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

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.

Ars Magica and Pendragon spring to mind. While Dragon Warriors had non-human races, but they weren't playable.

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.

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

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

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.

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.)

Lxndr wrote: 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.

clehrich wrote: 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.

Alex Johnson wrote: 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.

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. 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?

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Zak Arntson wrote: 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.

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.

Wolfen wrote: 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.

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

M. J. Young wrote: 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.

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...)

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.

Scourge108 wrote: 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?

Wolfen wrote: 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.

neelk wrote: 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.

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.

John (talysman) makes some excellent points; I have a couple minor quibbles and a follow-up.

talysman wrote: 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.

T. 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.

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.

talysman wrote: 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.

talysman wrote: 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.

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.

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.

RyuMaou wrote: 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?

RyuMaou wrote: 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".

contracycle wrote: I 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.

contracycle wrote: 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'.

Doctor Xero wrote: In the actual text, Grendel is definitely depicted as a creature of a nonhuman species (to use modern wording).

Doctor Xero wrote: 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!

Doctor Xero wrote: 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.

Doctor Xero wrote: 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).

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.

Shreyas Sampat wrote: 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.

Shreyas Sampat wrote: 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.

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!

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.

bcook1971 wrote: There was a hard-bound, one volume game that I used to have. And I just loved it! Can't remember the name.

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.

RyuMaou wrote: 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.

RyuMaou wrote: 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.

contracycle wrote: 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.

Doctor Xero wrote: 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.

Doctor Xero wrote: 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.

Doctor Xero wrote: 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.

Doctor Xero wrote: 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.

Contracycle:

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'.

AnyaTheBlue wrote: 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.

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.

neelk wrote: 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.

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

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

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

talysman wrote: 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?

Zak Arntson wrote: We need to have a common definition of race, so we can exclude fantasy monsters, as used in a fantasy RPG.

RyuMaou wrote: Really? Which ones? I remember the enchantresses as people with supernatural skills.

RyuMaou wrote: 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.

RyuMaou wrote: You know what they say about opinions, right?

RyuMaou wrote: 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?

Loki wrote: 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?".

Doctor Xero wrote:
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

RyuMaou wrote: I'm fascinated to know why you insist on encourageing topic drift.
cheers,
Jim

RyuMaou wrote: Too bad that Fantasy Games Unlimited is kaput.

Doctor Xero wrote: 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.

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 wrote: 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...)

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.

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.

clehrich wrote: 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.

clehrich wrote: 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

neelk wrote: 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.)

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

computer hiccough edited out

Xero wrote: 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.

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.

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.

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.