be . . . a jackelope.

[OT] This book also made the point that traditionally, magic occured for its own sake.  Certainly not in any functional way.  And that any fantasy game that ignored the struggle for Christianity to subplant Paganism was missing the boat. [/OT]

To me, what's most ugly about non-humans is using them as templates for character advantage.  Particularly when they trump class functions.  (Urge to burn Player's Handbook rising! . . .  Rising!! . . .  Fading . . .)

BTW, hitsumei, Mr. Sluagh, welcome to the Forge!
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: AnyaTheBlue on March 02, 2004, 12:28:58 AM
I think that there is a general consensus on the main point of the thread.

Are intelligent non-humans AS PCs necessary for a game to be a Fantasy RPG?

o No.  It is possible to make all of the PCs restricted to 'normal' humans.

Are intelligent non-humans as NPCs necessary for a game to be a Fantasy RPG?

o Yes.  With a caveat.

Why?

There's not just one reason.  First, Fantasy RPGS are, to a degree, attempting to Simulate-with-a-capital-S Myths and Fairy-tales.  Myths and Fairy-tales contained supernatural creatures with human-like intelligence and motivations.  Puss-in-boots and all the other talking animals.  Fairies, sprites, goblins, kobolds, and so forth.  At one time, real people believed most of these things to be real.  Modern Fantasty Fiction and the games that it inspired have attempted to embelish, simulate, or simply be inspired by these myths and legends

Most of the Fantasy Races descend, yes, from Tolkien's examples.  But that's not required.  They provide a shorthand that is commonly used in the grammar of FRPs, but Talislanta, if nothing else, shows us it's not necessary to use the stock set.

As someone said upthread, a Fantasy RPG has to have fantastic things in it.  If a place is fantastic, but entirely occupied by the mundane and ordinary, well, where's the Fantastic?  Fantasy entails the Fantastic, be those Fantastic People (mages, heroes, etc.), Fantastic Beings (dragons, unicorns, griffons), Fantastic Races (elves, dwarves, trolls, ad nauseum), Fantastic Things (the holy grail, Mjolnir), Fantastic Cultures, and Fantastic Places (Jotunheim, Olympus, Atlantis, Avalon).

The Fantastic source material is full of Fantastic places, and also Fantastic people, places, and things.  It's common to have Fantastic Things in Fantastic Places (elves, goblins, magic cauldrons, and so forth all in the Mystical (and hence Fantastic) Otherworld, or the Spear of Longinus in the Kingdom of the Fisher King), and it's common to have Fantastic Things and People in mundane places (Merlin and Excalibur).

There is a caveat.  You can have the fantastic without fantastic races, but only if you really constrain yourself.  It could be done.  I'm not sure if it would completely qualify as a standard FRP.

One option would be to have only the place, creatures, things and perhaps some of the people be Fantastic.

But what would that look like?  Surrounded by all this fantastic stuff, why would the people be 'normal'?  Why wouldn't they become fantastic themselves?

A good option here is to make everybody human, but then make the cultures they belong to Fantastic in some way.  If you took the Ducks, Trolls, Elves, Trolls, and so forth out of Glorantha, but left the magic and gods in, well, I think it'd still be Fantasy.  Of course, it wouldn't really be Glorantha, but that's another issue entirely.

But here's the thing.  In the end, you kind of end up recreating yourself.  No, you may have excluded Fantastic Races, but those races are a 'shorthand, archtypical stereotype set'.  Without them to fill those roles in the game and the setting, you make other things which end up looking an awful lot like them -- humans who belong to a culture with an elf-like role in the setting, or humans with certain 'special traits' or 'taint' or a club/guild/caste/whatever that, again, make them elf-like (Jorune had some of this going on, actually, with the elf-like Muadra (I think I spelled that right) and their (massive and giant) dwarf-like bretheren).

Heck, look at Star Wars.  Jedi are Elves (Yoda is ancient and has pointy ears -- you do the math).  The Sith are Drow.  Stormtroopers are Orcs.  Robots are kinda Dwarves, but so is Chewbacca.  Everybody else is surreal color of one sort or another.

I guess my conclusion is yes, you can make an FRP without any fantasy races.  But the trade-off is that you'll replace them with humans (or whatever) that fill the same evolutionary niche in the Fantastical story-scape.

Which is a roundabout way of saying they have to be there in some form or another.  But you don't have to call them elves, dwarves, or even fantasy races.  You can disguise them as castes or cultures or guilds of humans.

Well, in my opinion, anyway.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Zak Arntson on March 02, 2004, 12:45:44 AM
Quote from: bcook1971There was a hard-bound, one volume game that I used to have.  And I just loved it!  Can't remember the name.  

That would be Fantasy Wargaming by Bruce Galloway. And, interestingly, it is an attempt to provide rules and background to play a believable game based on a fantasy medieval period. Complete with Christianity, Satanism and Nordic religions. Also, it is an example of fantasy game which does not allow for PC fantasy races.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: contracycle on March 02, 2004, 04:29:08 AM
I may have a slightly clearer expression of my approach after thinking about it overnight.

I have come to think that OD&D hit the nail on the head when it distinguished all the non-player creatures as Monsters.  That is what they are, monsters, NOT people or any kind of self-sustaining race or gene line.  The purpose of Monsters, much like ninja's, is to flip out and bite peoples heads off.  Yes, they can have other thematic roles, but I think the primary function is probably to be eaters of people.

