This is a good way to handle this sort of thing. Austin Walker wrote a really good bit about how it makes him feel to hear n-bombs directed at him in video games. I feel like RPGs, especially fantasy RPGs, should be an escape for your players from at least some of the brutal horse shit of the real world. Let their demons be actual demons they can hit with a sword.
Austin Walker also runs RPGs that are all about exploring real-world themes.
edit: terrible totp. That's what I get for not just editing.
I mean, it all comes down to your group, and what they are interested in and what you think they can meaningfully engage in or not.
Would I want to play a game where racism is a major component at a convention with strangers? Hell no.
But, with the right group I might totally play and enjoy the experience of a game that focuses on colonialism and the interaction between native and colonizer (Dog Eat Dog).
Ultimately a lot of what you're saying is why many games recommend that you create your setting with the group of players you sit down with. RPGs can be a really good way to explore a lot of issues we deal with in the real world, but without triggering the issues that the players might be dealing with. Expressing racism through elf-on-dwarf violence may seem cheap, but it can still cover some very important issues without having to do anything horrifying like figure out what fake fantasy word for "black" is used as a slur.
Yes well, that's all well and good but I'm not just designing a setting for me and my buds. This is something I may possibly also release at some future point. That's sorta my dilemma. It's much easier to create some bespoke collaborative game world experience for you and your friends, in fact there are systems (Microscope for example) that are specifically designed to serve that very purpose.
But that's not the entirety of what I'm trying to do, so it's trying to find that balancing point between "What are the things that me and my friends like/dislike" and "What is the sort of thing that people who are not us would actually be interested in playing?"
I think there's a balance point to be found somewhere in the middle there. If it means I have to compromise on some of my numerous pet peeves or issues with fantasy than so be it, but that's also why I'm talking to a general public of RPG nerds about it.
I will say, for all it's faults Shadowrun probably has the most realistic racism. A lot of humans hate every metahuman, mages, and still hate based on heritage. If you're a dwarf shaman of colour, the odds of someone hating you for one of these reasons is basically 1 in 1.1
Granted, "Most realistic racism" is not really a selling point anyone wants.
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MaclayInsquequo Totus Es UnusHere and ThereRegistered Userregular
Apologies if this is overly tangential, but I've been reading the Ghosts of Albion corebook and due to being based on an existing franchise and a semi-real setting (Victorian England but with magic) it tries to be semi-realistic about bigotry and the like. What this amounts to is that a player can take a drawback called 'Minority' for being a different (human) race or even just female. If I were playing this game I think I would want to house-rule that drawback out, mostly so the GM didn't have to portray a hundred different assholes just so people can play the kind of character they want.
The racism issue is something I'm having to tread carefully around in my Ars Magica campaign. All my players are Muslim, playing Muslim characters in Medieval England. The fact that they are wizards makes them suspicious by default, and it hasn't really come up in gameplay yet beyond having to cast spells on ale to remove the alcohol, but it's something I don't want to ignore for ever. I just need to make sure that it's a really good reason to bring it up.
Apologies if this is overly tangential, but I've been reading the Ghosts of Albion corebook and due to being based on an existing franchise and a semi-real setting (Victorian England but with magic) it tries to be semi-realistic about bigotry and the like. What this amounts to is that a player can take a drawback called 'Minority' for being a different (human) race or even just female. If I were playing this game I think I would want to house-rule that drawback out, mostly so the GM didn't have to portray a hundred different assholes just so people can play the kind of character they want.
See and that's the rub, I think.
GMs don't mind playing villains. In fact, speaking as someone who has a tendency to be almost always the GM, it's a lot of fun! But they're villains for a reason. They exist in the plot to serve antagonistic purpose. Their shitty (or redeeming!) qualities add depth and purpose to them.
When that's just sorta smeared all over the setting as a default, it just sucks all around. It sucks for the player who wants to play a black person or a woman or whatever and not get shit on by just like, normal shopkeeps and shit (like they may very well in real life). It sucks for the GM who has to thread this weird line of figuring out how to accurately portray institutionalized, unthinking prejudice from characters who are not actively villainous or antagonistic.
I don't feel it's a value-add to most games, and I definitely don't want it in a product I want to release to a wide audience. If someone's bespoke game with their crew contains people who want to explore that, cool for them. But no thank you.
Apologies if this is overly tangential, but I've been reading the Ghosts of Albion corebook and due to being based on an existing franchise and a semi-real setting (Victorian England but with magic) it tries to be semi-realistic about bigotry and the like. What this amounts to is that a player can take a drawback called 'Minority' for being a different (human) race or even just female. If I were playing this game I think I would want to house-rule that drawback out, mostly so the GM didn't have to portray a hundred different assholes just so people can play the kind of character they want.
See and that's the rub, I think.
GMs don't mind playing villains. In fact, speaking as someone who has a tendency to be almost always the GM, it's a lot of fun! But they're villains for a reason. They exist in the plot to serve antagonistic purpose. Their shitty (or redeeming!) qualities add depth and purpose to them.
When that's just sorta smeared all over the setting as a default, it just sucks all around. It sucks for the player who wants to play a black person or a woman or whatever and not get shit on by just like, normal shopkeeps and shit (like they may very well in real life). It sucks for the GM who has to thread this weird line of figuring out how to accurately portray institutionalized, unthinking prejudice from characters who are not actively villainous or antagonistic.
I don't feel it's a value-add to most games, and I definitely don't want it in a product I want to release to a wide audience. If someone's bespoke game with their crew contains people who want to explore that, cool for them. But no thank you.
