Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?

[Doctor Xero]

The question related to fantasy role-playing games, not literature.  You keep bringing that up, though.

Yep.  Here're some reasons why:

This thread might be a good starting point for figuring out what sort of variables and issues should be involved.

While its entirely possible to have a human-centric FRPG, you also have to look at myths and fairy-tales.

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.
---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.

We 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?

Really?  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.

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.

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.

You 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?

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 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?

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

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

I'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

[RyuMaou]

Too 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

[RyuMaou]

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.

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

[contracycle]

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.

[RyuMaou]

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...)

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

[clehrich]

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:

In 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:

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.

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

[RyuMaou]

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.

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.

So 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

[Scourge108]

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.)
 

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.

[Doctor Xero]

Doctor 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

[Doctor Xero]

computer hiccough edited out

[Walt Freitag]

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.

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

[komradebob]

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.

[Lance D. Allen]

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.

[Itse]

komradebob:

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.