Now it seems to me that this was implicit in early D&D; theres no real attempt to make a coherent mythological or realistic 'ecology' or anything; just a compendium-like list of things that might conceivably encountered.  And in my opinion many of these were mistakenly generalised, like Medusa going from individual to species.

Now orcs and goblins et al fit in an interesting place here.  I think it is essentially only the Tolkienesque convention that introduces multiple 'races' as vehicles for the readers identification.  I don't think the kappa or the svartalfar are really races or species at all in the sense that RPG uses the term; they are still Monsters as OD&D uses the term.  They are completely inhuman, and presented in contrast to the humans.  They are not the Enemy because they are different or strange; they are the Enemy because they are our predators.

So let us say, that yes I agree that in order to be Fantatstic, some sort of Monster must probably be introduced, some sort of threat that could potentially drag your dearly beloved off into the bushes and eat them, complete with all the wet noises (but that said, this works perfectly well in SF without much of this confusion).  But in addition to the role that Monsters play, we have a whole body of work going in the opposite direction, the Orcs Are People Too movement.

I think that a lot of early RPG texts gave a sort of National Geographic-style description of these 'races', sometimes even including unkowns in the ' it is believed that...' form.  Their living arrangements and technology are described, sometimes even their ritual and mating and honour codes, that sort of thing.  The conclusion that Orcs Are People Too is quite strong, and this I believe is derived from the Tolkienesque precedent of realised, speaking enemy races.  But it seems to me that exactly there lies the problem: whether orcs are People or Predators.  Locked into the overarching mythic structure of LOTR, Tolkien can probably get away with orcs as rather people-like predators, but denied this specifically meaningful identity in most FRPG, and instead presented as just something that happens in the game world, the orcs-as-people concept has no counter-argument to overcome.

I think that this has resulted in a confused mess.  I disagree with the claim that there are a wide variety of existing (in the literary sense) mythical beings that are analogous to FRPG races... the kappa and kitsune to my mind having both a metaphysical function and a predatory relationship with humans.  They are not People Too, they are Monsters - even if some RPG has already senselessly made them into character races (no more than Medusa or the Minotaur become races).

Now, reverting to my otiginal point: if I wanted to do something that specifically addressed cultural relatavism, or cultural exploration, then I would strictly limit this to human cultures.  If I wanted to do something atavistic and directly threatening, I would employ Monsters.  But I think that the current crop of RPG races are caught in the divide between Monsters and People and I find them unsatisfying and/or counterproductive for this reason.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Doctor Xero on March 02, 2004, 03:58:54 PM
Quote from: RyuMaouBut, the Swan Princess is a human, under a curse.  Tom Thumb is unique and, therefore, not a race.  As is the Frog Prince.  They might make quite nice fantasy races, but that's not how they are presented.
I was referring to the races of enchantresses/fairies/et al. who cursed such individuals as the Frog Prince or the Beast -- don't forget that in much European folklore and some Native American and African folklore, witches and other enchanters/enchantresses are depicted as members of a race not as as individuals with magical skills.  (You'll find the same is true of Gandalf of the Istari.)  In some versions of the tiny child folktale (Tom Thumb, Thumbelina, et al.), the heroine or hero ends up married to a tiny fairy after ending up in intrigues involving anthropomorphic animals.  And then there're the innumerable ogres/trolls/giants faced by various and sundry heroines and heroes.  In some versions of The Sleeping Beauty, Briar Rose ends up with a mother-in-law who is half-ogre.  Folktales abound with "monster races" and such.

Quote from: RyuMaouIn my mind, they fall under the category of "gods", which are a whole different kettle of fish.  Dragon kings are, in one sense, a "race", but only in the sense that angels are a "race".  Similar, but different.
The reason that, as a folklorist, I am being so stubborn about this is that the division between fantastical race and magical/divine entity is a fairly modern conceit.  Elves/dwarves were originally viewed as no less divine than angels and gods, and I think it is a tad ethnocentric for us to dismiss their divine heritage.  One of the many sources for our image of the fairies is the Tuatha de Danann, the pre-Christian gods of what is now known as the United Kingdom.  Our modern division between the shadow fantastical race and the shadow magical/divine entity, between the monster and the demon, is similarly a modern conceit, born in part from early SF/horror tales.

One of the causes of our current confusion comes from European Medieval syncretism, as explicated by C. S. Lewis in his writings on the longevai (what we would now call the fantastical races).  Put simply, the European Medieval mindset wished to have an overtly Christian cosmology and metaphysics while still incorporating pagan imagery and figures -- so the gods-turned-fairies of previous religions became magical races halfway between divine angel and mortal human.  This is the primary origin of modern conceptions of the fair folk, strengthened and shaped particularly (though not exclusively!) by William Shakespeare's *A Midsummer's Night Dream* as well as The Professor's magnum opus.

Doctor Xero
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Doctor Xero on March 02, 2004, 04:27:13 PM
Quote from: contracycleThe conclusion that Orcs Are People Too is quite strong, and this I believe is derived from the Tolkienesque precedent of realised, speaking enemy races.  But it seems to me that exactly there lies the problem: whether orcs are People or Predators.

