On the abundance of races in Fantasy RPGs

[Mike Holmes]

Um, Lance, the Mongols were cannibals. And they did, as far as anyone at the time knew, sacrifice people to dark gods that would eat your soul. And you know what? They did much worse things than that. Stuff that no orc has ever been accused of doing. Stuff you probably don't even want to know about.

Were they evil? Was hitler evil? Were the German's following orders evil? That's not a debate we can get into here. But the Mongols weren't known for being nice, in any case. Humans are capable of a wide range of behavior culturally, and nothing that I've ever seen attributed to orcs could not be attributed to a human culture. Earthdawn's Orks are very much like a band of nice Mongols.

Can you make playable alien races? I think so, personally. I'm fond of some of the better written Traveller stuff. And they can provide a different atmosphere.

I just think that the word Orc, an elvish word invented by JRR Tolkien (goblin in the human tongue) has been abused enough. Please call them something else. Even goblins (a RW French term, IIRC) is better. Just a personal thing. Orc long ago ceased to mean anything coherent, unfortunately. It just has this "D&D" connotation. Yech.

Even when ICE (the people who owned the Middle Earth license) made up their Shadow World fantasy setting, they were smart enough to at least relabel Orcs as Logroki. Rob, if you're reading this, why Orkigashilli (sp?)? I can't pronounce that, so I'll probably start calling them orcs after a while. Which is what they are, no?

If you are going to include such beings as either a player race, or as an evil race, the first thing that you have to do is have a good reason. I buy Lances reason, but I agree with Gareth, that this does nothing to add wonder to a world. So if you have wonder as a goal, you'll need something else. Wonder is Pale Fire's stated goal, and a subject of discussion in this thread.

If people do make such a race a player race, see Max's post above. Giving a single alien species only a single culture is a sure way to make them look like cardboard. In Middle Earth the immortal and closely related elves have no less than three distinct cultures that I can think of off hand. The curmudgeonly, traditional dwarves have three as well. And the cardboardy evil Orcs have four, not counting tribes. And none of these races were designed to stand up under the same sort of scrutiny as RPG playable characters. They were supposed to be about wonder. And still they at least have a semblance of depth.

Sorry, sorta rambly.

Mike

[Daredevil]

I feel this discussion is skidding on its wheels a bit.

I think the following reply to Wolfen that contracycle wrote is essential:

Thats waht I meant by the mongol comparison - once orcs become people, their "orcness" is not whats frightening about being raided by them, is not important. Instead, their gods and their culture become the important things. All I'm pointing out is that, having gone down this route, the "orcness" has devalued. Their culture is far more important for understanding them and predicting their behaviour. At which point, it seems to me, there is little point to retaining a biological referent; they might as well be a human culture instead.

Now let me try to sum up the issues here. Wolfen doesn't want to make orcs cardboard villains and intends to do this by giving the orcs a distinct culture, et all. Which is in itself is a good thing, but by doing this, the orcs stop being orcs -- they're just a different "human" culture, with vile faces and nasty teeth. Just what contracycle said above.

I strongly agree with that point and I've ran into it while working on fantasy settings. I entirely understand wanting to have fantasy races "because they're cool", but to really work with that one has to understand what is it that really makes the fantasy races interesting. It's not that they have a unique culture -- since that's what humans can do as well. It's not simply that they have teeth or supernatural powers -- that's thinking too simply and superficially.

It is the otherworldly nature in the races that makes them interesting -- that sense of mystery, fear, awe and wonder.

The problem is when those otherworldy creatures become player characters, or perhaps even characters at all, they tend to loose a bit of their charm. I think this thread should be about finding the ways to emphasize and maintain that sense of wonder.

Of course, if one wants the fantasy elements in the races to be just a little add-on to the cultural differences, to illustrate the differences in culture and to merely invoke the supernatural because one can, why not? One alternative is to make the physical seeming reflect the cultural character (ie. hobbits look like children, because they're innocent as a racial trait).