What about as opposed to having races being a defined culture but rather just having countries and regions that have distinct cultures and the people living there mostly share it. The races are there for a more mechanics based reason.
Apologies if this is overly tangential, but I've been reading the Ghosts of Albion corebook and due to being based on an existing franchise and a semi-real setting (Victorian England but with magic) it tries to be semi-realistic about bigotry and the like. What this amounts to is that a player can take a drawback called 'Minority' for being a different (human) race or even just female. If I were playing this game I think I would want to house-rule that drawback out, mostly so the GM didn't have to portray a hundred different assholes just so people can play the kind of character they want.
See and that's the rub, I think.
GMs don't mind playing villains. In fact, speaking as someone who has a tendency to be almost always the GM, it's a lot of fun! But they're villains for a reason. They exist in the plot to serve antagonistic purpose. Their shitty (or redeeming!) qualities add depth and purpose to them.
When that's just sorta smeared all over the setting as a default, it just sucks all around. It sucks for the player who wants to play a black person or a woman or whatever and not get shit on by just like, normal shopkeeps and shit (like they may very well in real life). It sucks for the GM who has to thread this weird line of figuring out how to accurately portray institutionalized, unthinking prejudice from characters who are not actively villainous or antagonistic.
I don't feel it's a value-add to most games, and I definitely don't want it in a product I want to release to a wide audience. If someone's bespoke game with their crew contains people who want to explore that, cool for them. But no thank you.
What about as opposed to having races being a defined culture but rather just having countries and regions that have distinct cultures and the people living there mostly share it. The races are there for a more mechanics based reason.
the thing with that is then the races just become number blocks and that's just as boring.
If elves and humans are going to be culturally close within a nation then the separation between them should be something more than just Elves are fast and nimble.
Many years ago I was running a D&D game with a group of folks, one of whom was a trans woman. She told me, privately, while creating her character that her character is a trans woman as well, because she wanted to play a woman and playing a cis woman in tabletop RPGs feels... weird, to her? So she wanted to note that her character was trans.
But she also told me she didn't want her character's transgender status to come up as a plot point or game mechanic issue or something. Like, she didn't want to deal with a transphobic villain, or encounter a Girdle of Femininity, or a spell affects her differently because she's trans, or anything.
She basically wanted her trans woman character to be treated as a woman, period. I said "Okay, no problem".
Because apparently this has been an issue for her with previous groups and she just wanted to like, quietly clarify that issue beforehand. The fact that she needed to (and to be fair, like, it was a smart move, she didn't know me super well at that point and it was good of her to make her boundaries clear) just kinda made my brain frown. Because it kinda spoke to some unfortunate experiences she has had previously. Dammit, nerds.
Apologies if this is overly tangential, but I've been reading the Ghosts of Albion corebook and due to being based on an existing franchise and a semi-real setting (Victorian England but with magic) it tries to be semi-realistic about bigotry and the like. What this amounts to is that a player can take a drawback called 'Minority' for being a different (human) race or even just female. If I were playing this game I think I would want to house-rule that drawback out, mostly so the GM didn't have to portray a hundred different assholes just so people can play the kind of character they want.
See and that's the rub, I think.
GMs don't mind playing villains. In fact, speaking as someone who has a tendency to be almost always the GM, it's a lot of fun! But they're villains for a reason. They exist in the plot to serve antagonistic purpose. Their shitty (or redeeming!) qualities add depth and purpose to them.
When that's just sorta smeared all over the setting as a default, it just sucks all around. It sucks for the player who wants to play a black person or a woman or whatever and not get shit on by just like, normal shopkeeps and shit (like they may very well in real life). It sucks for the GM who has to thread this weird line of figuring out how to accurately portray institutionalized, unthinking prejudice from characters who are not actively villainous or antagonistic.
I don't feel it's a value-add to most games, and I definitely don't want it in a product I want to release to a wide audience. If someone's bespoke game with their crew contains people who want to explore that, cool for them. But no thank you.
What about as opposed to having races being a defined culture but rather just having countries and regions that have distinct cultures and the people living there mostly share it. The races are there for a more mechanics based reason.
the thing with that is then the races just become number blocks and that's just as boring.
If elves and humans are going to be culturally close within a nation then the separation between them should be something more than just Elves are fast and nimble.
Yeah, and to expand on that: The presence of a non-human culture would be vastly influential on human culture.
Like it's weird to me that in fantasy settings, cultures kinda exist in vacuums and the fact that there are sentient alien species on the same planet alongside each other and the most they influence each other or have an impact on each other is like... they sometimes war?
Like, think about sci-fi: In sci-fi, First Contact is a big fucking deal. Finding out we're not alone in the universe, that there's a whole Other of people who are not even our species is huge and momentous and creates giant shifts in human culture and attitudes and stuff. How that impact plays out depends a lot on how alien those aliens really are. If they're basically blue-skinned or pointy-eared humans that's kinda meh... unless their culture is somehow also super alien as well (like say, Vulcans).
Yet somehow, in fantasy, non-human races are just treated as interchangeable with nationality or ethnicity and maaaaaaan that rings so false for me.
Apologies if this is overly tangential, but I've been reading the Ghosts of Albion corebook and due to being based on an existing franchise and a semi-real setting (Victorian England but with magic) it tries to be semi-realistic about bigotry and the like. What this amounts to is that a player can take a drawback called 'Minority' for being a different (human) race or even just female. If I were playing this game I think I would want to house-rule that drawback out, mostly so the GM didn't have to portray a hundred different assholes just so people can play the kind of character they want.
See and that's the rub, I think.