Your division has helped me to recognize a key dividing point in the discussion in this thread, contracycle.

I think we need to recognize that we're talking about two very different visions of (for example) elves without differentiating these two visions.

In some literary and folkloric tales, fantastical beings are members of another (often envied or feared) race : Tolkien's elves, Anderson's mermaids, MacDonald's goblins, Lewis' giants, Gaiman's angels, the elves and dwarves and fairies in many high fantasy stories, etc.  Monsters which are nothing more than dangerous beasts or dangerous people fall into this category.

In some literary and folkloric tales, fantastical beings are preternatural entities (sometimes like carrier particles of the metaphysical, to use a physics analogy) whether divine or demonic or embodiments of mystical awe : Grimm's fairies, Anderson's Snow Queen, Beagle's Last Unicorn, Shakespeare's Three Witches, the elves and dwarves and fairies in Norse and Celtic mythology, etc.  Monsters which are embodiments of nature's terrors or of human nightmares fall into this category.

And in some literary and folkloric tales, it's not quite clear.  (Or there is a mix, as in Arthurian lore.)

In general, in FRPGs there may be no difficulty with allowing a player to play an elf who is a fantastical being who is part of a magical race but most FRPGs do not allow players to play elves who are fantastical beings which are divine or are embodiments of mystical awe.

In its earlier days, AD&D outraged a number of devotees of folklore and mythology when they "mortalized" into entire races various folkloric and mythic entities.  This was seen as a disrespectful diminishing of the awe and power of these entities.  The World of Darkness with its races had a similar but far less intense reaction.  There are still those who argue about whether faeries or kappa or dragons or Judaeo-Christian angels should be allowed as player-character races.

Or, to reword this in part in your words, contracycle, not people or predator
but
people or predator or thematic(metaphysic) personification.

I think the discussion here involves several different now-intertwined thoughts:

*) whether one needs in an FRPG fantastical beings who are part of a magical race

*) whether one needs in an FRPG fantastical beings who are embodiments of the divine or the demonic or mystical awe

*) whether one needs in an FRPG to allow players to play characters who are members of a magical race

*) whether one needs in an FPRG to allow players to play characters who are embodiments

Doctor Xero
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: RyuMaou on March 02, 2004, 10:13:59 PM
Quote from: Doctor XeroI was referring to the races of enchantresses/fairies/et al. who cursed such individuals as the Frog Prince or the Beast -- don't forget that in much European folklore and some Native American and African folklore, witches and other enchanters/enchantresses are depicted as members of a race not as as individuals with magical skills.  
Really?  Which ones?  I remember the enchantresses as people with supernatural skills.

Quote from: Doctor XeroAnd then there're the innumerable ogres/trolls/giants faced by various and sundry heroines and heroes.  In some versions of The Sleeping Beauty, Briar Rose ends up with a mother-in-law who is half-ogre.  Folktales abound with "monster races" and such.
I mostly read those ogres and such as individual beings, not at all like a community.  At best, an extended family.  Like, for instance, Grendel.

Quote from: Doctor XeroThe reason that, as a folklorist, I am being so stubborn about this is that the division between fantastical race and magical/divine entity is a fairly modern conceit.  Elves/dwarves were originally viewed as no less divine than angels and gods, and I think it is a tad ethnocentric for us to dismiss their divine heritage.  One of the many sources for our image of the fairies is the Tuatha de Danann, the pre-Christian gods of what is now known as the United Kingdom.  Our modern division between the shadow fantastical race and the shadow magical/divine entity, between the monster and the demon, is similarly a modern conceit, born in part from early SF/horror tales.
Oh, that's nice.  You know what they say about opinions, right?

I, obviously, disagree.  But, then, I was also the kid who argued for thirty minutes with his Junior English teacher about just what Shakespeare meant when Hamlet was talking to Yorick.  
The division, for instance, between the divine and the "less-than-divine" in American Indian culture was non-existant because everything was divine, including lunch.  Was the same true of other cultures?  Maybe.  But, where do you draw the line?  It must be drawn somewhere or else there's no point in the discussion.  Or, perhaps that's your point...

Quote from: Doctor XeroOne of the causes of our current confusion comes from European Medieval syncretism, as explicated by C. S. Lewis in his writings on the longevai (what we would now call the fantastical races).  Put simply, the European Medieval mindset wished to have an overtly Christian cosmology and metaphysics while still incorporating pagan imagery and figures -- so the gods-turned-fairies of previous religions became magical races halfway between divine angel and mortal human.  This is the primary origin of modern conceptions of the fair folk, strengthened and shaped particularly (though not exclusively!) by William Shakespeare's *A Midsummer's Night Dream* as well as The Professor's magnum opus.

Actually, I think it comes from your lack of understanding of the question.  Or, your need to hijack the thread to prove some kind of point.  
The question related to fantasy role-playing games, not literature.  You keep bringing that up, though.  Working on an English paper?  Or, thesis?  I'm fascinated to know why you insist on encourageing topic drift.

Cheers,
Jim
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Itse on March 03, 2004, 11:36:17 AM
Contracycle:
Quote
Hmm, I still disagree, I ave felt for many years now that fantasy races are at best supurfluous and at worst pernicious. I disagree that they make tyhe handling of cultural differences easier and more explicit, because they obviate the issue precisely becuase its a race property, not a culture property. I disagree that they allow RW racial issues to be dodges, rather IMO they allow such stereotypes to be projected under the guise of 'fantasy'.