I think Tolkien, much talked about on this subject, is somewhere in-between the two extremes. His elves are very otherworldly, whereas the hobbits are simplistically viewed little more than a cultural group of humans, expressing that difference in their physical nature. There is fantasy out there which is much more otherworldy (the pervasive faerie mythos, for example) and then again rather mundane, superficial fantasy (D&D) as well.

[Valamir]

The Sword of Truth series, addresses alot of this.  There are MANY really fascinating, intense cultures clashing throughout the books and ALL of them are human.  The Otherworldly types (called Twilight People by those who seek to demonize them) are rarely ever seen.  They are referred to periodically but their alien otherworldlyness is made very clear.

[Walt Freitag]

There has long been a discussion issue in Science Fiction: is it possible to invent a truly "alien" personality? Most aliens, like fantasy races, are just human personality archetypes caricatured. That makes them "cardboard" but it also makes them interesting. Humanize them by giving them a range of human personality and behavior instead of just a single point, and they become less cardboard individually, but also less interestingly different from humanity when extrapolated into a culture. The original cardboard Klingon culture where everyone is a rabid warrior is more distinct than the more detailed Klingon culture depicted later, in which there are some more, some less warlike, political differences, factions, enlightened leaders... gosh, just like humans! [This is just restating cc's and DD's points yet again; I wrote most of this before the last few posts were added.] At the opposite extreme, it would appear that any species sufficiently alien to not have analogues in human culture would be impossible to interact with except in the ways one might interact with a completely insane human: fear it, ignore it, attempt to "cure" it, or go mad yourself trying to comprehend it.

Take any human quality or combination of qualities, crank it down to zero or up to eleven, and humans have already been there. Completely amoral and violent? Got it. So moral and pacifistic as to make one's own survival marginal? Got it. No sense of humor? Got it. Completely devoted to humor full-time? Got it. Totally rational? Got it. Totally dedicated to irrational beliefs? Got it, in spades.

Okay, so maybe my truly-alien alien can have a non-human quality. Like, say, some emotion that humans simply don't have the capacity for. Good luck describing it or figuring out how it affects your alien's behavior. "It's called Skzzt, it's aroused by certain frequencies of vibrations and it makes the alien want to spin around and eat anything it sees that's purple." How wonderfully (yawn) alien.

Maintaining a biological referent for a nonhuman culture can be appropriate purely for reasons of color.  A species with the same thought processes and diverse personality range as humans, but that can fly (or can breathe underwater, or communicates telepathically, or has five sexes, or lives in trash cans and venerates the materials discarded by urban human society, etc etc) would develop colorful variations on human cultures that can be interesting to explore.

Daredevil's point about physiological differences that reflect the cultural character is good. This can also go the opposite way: the happy childlike people are actually cannibals; the flying people have a strictly regimented society with little personal freedom. This is one of the things that determines the overall flavor of a fantasy world. Does appearance reveal something's true nature, as in Middle Earth, or does it only conceal the truth, as in Dying Earth?

The most interesting hypothetical cases are when biology clashes with culture. Consider, for example, the wasp-like but intelligent creature that must reproduce by laying its eggs in human hosts which kill the host when they hatch. These are usually, and conveniently, rendered as implacably evil, treating the humans as prey (Alien) or as an enslaved race (one of the early Barsoom novels, I forget which). These creatures would be much more interesting if they developed human-like culture and morality! Imagine having to interact with them. They know it's wrong to infect a human; it's illegal in their culture (and no longer necessary for their survival, since unintelligent beasts raised for the purpose will suffice). And yet, "human-hosted" is still a secret boast of some of the oldest and wealthiest, and every one of them is genetically predisposed to be sexually aroused by the sight of a healthy hominid ("We just think you humans are so beautiful"). It's disturbing, largely because it's uncomfortably close to conflicts that exist between culture and biology within our own species

- Walt

[Daredevil]

Walt wrote:

At the opposite extreme, it would appear that any species sufficiently alien to not have analogues in human culture would be impossible to interact with except in the ways one might interact with a completely insane human: fear it, ignore it, attempt to "cure" it, or go mad yourself trying to comprehend it

This is a good point, which pops up in thinking related to science fiction quite often, as you already said. However, bringing this consideration up in a fantasy related thread had me make an unusual connection in my mind.