GMs don't mind playing villains. In fact, speaking as someone who has a tendency to be almost always the GM, it's a lot of fun! But they're villains for a reason. They exist in the plot to serve antagonistic purpose. Their shitty (or redeeming!) qualities add depth and purpose to them.
When that's just sorta smeared all over the setting as a default, it just sucks all around. It sucks for the player who wants to play a black person or a woman or whatever and not get shit on by just like, normal shopkeeps and shit (like they may very well in real life). It sucks for the GM who has to thread this weird line of figuring out how to accurately portray institutionalized, unthinking prejudice from characters who are not actively villainous or antagonistic.
I don't feel it's a value-add to most games, and I definitely don't want it in a product I want to release to a wide audience. If someone's bespoke game with their crew contains people who want to explore that, cool for them. But no thank you.
What about as opposed to having races being a defined culture but rather just having countries and regions that have distinct cultures and the people living there mostly share it. The races are there for a more mechanics based reason.
the thing with that is then the races just become number blocks and that's just as boring.
If elves and humans are going to be culturally close within a nation then the separation between them should be something more than just Elves are fast and nimble.
Yeah, and to expand on that: The presence of a non-human culture would be vastly influential on human culture.
Like it's weird to me that in fantasy settings, cultures kinda exist in vacuums and the fact that there are sentient alien species on the same planet alongside each other and the most they influence each other or have an impact on each other is like... they sometimes war?
Like, think about sci-fi: In sci-fi, First Contact is a big fucking deal. Finding out we're not alone in the universe, that there's a whole Other of people who are not even our species is huge and momentous and creates giant shifts in human culture and attitudes and stuff. How that impact plays out depends a lot on how alien those aliens really are. If they're basically blue-skinned or pointy-eared humans that's kinda meh... unless their culture is somehow also super alien as well (like say, Vulcans).
Yet somehow, in fantasy, non-human races are just treated as interchangeable with nationality or ethnicity and maaaaaaan that rings so false for me.
The thing about Sci-Fi v. Fantasy in this regard is it's assumed the fantasy races encountered each other at some point in the past, and that there have been interactions such to a point that the various races/cultures have some relationships and norms with each other. In a sense, boiling it down to really simple terms (Which is how Race is usually dealt with) it just a different nationality for the races of that world.
In Sci-Fi, first contact tends to be big because it usually between 2 different races that have had centuries if not millienia developing on their own until they meet. The amount of cultural difference is staggering (This trope is sometimes played with in fantasy when encountering 'lost civilizations' and the like)
In pondering on this, I realize the reason we tend to default these things is because:
1. Shorthand is easy and people are lazy even when we want to be creative (to a certain extent)
2. It is way easier to design a few monolithic cultural entities/touchstones and go from there, because trying to model things as complex and diverse as the real world would take way more time than it ends up being worth (If people notice the effort at all) and usually would lead to more troubles than it would solve. Like, cool ideal to strive for, but I don't think we'll be getting there anytime soon.
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
Ultimately when it comes to a lot of the non-human races issue, especially as it relates to fantasy-standards like elves and dwarves (especially elves), I think player expectation plays into it a lot. I touched on this a little bit before ("if they're not archetypal dwarves, why bother having dwarves?"), but to expand on that point a bit...
RPGs tend to put very few restrictions on how players create human characters. Because for many people RPGs (especially fantasy RPGs) can be a power fantasy or another way to be a person you wish you could be, many people tend to play characters who are idealized versions of themselves. The same gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. Players do break from this all the time, of course. People play characters of a different gender, or a vastly different worldview and moral code than themselves, or even in some rare cases a different sexual orientation than themselves (this is almost always paired up with playing a different gender as well, but sometimes not!).
Generally speaking, saying you can't play black people or women or trans people or gay people or whatever is frowned upon. At most, you may see a game devote a page to discussing the "challenges and difficulties" or other peculiarities that a specific group of folk (who aren't straight white cis men) face in the setting. On rare occasions, like Ghosts of Albion, you'll have an actual game mechanic devoted to it and many people (myself included) will think that's sorta inappropriate.
But for the most part, we put few restrictions on people's abilities to play the human they want, largely so they can play someone like themselves.
Well, you're not an elf. I'm sorry I don't consider Otherkin a real thing (I don't, and if you want to pick a fight with me about it please take it to PM and not this thread). You're not an elf, even if elves are your ideal from a beauty/cultural/aesthetic/whatever perspective. It's okay if they're an ideal. It's okay if you think they're sexy or cool or awesome. But I don't feel like a setting owes you elves so you can express your true inner elf. I don't feel like this is on par with letting you be an Arabic person or a woman or a trans person or bisexual or whatever.
So I don't feel like the fantasy standards (or even trope equivalents, like "basically elves but...") are necessary for a setting and I think if you opt to include them, you're essentially opening a door for people to want to play those kinds of characters their way, even if that might not be what you want for your setting. You can try to solve this with diversity and making them really complex and large (like Melding suggested, having a giant diverse cultural background of elves where standard Legolas stereotypes go over there but the elves over here are the ones are different), but I feel like the purpose for doing that is kinda dubious.
Fair enough, Just an idea. You could also maybe take inspiration from the Aen Elle from the Witcher? Where they are 'elves' but are super alien
Sure but the more alien they get, the more I feel like they become background creatures and not player character races.
While playing races that are super alien and weird and have completely inhuman cultures can be really fun and challenging and is totally a thing in many RPGs, I feel like the more you crank it up the harder it gets to find quality players for those character types and the more they become vulnerable to being appealing choices for people who are fuckin' obnoxious to play with (see: Kender or Warforged or Shifters).