That's also true. "Easy solution" doesn't mean "good results" if your not ready to put some effort into the game in general. I just wanted to point out that I don't think that the current "standard" presentation of fantastic races is just a result of tradition. Most fantasy fiction is crap. 95% of everything is garbage.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: neelk on March 03, 2004, 01:12:19 PM
Quote from: AnyaTheBlueI think that there is a general consensus on the main point of the thread.

Are intelligent non-humans AS PCs necessary for a game to be a Fantasy RPG?

o No.  It is possible to make all of the PCs restricted to 'normal' humans.

Are intelligent non-humans as NPCs necessary for a game to be a Fantasy RPG?

o Yes.  With a caveat.

Thanks for summarizing the consensus, because it provides a really strong hook for me to explain just why I disagree. :)

First, I know the answer to the second question is "no", because, well, I've run fantasy games like that, and read fantasy novels like that.  For example, I ran a game in college which in a pretty standard late-Renaissance setting which didn't have any non-humans. There were swords, castles, magic spells, sorcerers, and all the usual trappings of genre fantasy, except that there weren't any gods (though there were religions), demons, elves, orcs, ghosts, or whatever. It was all just people.

I've been meaning to run a fantasy game without any magic in it, either. It wouldn't be very hard to do, either, for reasons I will elaborate below:

Quote
There's not just one reason.  First, Fantasy RPGS are, to a degree, attempting to Simulate-with-a-capital-S Myths and Fairy-tales.  Myths and Fairy-tales contained supernatural creatures with human-like intelligence and motivations.  Puss-in-boots and all the other talking animals.  Fairies, sprites, goblins, kobolds, and so forth.  At one time, real people believed most of these things to be real.  Modern Fantasty Fiction and the games that it inspired have attempted to embelish, simulate, or simply be inspired by these myths and legends.

This account overlooks an entire brach of the fantasy genre's evolutionary tree. An important ancestor of fantasy genre are historical romances. Think  of The Three Musketeers, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Ivanhoe, and later novels like The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Scaramouche, and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Historical adventure fiction was wildly popular in the nineteenth century, and especially in the latter half it occupied a position of literary (dis)respect roughly comparable to the way that fantasy and science fiction hold today. However, what's important to us is that writers often wanted to write historical adventures that were not overly constrained by actual history or legend, and from this impulse we got the subgenre of Ruritanian fantasy, which had "ordinary" adventure stories set in fictional (and sometimes fictionalized) countries. (And of course nowadays that technique is not just used for adventure stories -- cf LeGuin's Orsinian Tales.)

So, one game I want to run is adventure in the mode of Dumas, but I don't want to use a historical setting because I can't expect the players to know everything relevant. So, I can use an invented fantasy setting for this purpose. In it swashbuckling heroics would be appropriate, and I'd leave out magic and nonhumans because they'd just be a distraction.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: RyuMaou on March 03, 2004, 01:28:57 PM
Quote from: neelkSo, one game I want to run is adventure in the mode of Dumas, but I don't want to use a historical setting because I can't expect the players to know everything relevant. So, I can use an invented fantasy setting for this purpose. In it swashbuckling heroics would be appropriate, and I'd leave out magic and nonhumans because they'd just be a distraction.

Too bad that Fantasy Games Unlimited is kaput.  They made a game called "Flashing Blades" that was perfect for what you describe there.  Of course, they used the fictionalized France that Dumas wrote, but the rest of the game system would be just what you would want.  I'm at work now, but I think I actually have a copy of the game at home.  The box has been destroyed, but the game itself should be around.  If you're interested, we might be able to work out a "loan" of somekind so you could see the rules...

You know, I don't think I ever actually played that game.  I bought it just because I liked the Idea of it.  Well, the First Step is admitting there's a problem...

Cheers,
Jim
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Doctor Xero on March 03, 2004, 02:26:33 PM
Quote from: RyuMaouThe question related to fantasy role-playing games, not literature.  You keep bringing that up, though.
Yep.  Here're some reasons why:

Quote from: Ron EdwardsThis thread might be a good starting point for figuring out what sort of variables and issues should be involved.
Quote from: timfireWhile its entirely possible to have a human-centric FRPG, you also have to look at myths and fairy-tales.
Quote from: talysmanhere's my take on the question.
yes, non-human races are necessary in FRPGs. my explanation is similar to Mike Holmes, but I'm looking at it from the viewpoint of the history of fantasy literature.
---snip!--
so how does fantasy literature get away with this?
I agree -- I think it is indeed helpful for us to examine the myths and literature which are the source materials for modern gaming as one of many tacks from which to address this question, as Ron suggests.

Quote from: Zak ArntsonWe need to have a common definition of race, so we can exclude fantasy monsters, as used in a fantasy RPG.
I have tried to explain the folkloric/mythological definition as one possibility, although I would wager there are others just as valid.  For example, is a fantastical race one which is accessible to players?  Or is it any phenetic community even if only NPCs can be from that race?