In fantasy, the truly wondrous races often live half (or entirely) immersed in an Otherworld, only barely accessible to humans. The most obvious example is faeries and their own mystical world. Tolkien's world also has the same elements -- as evidenced in the elves and the ringwraiths. Now, in a mythical sense, what is that Otherworld but a dimension of our own mind, a manifestation of imagination?

Returning to your comment, that a truly alien race is impossible to comprehend or understand. Impossible, without exercising our imagination. This is satisfactory for fantasy where a sense of wonder is what we want, but perhaps not as immediately satisfactory for pure science fiction (or simulationist) purposes.

So, as the otherworld is accessed by a subjective exercise of our imagination, rendering an entirely objective description of something that contains this otherwordly awe impossible. The wondrous must be elusive, impossible to define, but tangible inside our own mind nonetheless.

Just got me thinking.

[Gordon C. Landis]

Gareth -

My purely amatuer perspective - virtually NOTHING about Erectus is well-established, which allows for lots o' fun speculation . . .  but yeah, that's all it is.  Neanderthal, on the other hand - my impression is that the "interbreeding" notion is pretty well discredited at the moment (by genetic studies, if I remember right).  Still, what little Ron has let slip about Trollbabe got me thinking about infertile Sapiens/Neanderthal crossbreeds . . .  "HalfOrkworld", someone's next game project ;-)

Max -

I recognize Machen - must've read SOMETHING by him during one of my "devour books at semi-random" phases.  More likely, I've read some of his stories but NOT a novel . . . thanks for the lead.

In general -

So . . . what we want is "the feeling of surprise and discovery as one encounters other monsters/races"?  I'll change that last to "monsters/races/CULTURES" and say that if a problem exists, it has nothing to do with the number (or lack thereof) of "race"-choices.  Most of the time, there is nothing gained (or lost, really) by making your "Orcs" (or whatever) biologically/phisiologicaly different AND culturally different rather than JUST culturally different.  It's just color - some people would rather play a "Variant-Tolkienesque-Orc" raider than a "Variant-psuedo-Mongol" raider.  Whether or a not a good job is done with either culture (and the play therof) is a seperate issue.

If you do want the cultural difference to trully spring from a variant biology . . .   Problem 1 has already been pointed out -  a really "different" biology (and the behavior it engenders) becomes incomprehensible.  Problem 2 is that this is tricky stuff - what is the relationship between biology and culture?  How does it work?  Some folks (who might also write RPGs about summoning demons in their spare time) have full-time academic careers in this general area . . .

Gordon

[Christoffer Lernö]

Ok, did this thread drift quickly or what?

After reading the debate here between contracycle and Lance, I think I can see a pattern.

There seems to be agreement that other races either are

a) Monsters (otherworldly, hard-to-understand, creatures)

or

b) Persons (behaving mostly like humans)

In fiction we see both of these versions, and I think also a path between them.

For individuals of a species, I think a shift is possible.

Suggestion: A individual of a species can go from "monster" to "person" despite the species in general being regarded as the former.

The goblin shouting "must save the pretty lady" had in Lance's mind taken the step from just one of the same archetype to a person with actual inner goals and motivations.

Now how did this transformation occur? Through communication.

Beings communicating with the protagonists somehow will always?/might? go from monster to person.

The moment the orcs actually try to talk to the players instead of attacking them in berserker rage, that's when they're gonna be persons. Either that or the world is written so that orcs are all nice people (in other words, certified to be able to communicate with the players).

What do you think?[/b]

[Lance D. Allen]

Ach, too many posts, too many varying ideas to attempt to respond to at once.. I'll bow out of this thread with this last point/observation. I think that Contracycle and I aren't truly disagreeing about orcs and fantasy creatures in general, just in how they are applied. I think it best that I simply state my disagreement, and step back for now, at least on this particular debate, because I have contributed majorly to the drift from it's original intent. It was fun, though, I'll say that.