Because RPG players, as Matev pointed out, can be intellectually lazy and use a lot of tropes and archetypes and shorthand. Trust me, playing with a dude who is playing a Warforged that is trying too hard to talk like HK-47 is beyond wearisome, even if Warforged are fucking cool.
Apologies if this is overly tangential, but I've been reading the Ghosts of Albion corebook and due to being based on an existing franchise and a semi-real setting (Victorian England but with magic) it tries to be semi-realistic about bigotry and the like. What this amounts to is that a player can take a drawback called 'Minority' for being a different (human) race or even just female. If I were playing this game I think I would want to house-rule that drawback out, mostly so the GM didn't have to portray a hundred different assholes just so people can play the kind of character they want.
See and that's the rub, I think.
GMs don't mind playing villains. In fact, speaking as someone who has a tendency to be almost always the GM, it's a lot of fun! But they're villains for a reason. They exist in the plot to serve antagonistic purpose. Their shitty (or redeeming!) qualities add depth and purpose to them.
When that's just sorta smeared all over the setting as a default, it just sucks all around. It sucks for the player who wants to play a black person or a woman or whatever and not get shit on by just like, normal shopkeeps and shit (like they may very well in real life). It sucks for the GM who has to thread this weird line of figuring out how to accurately portray institutionalized, unthinking prejudice from characters who are not actively villainous or antagonistic.
I don't feel it's a value-add to most games, and I definitely don't want it in a product I want to release to a wide audience. If someone's bespoke game with their crew contains people who want to explore that, cool for them. But no thank you.
What about as opposed to having races being a defined culture but rather just having countries and regions that have distinct cultures and the people living there mostly share it. The races are there for a more mechanics based reason.
the thing with that is then the races just become number blocks and that's just as boring.
If elves and humans are going to be culturally close within a nation then the separation between them should be something more than just Elves are fast and nimble.
Yeah, and to expand on that: The presence of a non-human culture would be vastly influential on human culture.
Like it's weird to me that in fantasy settings, cultures kinda exist in vacuums and the fact that there are sentient alien species on the same planet alongside each other and the most they influence each other or have an impact on each other is like... they sometimes war?
Like, think about sci-fi: In sci-fi, First Contact is a big fucking deal. Finding out we're not alone in the universe, that there's a whole Other of people who are not even our species is huge and momentous and creates giant shifts in human culture and attitudes and stuff. How that impact plays out depends a lot on how alien those aliens really are. If they're basically blue-skinned or pointy-eared humans that's kinda meh... unless their culture is somehow also super alien as well (like say, Vulcans).
Yet somehow, in fantasy, non-human races are just treated as interchangeable with nationality or ethnicity and maaaaaaan that rings so false for me.
which is an area no one has really played with and something to explore. How did the eventual assimilation of wood elves change this human kingdom? Sure there was probably some xenophobia, racism, but what about a few generations later where things have settled for a bit (hopefully).
This nomadic tribe of humans settled by dwarves, adopted dwarven values, how does this expand?
Eberron has some of this, but the answer they came to seemed to have been "everyone acts like humans do anyway."
Things can't be quite as alien as space simply by nature of we share a common point of origin, but they can still be very strange. but knowing in the ocean there are evil fishmen is going to have a very specific effect on the people living on the coast and pirates.
Apologies if this is overly tangential, but I've been reading the Ghosts of Albion corebook and due to being based on an existing franchise and a semi-real setting (Victorian England but with magic) it tries to be semi-realistic about bigotry and the like. What this amounts to is that a player can take a drawback called 'Minority' for being a different (human) race or even just female. If I were playing this game I think I would want to house-rule that drawback out, mostly so the GM didn't have to portray a hundred different assholes just so people can play the kind of character they want.
See and that's the rub, I think.
GMs don't mind playing villains. In fact, speaking as someone who has a tendency to be almost always the GM, it's a lot of fun! But they're villains for a reason. They exist in the plot to serve antagonistic purpose. Their shitty (or redeeming!) qualities add depth and purpose to them.
When that's just sorta smeared all over the setting as a default, it just sucks all around. It sucks for the player who wants to play a black person or a woman or whatever and not get shit on by just like, normal shopkeeps and shit (like they may very well in real life). It sucks for the GM who has to thread this weird line of figuring out how to accurately portray institutionalized, unthinking prejudice from characters who are not actively villainous or antagonistic.
I don't feel it's a value-add to most games, and I definitely don't want it in a product I want to release to a wide audience. If someone's bespoke game with their crew contains people who want to explore that, cool for them. But no thank you.
What about as opposed to having races being a defined culture but rather just having countries and regions that have distinct cultures and the people living there mostly share it. The races are there for a more mechanics based reason.
the thing with that is then the races just become number blocks and that's just as boring.
If elves and humans are going to be culturally close within a nation then the separation between them should be something more than just Elves are fast and nimble.
Yeah, and to expand on that: The presence of a non-human culture would be vastly influential on human culture.
Like it's weird to me that in fantasy settings, cultures kinda exist in vacuums and the fact that there are sentient alien species on the same planet alongside each other and the most they influence each other or have an impact on each other is like... they sometimes war?
Like, think about sci-fi: In sci-fi, First Contact is a big fucking deal. Finding out we're not alone in the universe, that there's a whole Other of people who are not even our species is huge and momentous and creates giant shifts in human culture and attitudes and stuff. How that impact plays out depends a lot on how alien those aliens really are. If they're basically blue-skinned or pointy-eared humans that's kinda meh... unless their culture is somehow also super alien as well (like say, Vulcans).