Quote from: RyuMaouReally?  Which ones?  I remember the enchantresses as people with supernatural skills.
In early versions of Hansel and Gretel, the witch is identified as one of the evil race which have been eradicated from everywhere but the woods.  In the Kalevala, witches are quasi-deific.  In The Professor's fiction, Gandalf is specifically identified as being a wizard because of being part of the Istari, a race which is somewhere between human and angelic.  In some South American Indian folktales, there is reference to races of cannibalistic witches living outside the tribe and eager to harm it.  In one North American Indian folktale, for example, there is reference to a race of witches who derive their powers from being a race of serpent people.

Quote from: RyuMaouI mostly read those ogres and such as individual beings, not at all like a community.  At best, an extended family.  Like, for instance, Grendel.
The Sleeping Beauty's mother-in-law is specifically referred to as "from the race of ogres."  The dwarves of Snow White are referred to as members of a known race.  Fairies are a race to the point of having a royal court and exiled members.  In Greek mythology, the Nereids are a race of sea entities named after their transformed human sire, Nereus.  In The Little Mermaid, the mermaid is clearly identified as a member of a race.

Quote from: RyuMaouYou know what they say about opinions, right?
They say that a person can dismiss theories about the earth being round, about disease coming from microscopic organisms rather than demons, etc. by simply categorizing them all as opinions and then noting everyone's got an opinion as a way to imply that one's flat earth imps-cause-diseases notions are just as authoritative, is that it?

Quote from: RyuMaouI was thinking about this the other day and it occurred to me that I don't know of any surviving, or even dead-but-once-popular, FRPGs that didn't involve elves, dwarves, or some other non-human player-character race.   Oh, wait, make that any non-modern....
Anyway, it got me thinking.  Are they really necessary?  Can players do without them?  Even one of my favorites, Legend of the Five Rings, added in some fantastical player characters (naga and nezumi).  But, did they have to?  Will players not accept a humans-only FRPG?
Quote from: LokiThis is a tangent, but has anyone ever noticed that the so-called non-human races like Elves, Dwarves, etc are really just humans with exaggerated characteristics?
---snip!--
So perhaps the real question is "*are* there non-humans in FRPGs?".
Quote from: Doctor Xero
I think the discussion here involves several different now-intertwined thoughts:

*) whether one needs in an FRPG fantastical beings who are part of a magical race

*) whether one needs in an FRPG fantastical beings who are embodiments of the divine or the demonic or mystical awe

*) whether one needs in an FRPG to allow players to play characters who are members of a magical race

*) whether one needs in an FPRG to allow players to play characters who are embodiments

Quote from: RyuMaouI'm fascinated to know why you insist on encourageing topic drift.
cheers,
Jim
This is a good topic, and one with many responses, as I've shown above.  What you call topic drift others call figuring out what sort of variables and issues should be involved.  I hope this small selection of responses throughout this thread answers your questions and the evolution of this thread, cheerfully, Jim.

Doctor Xero
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: RyuMaou on March 03, 2004, 05:32:55 PM
Quote from: RyuMaouToo bad that Fantasy Games Unlimited is kaput.  
Usually, I hate to correct myself, but FGU is alive and well on the web at http://www.fantasygamesunltd.com  And, they seem to have copies of "Flashing Blades" available!  Who'd 'a thunk it?

Cheers,
Jim
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: RyuMaou on March 03, 2004, 11:25:49 PM
Quote from: Doctor XeroThis is a good topic, and one with many responses, as I've shown above.  What you call topic drift others call figuring out what sort of variables and issues should be involved.  I hope this small selection of responses throughout this thread answers your questions and the evolution of this thread, cheerfully, Jim.
Sorry, I guess my "topic drift radar" went up when you suggested splitting the thread before it had even gotten started.  It seemed excessive to me.
I'm also instantly suspicious of anyone who is a self-proclaimed expert, but who's credentials are unverifiable.  I'm funny that way.  (Rumor has it that you can pretend to be anyone on the Internet...)

That being said, I still see your long posts about literature as straying far afield, and repeatedly so.  Granted, I didn't specifically define what I meant by a "race" versus "human" versus "god and/or divine spirit", but I gave specific examples from games.  I really felt that you muddied the waters by introducing extra and, in my mind, unnecessary, definitions based on literature.  Also, they were opinions.  Sure, highly educated opinions, but still, just opinions.  Opinions, I might add, that were about highly subjective material.  You cited one interpretation of the examples given as The Correct Answer, based on the fact that you are a folklorist.  (Did I mention that people can pretend to be anything on the Internet?)  I'm sure you're tops in your field, but I interpreted those citations differently than you.

In any case, it certainly has been... interesting.  I'm still not sure about the idea, but, frankly, if it's going to draw this kind of discussion, I'm not sure its worth trying to market.  That was my real question, I guess.  Is such an idea marketable?  It might be, but I'm not sure it's worth it to me...

Thanks for the food for thought,
Jim
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: contracycle on March 04, 2004, 04:04:59 AM
Hmm, Dr Xero, I take your point, but I would feel a little more scope for metaphor might be allowed the people advancing these stories.  They may, after all, have a very different way of using the term race.  Recently, while reading the Plantagenet chronicles, I found a clergyman describing the people of Anjou as a 'race'.

So, looking at Hansel & Gretel again, when that describes a race of ogres living in the woods, I think its quite possible that what they are actually describing is merely a subgroup of one of the Germanic tribes with whom the local polity has been locked in conflict for some time.