Yet somehow, in fantasy, non-human races are just treated as interchangeable with nationality or ethnicity and maaaaaaan that rings so false for me.
which is an area no one has really played with and something to explore. How did the eventual assimilation of wood elves change this human kingdom? Sure there was probably some xenophobia, racism, but what about a few generations later where things have settled for a bit (hopefully).
This nomadic tribe of humans settled by dwarves, adopted dwarven values, how does this expand?
Eberron has some of this, but the answer they came to seemed to have been "everyone acts like humans do anyway."
Things can't be quite as alien as space simply by nature of we share a common point of origin, but they can still be very strange. but knowing in the ocean there are evil fishmen is going to have a very specific effect on the people living on the coast and pirates.
Seriously. If you're a coastal city you should have weapons ready at all times to repel the creatures of the depths. Oh the tribe of Island elves have been driven from their homes and many fled here, alright well if you're willing to help repel the unseen horrors i guess we can help them, but they need to be willing to work.
Basically, my idea is start at a human angle trying to deal with the fantastical, and build what you want from there. As someone who likes the Standard Fantasy Races, i am likely to include them at some point, but that's just me.
But then you have people on the coast being paranoid, not trusting nature magic (since it is the tool of the unseen horrors), but being generally good at fighting on land and boats. this can be an additional thing to like national traits, and maybe even racial traits. Being humans who grew up around zealous wood land defending woads is going to get to a distaste for building with wood. Or maybe it's very highly valued because it has to be brought in from different regions. Maybe you're from a town that just burned all the trees in the area down because fuck the fair folk We Live Here Now.
Seriously. If you're a coastal city you should have weapons ready at all times to repel the creatures of the depths. Oh the tribe of Island elves have been driven from their homes and many fled here, alright well if you're willing to help repel the unseen horrors i guess we can help them, but they need to be willing to work.
Basically, my idea is start at a human angle trying to deal with the fantastical, and build what you want from there. As someone who likes the Standard Fantasy Races, i am likely to include them at some point, but that's just me.
But then you have people on the coast being paranoid, not trusting nature magic (since it is the tool of the unseen horrors), but being generally good at fighting on land and boats. this can be an additional thing to like national traits, and maybe even racial traits. Being humans who grew up around zealous wood land defending woads is going to get to a distaste for building with wood. Or maybe it's very highly valued because it has to be brought in from different regions. Maybe you're from a town that just burned all the trees in the area down because fuck the fair folk We Live Here Now.
And that's if you don't decide to go full Dagon Cult and throw in with the evil fish people, which brings it's own set of events that can come into motion. Is there a coastal kingdom of fish people and the humans who live with them? Did they get rooted out in a pogrom awhile ago, and now Coastal cities house more churches and inquisitorial figures to safeguard against another deep one uprising? Did the elves ally with the fish people cause the water's nature as well, leading to anti-elf sentiment? Just this one little prompt can inspire a region's worth of lore and data.
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
The villain I'm writing up for tonight's game is designed to play like Reaper from Overwatch. The party is going to protect an Alchemist based out of the Underworld from this fallen paladin's onslaught, and it's going to be amazing.
Hiverax, Oathreaper
STR 14 DEX 20 CON 14
CHA 19 WIS 10 INT 10
HP: 156/156 AC 19
Wis +9 Cha +13 Str +6
Dex +9 Con +6 Int +4
Skills: Stealth +10, Perception +5, Religion +5, Intimidation +9
Abilities:
Wraith Form (Recharge 6)
Bonus Action: Enter the Ethereal Plane and exit anywhere within 30ft at the start of your next turn.
Step of the Reaper(Recharge 6)
Bonus Action, teleport 30ft to an unoccupied space in sight, all adjacent to your start and end point take 3d6 Necrotic, and Hiverax gains THP equal to damage dealt.
Hellfire Blossom (Charge: Deal 100 Damage) Make 6 Hellfire Blade attacks that target all foes within 30 ft. After each attack, all targets may move 5ft or use a Reaction to take an attack of opportunity, then Hiverax moves 5ft.
Dual Wield: Hiverax makes 2 attacks with his Hellfire Blades: +10 to hit: 1d6+10 Slashing +1d6 Fire + 1d8 Necrotic (21.5 avg)
After Hiverax makes 4 attacks with Hellfire Blades he discards them and draws new ones from beneath his cloak, using his action for the turn.
He should pull 80 Damage with the Blades, and fill the last 20 with the Step, but at that point he'll have to reload, giving the party time to slow him down before he unleashes Hellfire Blossom(DIE DIE DIE)
I might want to tweak his attacks to 3 per round but he hits accurately and hard enough so I don't feel that I need to, but we'll see. I might give him some more Paladin features beyond buffed saves but this should be enough fun, right?
If the party gets wiped by Hellfire Blossom, then they'll get revived after the Alchemist's laboratory is destroyed as Arcane potions flow along the ground to restore them. If they succeed, they get a source of powerful potions and poisons!
So I'm trying to find a balancing point between making a setting that doesn't include all the various pet peeves about fantasy I have, and something that's accessible and engaging for other people who might not necessarily share my views and hang-ups.
Wait is secret hitler available to just buy now? I've been waiting for that
The kickstarters have shipped. There is still no date for stores yet.
@uriel if you are interested in the game if you go to their website, there is a print and play that you can try out to see if it is your thing. But the print and play lack the super cool timber title thingies that you get that denotes if you are president or chancellor.
I have spent two days slamming my head at this, and the truth is... I just really don't like fantasy that much. I was trying to do it because fantasy is popular and I ain't done fantasy in years and the more I worked on it the more I realised I just... don't like fantasy.
Anything I want to do or say or any stories I want to tell, I can do better with sci fi. There aren't stories I'm interested in telling in fantasy.
So I give up and I think I'm just going to try to do a sci fi setting instead because at least I like sci fi.
I was having a conversation the other day with a couple friends (including @DE?AD) about medieval society, and how it just isn't represented in fantasy
it's always some weird version of monarchy tooled from modern perspectives
fantasy would be a LOT more interesting if writers researched feudal and tribal cultures, as well as mythology and stories from the times
an attempt to do something different than science-fiction, and look towards the past rather than the future
also, folk need to stop aping Tolkien ad nauseam
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I was having a conversation the other day with a couple friends (including @DE?AD) about medieval society, and how it just isn't represented in fantasy
it's always some weird version of monarchy tooled from modern perspectives
fantasy would be a LOT more interesting if writers researched feudal and tribal cultures, as well as mythology and stories from the times
an attempt to do something different than science-fiction, and look towards the past rather than the future
also, folk need to stop aping Tolkien ad nauseam
Honestly I think I'd like to explore a dark ages/feudalism settings with much more detail than Magic Renaissance Steampunk Castles. The magical possibilities of fantasy with the grim darkness of medieval history.
Basically the problem I am running into with trying to build a fantasy setting is I have to choose one of three things:
1. Design a highly derivative setting relying on an extensive amount of archetypes, touchstones, tropes, and pre-existing cultural notions.
2. Not give a shit and hand-wave away alot of the details or deliberately leave them as blank space for the player to fill in and only make a minimal setting to go alongside the system I'm designing.
3. Put an enormous amount of work into making a cohesive, bespoke original setting that the overwhelming majority of people who are not me will never ever give a shit about and will actively opt to ignore.
I can run a fantasy campaign fly by wire, so I don't have to sweat the small stuff
sci-fi tends to involve a little more careful planning on my part
I have a Star Wars campaign idea, but that's waiting for whenever I feel like learning a new system
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this is usually why i just use a sandbox setting, cause fuck it. Someone is going to want to play a kobold or a gnome or something, ant i'm not really going to say no, i'm going to make the characters and history i want and so long as nothing directly counters any of that they can do whatever.
They want to be the worst dwarf trope in the world? fine. Oh their elf is actually a stone statue given life and hates magic for it? cool, whatever, but this Duke has a magic sword that can kill Satan and is working for Satan so you need to get the sword away from him so you can kill Satan.
But then i'm not really looking to make a sellable project outside of maybe the monster guide stuff i do. Which is just set in the modern world so i don't have to really worry about world building.
On the upside I have a lot more experience, comfort, and scope with scifi to do whatever I want and make something good and not feel shackled by weird tropes and player expectations.
Dwarf Fortress is one of the only things in recent years that I feel does a decent "standard" fantasy setting
the elves have a neat feel, dwarfs are at the center of the game - not humans
and goblins has a super unique feel
it's definitely inspired any future D&D-type campaigns I run
i don't like its elves very much, but then i am the person who will use elves as the standard and put humans in the typical orc role of roaming savages.
Posts
Austin Walker also runs RPGs that are all about exploring real-world themes.
edit: terrible totp. That's what I get for not just editing.
I'm sure you aren't as terrible as The Example Derick i have created.
Would I want to play a game where racism is a major component at a convention with strangers? Hell no.
But, with the right group I might totally play and enjoy the experience of a game that focuses on colonialism and the interaction between native and colonizer (Dog Eat Dog).
Yes well, that's all well and good but I'm not just designing a setting for me and my buds. This is something I may possibly also release at some future point. That's sorta my dilemma. It's much easier to create some bespoke collaborative game world experience for you and your friends, in fact there are systems (Microscope for example) that are specifically designed to serve that very purpose.
But that's not the entirety of what I'm trying to do, so it's trying to find that balancing point between "What are the things that me and my friends like/dislike" and "What is the sort of thing that people who are not us would actually be interested in playing?"
I think there's a balance point to be found somewhere in the middle there. If it means I have to compromise on some of my numerous pet peeves or issues with fantasy than so be it, but that's also why I'm talking to a general public of RPG nerds about it.
Granted, "Most realistic racism" is not really a selling point anyone wants.
See and that's the rub, I think.
GMs don't mind playing villains. In fact, speaking as someone who has a tendency to be almost always the GM, it's a lot of fun! But they're villains for a reason. They exist in the plot to serve antagonistic purpose. Their shitty (or redeeming!) qualities add depth and purpose to them.
When that's just sorta smeared all over the setting as a default, it just sucks all around. It sucks for the player who wants to play a black person or a woman or whatever and not get shit on by just like, normal shopkeeps and shit (like they may very well in real life). It sucks for the GM who has to thread this weird line of figuring out how to accurately portray institutionalized, unthinking prejudice from characters who are not actively villainous or antagonistic.
I don't feel it's a value-add to most games, and I definitely don't want it in a product I want to release to a wide audience. If someone's bespoke game with their crew contains people who want to explore that, cool for them. But no thank you.
What about as opposed to having races being a defined culture but rather just having countries and regions that have distinct cultures and the people living there mostly share it. The races are there for a more mechanics based reason.
Want to play co-op games? Feel free to hit me up!
the thing with that is then the races just become number blocks and that's just as boring.
If elves and humans are going to be culturally close within a nation then the separation between them should be something more than just Elves are fast and nimble.
But she also told me she didn't want her character's transgender status to come up as a plot point or game mechanic issue or something. Like, she didn't want to deal with a transphobic villain, or encounter a Girdle of Femininity, or a spell affects her differently because she's trans, or anything.