Another feature of giants common in both European and Native American myths is the ability to intermarry with humans.  OK, now we can wave the stick that is 'myth' over this to wish it away, but it seems to me that the alleged giants and ogres in most mythology are very probably human but described in an overtly propagandist, if you like, manner.  I'm not sure theres a serious basis for claiming that the people creating these stories Really Believed in giants or ogres; I would think people who create explicit carvings of sexual congress would not overlook the mechanical problems implicit in, say, intercourse between a 20-foot giant and a 5-foot woman.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: RyuMaou on March 04, 2004, 07:59:31 AM
Quote from: RyuMaouI'm also instantly suspicious of anyone who is a self-proclaimed expert, but who's credentials are unverifiable.  I'm funny that way.  (Rumor has it that you can pretend to be anyone on the Internet...)

Someone pointed out to me, quite rightly, that they interpreted this as an attack on Doctor Xero's credentials.  Now that I've slept, I can see it that way, too.

Doctor Xero, I apologize for even seeming to question your credentials as a folklorist.  Beleive it or not, that was not my intention.

To avoid the risk of further derailing the thread, let me say simply that I disagree with how you interpreted both the source material you referenced and the original question.

Sorry for the trouble.  And, again, thanks for the food for thought,
Jim
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: clehrich on March 04, 2004, 02:26:00 PM
RyuMaou, let me know if this is off-topic, but it seems to me that there's a lot of confusion arising because of the use of folklore in somewhat dubious ways.

First of all, if we're talking about folklore and myth as the products of various so-called "traditional" cultures, then we're dealing with major issues of translation every time we make blanket assertions.  The texts are only as good as the ethnographer or transcriber, and one should I think be exceedingly wary of leaning heavily on specific verbiage.  This is especially true when the words in question are things like "race" or "species," which are (as we see in this and other threads) confused enough concepts in our culture that it's not at all clear whether they might appear elsewhere, much less how.

For example:
QuoteIn some South American Indian folktales, there is reference to races of cannibalistic witches living outside the tribe and eager to harm it.  
Now let me put that rather differently.  In some South American Indian folktales, there are references to cannibalistic beings who live outside the tribe and are eager to harm it.  There are also references to, for example, jaguars who are masters of fire, married to human-appearing women, the former making friends with various culture-heroes, and the latter being threatening.  What's this got to do with race?  The Jaguar, simply because he is highly intelligent, copulates with a human-seeming woman, and has mastered certain skills that humans get from him, would appear here to be no less a "person" than anyone else.  Fine, but does that make him a "race"?  I think the distinction is invalid: unless the people in question make such a distinction, it is very dangerous to impose it.

On a related note:
QuoteIn early versions of Hansel and Gretel, the witch is identified as one of the evil race which have been eradicated from everywhere but the woods.
By whose telling?  What word is actually used?  Do we know precisely what it meant to that person?  Again, I doubt it.  Let's suppose we were talking about the Grimm brothers, for example; what exactly did they mean by whatever word we're here translating as "race"?  Do you see what a complicated issue that would be, given when they were writing, and how that would considerably color what we thought was meant?

My point isn't that folklore and myth aren't good sources for FRPG "races", but rather that I don't think we can root our use of this sort of classification in those prior sources.  If we use them, it's our business; it's our appropriation, and our construction.  Pointing to some myth somewhere and saying, "Well, they have races, so there you go" proves nothing except that you or your sources have chosen to read the myth this way.

I'll give one last example:

Among the Zande (a tribe in Africa much studied by E.E. Evans-Pritchard, and a famous case because of his work), it is believed that witchcraft comes from a special organ (mangu) lodged in the witch's body at birth.  This is usually hereditary.  Witches are generally understood to be simply not the same as the rest of us; they don't learn their power, but it often controls them to a significant degree.  By contrast, sorcerers are entirely human, and learn their evil magic.

Now are witches another race?  Nothing in Zande culture would allow us to draw this inference.  They live among us, they breed with us, they may be your siblings or children.  Certainly they aren't like us in one way, but they are in every other way.

Now suppose we make the classic extension of the Zande case into early modern European witch-trials and notions of witchcraft, learned and popular.

The elite conception, formulated most importantly by St. Thomas Aquinas, is that the idea of some people being born with special powers borders on heresy.  Simply not possible.  No one to my knowledge ever decided to draw the inference that this made witches a non-human race; on the contrary, they were human -- which is precisely why they were subject to (divine-inspired) human legal jurisdiction.

The popular conception often did say that witches could be born as well as made.  The benandanti of Friuli, for example, were marked with their power by being born in the caul, a not-uncommon marker of special characteristics.  Being the seventh son is another famous one, and one could go on.  No one to my knowledge ever claimed that this made such people a non-human race.


----------

As to the use of race in FRPG's, I think Loki, considerably earlier in this thread, hit the nail on the head when he said that races are very commonly exaggerations of specific characteristics of humanity.  I would also note that such exaggeration in one dimension usually goes hand-in-hand with a simplification in others.  That is, as you exaggerate (let's say) greed to create a race (dwarves, let's say), you also simplify them to bring that characteristic set more to the fore.  This, I think, is one of the reasons such "races" are sometimes (often) read as race-ist, if you will: they are less human because less complex.