She basically wanted her trans woman character to be treated as a woman, period. I said "Okay, no problem".
Because apparently this has been an issue for her with previous groups and she just wanted to like, quietly clarify that issue beforehand. The fact that she needed to (and to be fair, like, it was a smart move, she didn't know me super well at that point and it was good of her to make her boundaries clear) just kinda made my brain frown. Because it kinda spoke to some unfortunate experiences she has had previously. Dammit, nerds.
Every elf is some flavor of weird bullshit anime
Yeah, and to expand on that: The presence of a non-human culture would be vastly influential on human culture.
Like it's weird to me that in fantasy settings, cultures kinda exist in vacuums and the fact that there are sentient alien species on the same planet alongside each other and the most they influence each other or have an impact on each other is like... they sometimes war?
Like, think about sci-fi: In sci-fi, First Contact is a big fucking deal. Finding out we're not alone in the universe, that there's a whole Other of people who are not even our species is huge and momentous and creates giant shifts in human culture and attitudes and stuff. How that impact plays out depends a lot on how alien those aliens really are. If they're basically blue-skinned or pointy-eared humans that's kinda meh... unless their culture is somehow also super alien as well (like say, Vulcans).
Yet somehow, in fantasy, non-human races are just treated as interchangeable with nationality or ethnicity and maaaaaaan that rings so false for me.
Want to play co-op games? Feel free to hit me up!
I felt pretty alone when I still played D&D
The thing about Sci-Fi v. Fantasy in this regard is it's assumed the fantasy races encountered each other at some point in the past, and that there have been interactions such to a point that the various races/cultures have some relationships and norms with each other. In a sense, boiling it down to really simple terms (Which is how Race is usually dealt with) it just a different nationality for the races of that world.
In Sci-Fi, first contact tends to be big because it usually between 2 different races that have had centuries if not millienia developing on their own until they meet. The amount of cultural difference is staggering (This trope is sometimes played with in fantasy when encountering 'lost civilizations' and the like)
In pondering on this, I realize the reason we tend to default these things is because:
1. Shorthand is easy and people are lazy even when we want to be creative (to a certain extent)
2. It is way easier to design a few monolithic cultural entities/touchstones and go from there, because trying to model things as complex and diverse as the real world would take way more time than it ends up being worth (If people notice the effort at all) and usually would lead to more troubles than it would solve. Like, cool ideal to strive for, but I don't think we'll be getting there anytime soon.
RPGs tend to put very few restrictions on how players create human characters. Because for many people RPGs (especially fantasy RPGs) can be a power fantasy or another way to be a person you wish you could be, many people tend to play characters who are idealized versions of themselves. The same gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. Players do break from this all the time, of course. People play characters of a different gender, or a vastly different worldview and moral code than themselves, or even in some rare cases a different sexual orientation than themselves (this is almost always paired up with playing a different gender as well, but sometimes not!).
Generally speaking, saying you can't play black people or women or trans people or gay people or whatever is frowned upon. At most, you may see a game devote a page to discussing the "challenges and difficulties" or other peculiarities that a specific group of folk (who aren't straight white cis men) face in the setting. On rare occasions, like Ghosts of Albion, you'll have an actual game mechanic devoted to it and many people (myself included) will think that's sorta inappropriate.
But for the most part, we put few restrictions on people's abilities to play the human they want, largely so they can play someone like themselves.
Well, you're not an elf. I'm sorry I don't consider Otherkin a real thing (I don't, and if you want to pick a fight with me about it please take it to PM and not this thread). You're not an elf, even if elves are your ideal from a beauty/cultural/aesthetic/whatever perspective. It's okay if they're an ideal. It's okay if you think they're sexy or cool or awesome. But I don't feel like a setting owes you elves so you can express your true inner elf. I don't feel like this is on par with letting you be an Arabic person or a woman or a trans person or bisexual or whatever.
So I don't feel like the fantasy standards (or even trope equivalents, like "basically elves but...") are necessary for a setting and I think if you opt to include them, you're essentially opening a door for people to want to play those kinds of characters their way, even if that might not be what you want for your setting. You can try to solve this with diversity and making them really complex and large (like Melding suggested, having a giant diverse cultural background of elves where standard Legolas stereotypes go over there but the elves over here are the ones are different), but I feel like the purpose for doing that is kinda dubious.
Sure but the more alien they get, the more I feel like they become background creatures and not player character races.
While playing races that are super alien and weird and have completely inhuman cultures can be really fun and challenging and is totally a thing in many RPGs, I feel like the more you crank it up the harder it gets to find quality players for those character types and the more they become vulnerable to being appealing choices for people who are fuckin' obnoxious to play with (see: Kender or Warforged or Shifters).
Because RPG players, as Matev pointed out, can be intellectually lazy and use a lot of tropes and archetypes and shorthand. Trust me, playing with a dude who is playing a Warforged that is trying too hard to talk like HK-47 is beyond wearisome, even if Warforged are fucking cool.
which is an area no one has really played with and something to explore. How did the eventual assimilation of wood elves change this human kingdom? Sure there was probably some xenophobia, racism, but what about a few generations later where things have settled for a bit (hopefully).
This nomadic tribe of humans settled by dwarves, adopted dwarven values, how does this expand?
Eberron has some of this, but the answer they came to seemed to have been "everyone acts like humans do anyway."
Things can't be quite as alien as space simply by nature of we share a common point of origin, but they can still be very strange. but knowing in the ocean there are evil fishmen is going to have a very specific effect on the people living on the coast and pirates.