So my inclination in designing such things for an FRPG is to be very deliberate about it.

1. If you want an exaggerated "race" in the seemingly classic sense, then bear in mind that you are also going to be simplifying, creating beings who are defined by a more limited and extreme set of characteristics than will ordinary people.

2. If you want a "race" to be just as complicated as humanity, recognize that you're fighting an uphill battle.  You're going to need to design their culture to be more complex than human, to compensate for the intrinsic ability of the players to identify with the humans' motivations and so forth.

3. If you're doing #1, race = culture.  Dwarves are greedy, for example, and their culture is gold.  If you're doing #2, cut these apart brutally.  

4. If you don't want #1, avoid the tendency to have race-cultures.  Why is it that humans have hundreds of cultures, but all dwarves have the same culture?  Why are there race-languages, and race-religions?  I remember a truly horrible episode of Bab5 (a show I mostly liked) which demonstrated this point beautifully: all the species (read: races) decided to put on a little "show" of their various religions [!], and so you had these rituals performed by members of each species, but when you got to humans there were hundreds of priests, rabbis, and whatnot to represent hundreds of cultures.  

My point:
It is traditional (though not required) to allegorize through what these days gets called "race," in both the sources and especially the recent productions of the Fantasy and SciFi genres.

If you don't want to allegorize through "race," then a U.N. on your fantasy world probably ought to have roughly proportional representation of races, in the sense that if there are 10% as many elves as humans, then there also ought to be 10% as many elvish cultures as human ones.

----

So as to the questions raised by Xero (which I'm not sure are RyuMaou's questions):

*) whether one needs in an FRPG fantastical beings who are part of a magical race
No

*) whether one needs in an FRPG fantastical beings who are embodiments of the divine or the demonic or mystical awe
No

*) whether one needs in an FRPG to allow players to play characters who are members of a magical race
No

*) whether one needs in an FPRG to allow players to play characters who are embodiments
No

Any and all of these are possible.  Necessary?  Absolutely not.

Anyway, that's more than enough.  Sorry to run on.

Chris Lehrich
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: RyuMaou on March 04, 2004, 10:53:10 PM
Quote from: clehrichRyuMaou, let me know if this is off-topic, but it seems to me that there's a lot of confusion arising because of the use of folklore in somewhat dubious ways.
Well, it wasn't what I started the thread for, but it sure was relavant to the discussion at hand.  I stand in awe, frankly, of the clear reasoning and language.


Quote from: clehrichSo as to the questions raised by Xero (which I'm not sure are RyuMaou's questions):
<<section snipped for brevity>>
*) whether one needs in an FRPG to allow players to play characters who are members of a magical race
No

That was really my only question.  It seemed so simple and straight-forward at the time...

Hmm, maybe war games or miniatures would be simpler.  (Just kidding!)

Thanks,
Jim
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Scourge108 on March 04, 2004, 11:29:13 PM
Quote from: neelkThis account overlooks an entire brach of the fantasy genre's evolutionary tree. An important ancestor of fantasy genre are historical romances. Think  of The Three Musketeers, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Ivanhoe, and later novels like The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Scaramouche, and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Historical adventure fiction was wildly popular in the nineteenth century, and especially in the latter half it occupied a position of literary (dis)respect roughly comparable to the way that fantasy and science fiction hold today. However, what's important to us is that writers often wanted to write historical adventures that were not overly constrained by actual history or legend, and from this impulse we got the subgenre of Ruritanian fantasy, which had "ordinary" adventure stories set in fictional (and sometimes fictionalized) countries. (And of course nowadays that technique is not just used for adventure stories -- cf LeGuin's Orsinian Tales.)
 

Now, I would question to what degree these games and stories would count as fantasy.  Certainly they share many aspects of fantasy, but what makes a fantasy game a fantasy game?  I would say the presence of magic is a good deciding factor.  Of course, this would mean we would have to include a lot of games that certainly are not fantasy, but have spells for some reason.  I think spells and magic have become so ingrained in RPGs because of their fantasy origins that it's hard to find a game without magic of some sort.  So perhaps a working definition of fantasy would help answer the question.

However, I think the answer is no either way.  I can easily envision a game where the characters have magic powers, go on quests, battle strange creatures, and are all 100% human.  I have a feeling that whatever definition you come up with for "fantasy," that the word "demi-humans" won't even show up in it.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Doctor Xero on March 06, 2004, 02:14:12 AM
Quote from: RyuMaouDoctor Xero, I apologize for even seeming to question your credentials as a folklorist.  Beleive it or not, that was not my intention.
No, that's all right, Jim.  I hadn't interpreted it that way as I had only just found out that it is the norm to use one's real name on The Forge; I am used to the reverse norm.  Besides, you have no proof of any credentials I might or might not have, and I have been evasive about them other than calling myself a folklorist (amateur folklorist?  professional folklorist?  I think I avoided stating one way or the other).

I earned my Ph.D. in multiple subjects (English, gender, folklore, culture studies) a bit over a year ago, and right now I am plugging through the efforts towards eventual full professorship.  Translation: I work pretty much exclusively with first year students.  So the opportunity to discuss folklore with people who actually understand what I'm writing about without once hearing the exchange waylaid by the question "Is this going to be on the test, or can I forget about it?" has been positively intoxicating!

I disagree with clehrich, and I suspect clehrich and I could enjoy many an hour discussing this, but that would turn your topic into "My Dinner with Xero" with clehrich and me on-stage and everyone else in audience.  So I'm dropping it right now.

I would like to reveal my real name BUT for two things.  First, there is considerable prejudice against professors and would-be professors who RPG in the university, so until I'm someday a tenured professor, I am cautious.  Second, I once revealed incomplete personal information during my first experiences in a forum, and some of the posters were so outraged by the fact that I consider men and women to be for all discernible purposes equal and "identical" that they hounded me, spamming my e-mailbox and trying to reach me at work and at home to harrass me (or so they claimed, since they failed to track me down).  I am grateful I hadn't revealed more personal information!  It took me two years before I was willing to risk a forum again after the flood of vitriole I experienced then.

However, since I have not revealed my name, you have no reason to trust me on this but for good faith, and I am pleasantly surprised by the amount of good faith I have found in The Forge.

So, no apologies needed, Jim.  And I'll let the folklore tangent rest.

nom du techne'
Doctor Xero
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Doctor Xero on March 06, 2004, 02:14:35 AM
computer hiccough edited out
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Walt Freitag on March 06, 2004, 09:22:47 AM
Quote from: XeroI disagree with clehrich, and I suspect clehrich and I could enjoy many an hour discussing this, but that would turn your topic into "My Dinner with Xero" with clehrich and me on-stage and everyone else in audience. So I'm dropping it right now.

Nothing wrong with having that discussion in another thread, though. I mean, sure we're all about discourse here, but there's no rule that says all discourse has to be at a general knowledge level. When people who know more than I do about an interesting and potentially useful subject want to discuss it, I'm happy to be in audience.

- Walt
Title: side issue: Fantasy race focus
Post by: komradebob on March 06, 2004, 11:02:11 AM
At the risk of badly sidetracking this thread, I'd like to bring up an issue with non-human races in FRPGs:

The perception of fantasy races and stereotyped behavior is mostly an effect of spotlight focus.

Since many/most frpgs focus their attention on human characters, other races appear monocultural and individuals as stereotyped.

If a gamemaster or designer were to focus the attention primarily on members of a given non-human race, wouldn't you begin to see more complexity and cultural diversity within that race?

From a literary example:
In LotR, elves appear somewhat aloof, seemingly powerful, ancient and somewhat threatening. Most of the action is human and hobbit oriented. Compare this to the Silmarillion, where the action is decidely more Elf-oriented. Here all of the LotR characteristics are true, but elves are also passionate, bloodthirsty, greedy, kinslaying, powerdriven, and even occasionally noble and self sacrificing.

Many moons ago, my gamer pals and I discussed running a few hobbit only adventures. Everyone would be a hobbit, living in the Shire and dealing with hobbitsized adventures. Nobody haring off to the otherside of the planet stealing dragon gold like those weirdos the Tooks and Bagginses. The one key adventure idea discussed was one involving a supernaturally large badger that had been burrowing into people's larders and beer cellars and gourging itself on the goodies. Imagine the trauma! Clearly the local toughs would need to do something to stop the depradations of this vicious beast. Suggestions for pcs were local layabouts grabbed from gaming and drinking at the pub, an elderly shire official along to watch them, and a forester type brought for skill in dealing with wilderness creatures of all types.

My point: Fantasy races, as characters, really come alive with diversity when you look at them and their mindset within a context where their individual qualities can be explored. IRL, one of racism's ugly facets is the way in which it causes a person to be percieved only by the stereotypes associated with their ethnic group, not by their qualities as an individual. Fantasy races in frpgs seem to suffer from this as well.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Lance D. Allen on March 06, 2004, 02:34:52 PM
Good points, Bob. Mike's Standard Rant #X (the one that involves fantasy races) made me decide to revamp my setting so that the races were not so typical.

I never questioned whether or not they should be there. Why? 'cause I like 'em. Other people like 'em. All the discussion here has been interesting to read, but not applicable to me.

But yes.. My elves are long-lived, aloof and mysterious.. but I think they're a little more original than the standard tropes. My dwarves are earthy, subterranean and have a love of metals and crafting, but that's about where the similarities stop. My orcs are savage, and were once a slave race..

I bet a lot of people are thinking that it'll be a typical setting because of these typical races. But as someone once said back when I was still on the old track, what's the point of calling them elves, dwarves orcs, etc. if you're going to change them so that they're so utterly different? My goal is to take the standard descriptions, and put enough of a twist on them that the races aren't typical.

The devil's in the details, as they say.
Title: Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?
Post by: Itse on March 07, 2004, 06:27:14 PM
komradebob:

Quote
My point: Fantasy races, as characters, really come alive with diversity when you look at them and their mindset within a context where their individual qualities can be explored.

Side note: I think this applies to other attributes as well, like profession. The "standard" character group, in which every character has easily classifiable different abilities, tends to water down the interesting parts of all professions (or the equivalent) and also tends to lead to more stereotypical characters. Or so I've started to think, based on experience. So far, I've only had positive experience from games where all or most characters are "of the same class", whether that means that they are from the same tribe of werewolves, they are members of a female streetgang or that they are all technicians by profession, this has had a positive influence on the game as a whole.