Right?! Exactly
Like that is exactly what I am talking about.
Basically, my idea is start at a human angle trying to deal with the fantastical, and build what you want from there. As someone who likes the Standard Fantasy Races, i am likely to include them at some point, but that's just me.
But then you have people on the coast being paranoid, not trusting nature magic (since it is the tool of the unseen horrors), but being generally good at fighting on land and boats. this can be an additional thing to like national traits, and maybe even racial traits. Being humans who grew up around zealous wood land defending woads is going to get to a distaste for building with wood. Or maybe it's very highly valued because it has to be brought in from different regions. Maybe you're from a town that just burned all the trees in the area down because fuck the fair folk We Live Here Now.
And that's if you don't decide to go full Dagon Cult and throw in with the evil fish people, which brings it's own set of events that can come into motion. Is there a coastal kingdom of fish people and the humans who live with them? Did they get rooted out in a pogrom awhile ago, and now Coastal cities house more churches and inquisitorial figures to safeguard against another deep one uprising? Did the elves ally with the fish people cause the water's nature as well, leading to anti-elf sentiment? Just this one little prompt can inspire a region's worth of lore and data.
STR 14 DEX 20 CON 14
CHA 19 WIS 10 INT 10
HP: 156/156 AC 19
Wis +9 Cha +13 Str +6
Dex +9 Con +6 Int +4
Skills: Stealth +10, Perception +5, Religion +5, Intimidation +9
Abilities:
Wraith Form (Recharge 6)
Bonus Action: Enter the Ethereal Plane and exit anywhere within 30ft at the start of your next turn.
Step of the Reaper(Recharge 6)
Bonus Action, teleport 30ft to an unoccupied space in sight, all adjacent to your start and end point take 3d6 Necrotic, and Hiverax gains THP equal to damage dealt.
Hellfire Blossom (Charge: Deal 100 Damage) Make 6 Hellfire Blade attacks that target all foes within 30 ft. After each attack, all targets may move 5ft or use a Reaction to take an attack of opportunity, then Hiverax moves 5ft.
Dual Wield: Hiverax makes 2 attacks with his Hellfire Blades: +10 to hit: 1d6+10 Slashing +1d6 Fire + 1d8 Necrotic (21.5 avg)
After Hiverax makes 4 attacks with Hellfire Blades he discards them and draws new ones from beneath his cloak, using his action for the turn.
He should pull 80 Damage with the Blades, and fill the last 20 with the Step, but at that point he'll have to reload, giving the party time to slow him down before he unleashes Hellfire Blossom(DIE DIE DIE)
I might want to tweak his attacks to 3 per round but he hits accurately and hard enough so I don't feel that I need to, but we'll see. I might give him some more Paladin features beyond buffed saves but this should be enough fun, right?
If the party gets wiped by Hellfire Blossom, then they'll get revived after the Alchemist's laboratory is destroyed as Arcane potions flow along the ground to restore them. If they succeed, they get a source of powerful potions and poisons!
Birthright. Humanocentric with fantasy races present but generally indifferent or openly hostile to humans.
It should give some ideas that, sadly, never made it into mainstream setting development.
The kickstarters have shipped. There is still no date for stores yet.
@uriel if you are interested in the game if you go to their website, there is a print and play that you can try out to see if it is your thing. But the print and play lack the super cool timber title thingies that you get that denotes if you are president or chancellor.
Satans..... hints.....
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
Anything I want to do or say or any stories I want to tell, I can do better with sci fi. There aren't stories I'm interested in telling in fantasy.
So I give up and I think I'm just going to try to do a sci fi setting instead because at least I like sci fi.
it's always some weird version of monarchy tooled from modern perspectives
fantasy would be a LOT more interesting if writers researched feudal and tribal cultures, as well as mythology and stories from the times
an attempt to do something different than science-fiction, and look towards the past rather than the future
also, folk need to stop aping Tolkien ad nauseam
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
Chimps are endangered you monster
Honestly I think I'd like to explore a dark ages/feudalism settings with much more detail than Magic Renaissance Steampunk Castles. The magical possibilities of fantasy with the grim darkness of medieval history.
Are you saying that the Tolkiens eat chimps?
That's, quite the claim.
I don't think highly of Christopher Tolkien lets put it that way.
That's fair. is there a non-endangered ape? maybe i will switch to those.
1. Design a highly derivative setting relying on an extensive amount of archetypes, touchstones, tropes, and pre-existing cultural notions.
2. Not give a shit and hand-wave away alot of the details or deliberately leave them as blank space for the player to fill in and only make a minimal setting to go alongside the system I'm designing.
3. Put an enormous amount of work into making a cohesive, bespoke original setting that the overwhelming majority of people who are not me will never ever give a shit about and will actively opt to ignore.
I chose option 4: No.
sci-fi tends to involve a little more careful planning on my part
I have a Star Wars campaign idea, but that's waiting for whenever I feel like learning a new system
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
They want to be the worst dwarf trope in the world? fine. Oh their elf is actually a stone statue given life and hates magic for it? cool, whatever, but this Duke has a magic sword that can kill Satan and is working for Satan so you need to get the sword away from him so you can kill Satan.
But then i'm not really looking to make a sellable project outside of maybe the monster guide stuff i do. Which is just set in the modern world so i don't have to really worry about world building.
the elves have a neat feel, dwarfs are at the center of the game - not humans
and goblins has a super unique feel
it's definitely inspired any future D&D-type campaigns I run
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
So that's freeing.
i don't like its elves very much, but then i am the person who will use elves as the standard and put humans in the typical orc role of roaming savages.
we all have our biases.