The Gaming Den

Talisman wrote:Then why are you still posting here?

Roy, you've got a broken quote tag.

Yeah, new thread I think.

I'm not sure why my quoting that post did that. My mistake. Fixed.

Roy wrote:

Talisman wrote:Then why are you still posting here?

Roy, you've got a broken quote tag.

Yeah, new thread I think.

I'm not sure why my quoting that post did that. My mistake. Fixed.

Because of the "tag" missing a character, thus not being a tag, and this board's software being ... questionable? Don't take me wrong: good members (and Fence Builders, of course) > good software, by about the same proportion that wild shape > rage. Or greater, if that's even possible.

No, I know why the error occurred. I don't know how a character got shaved off to cause the broken tag. Anyways, carry on.

Elennsar wrote: The stupid part is the "NPC only". Admitedly, the truly stupid part is having 1-20 classes that are designed to be inferior.

If Joe The Standard Guardsman is an inferior character, then he's lower level. If Joe the Above Average Guardsman is your peer, he should be the same level.

Um what... If yiou truly believe that, then why are you advocating that Grok, the orcish archer is weaker than Legolas, the elven archer, yet they are both the same level.

Because Legolas has "better than a nonelf" from being an elf OR personally better statistics than Grok was built with (or both).

But both would have Fighter (or whatever) levels.

FrankTrollman wrote:

Fuchs wrote:I still think making racial bonuses available to all PCs regardless of race would be the easiest and best option.

Those by definition are not racial bonuses.

Make them NPC-only racial bonuses then, and PC options. Or just call them character traits, and add "NPC generally have those traits per race:", followed by the racial traits the majority has.

Elennsar wrote:Because Legolas has "better than a nonelf" from being an elf OR personally better statistics than Grok was built with (or both).

But both would have Fighter (or whatever) levels.

If it's an elf it has to be better in E's world.

Only if elves are set up as better to begin with, which is not necessarily the case (in D&D as written, they shouldn't be superior overall, whatever their advantages are).

Middle-Earth, on the other hand, elves are superior to the other races.

Not by any means all elves to all nonelves, but elves are usually more experienced and often talented.

Fuchs wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:

Fuchs wrote:I still think making racial bonuses available to all PCs regardless of race would be the easiest and best option.

Those by definition are not racial bonuses.

Make them NPC-only racial bonuses then, and PC options. Or just call them character traits, and add "NPC generally have those traits per race:", followed by the racial traits the majority has.

I'm actually totally down with giving races "average ability score assignments" where for example most Kobolds have Dex first and Strength last. That scales smoothly to characters who have better and worse ability score arrays and allows for characters to be exceptional in one way or another without pushing them off the RNG or making anyone unbalanced.

But you don't call those "modifiers" because they don't modify anything. Similarly, anything else that players choose to have or not have are by definition not chosen by their race - they are chosen by the player. So giving races "suggested ability selections" or something would work similarly. And if you went with a no racial abilities set-up, that's how to do it.

But you wouldn't have racial abilities at that point. Which is fine if you want to live in Star Trek land where all races are interchangeable and equivalent to humans in all ways (at least as far as actual PCs go). If you don't want to live in Star Trek land, then you'll want to hav some sort of actual racial differences.

---

Which doesn't mean that any of Elennsar's examples hold water, because they do not.

The question of forehead aliens is actually quite complex. After all, when aliens are sufficiently similar to humans that they are pretty much just guys in makeup then their personality ends up getting shoehorned into being their makeup fairly often. This character is "A Vulcan" that character is "A Klingon" and so on. It's fairly disheartening. Indeed, the more races there are, and the more similar races are to each other, the less interesting any particular character who is a member of those races actually is in practice. Elves in Shadowrun are far more interesting people than elves in D&D. And this is in no small part because of how few races there are in Shadowrun.

When a race gets minor modifiers towards various tasks, like they do in D&D and Elennsar's misguided tirades, it becomes even worse. People end up playing Elves because they want to shoot bows, rather than because they have anything invested in being an elf. When race becomes a min/max tool, no matter how minor, character development suffers tremendously. How many "Elven" characters have you seen that are played basically like Legolas from DM of the Rings? I've seen... many.

And that's not surprising. When people are told point blank that their archer character would be better if they wrote "Elf" on their character sheet, they will totally do that. And then because their character wasn't exactly the character they were originally thinking of they become less attached to it. Less attachment to a character causes them to be invested with less personality, make less of an impact on the story and further reinforces the player's lack of interest. It's a vicious cycle that starts any time you put rules in between what a player wants to play and what they actually are playing.

If you want races to be different, you want them to have actual abilities that other people don't have. For example: having slug people that can stick to walls and ceilings or mer people who breathe water is different, while having people get +1 to a task anyone does is not. But you also need to have few enough races that individual members of that race come "on camera" often enough that the race as a whole doesn't become a stereotype. The fact that Gimli is the only Dwarf in LotR has done more to damage Dwarves than anything else. I mean seriously, he's a warrior who fights with an ax. You know how many people go on about how Dwarves can't be good archers or magicians just because he personally wasn't one? Every Wookie has to be a Chubacca. Every Vulcan has to be a Spock. And so on.

When it comes to races, less is seriously more. Nothing interesting or good was ever done by a Star Wars cameo-muppet.

-Username17

So in order to avoid having race mean absolutely nothing, you wind up with it either only A) providing unique abilities that don't exist anywhere else, or B) you wind it with there being no difference between an elf who has a bow and a dwarf who has a bow other than that one player wrote "elf" on the sheet.

Also known as "making race totally irrelevant to your ability to do anything".

So instead of rewarding someone for coming from a race with certain advantages, you make it so that anyone can have any numbers they like and it doesn't matter if you call the result an elf.

Remind me how "elf" suddenly means something when you get nothing distinct from it other than fluff that you can ignore too because we don't even want PCs following cultural standards if the player wants to be unconventional that badly?

frank:
how do feel of variation on a theme race. For Beastfolk might have a dozen different traits which they might have yet still be a beastfolk. Or saying Bugbears are the assault type, hobgoblins are the brain version and goblins are the sneak version of the goblinoid race?

ckafrica wrote:frank:
how do feel of variation on a theme race. For Beastfolk might have a dozen different traits which they might have yet still be a beastfolk. Or saying Bugbears are the assault type, hobgoblins are the brain version and goblins are the sneak version of the goblinoid race?

It's a razor edge. The more you compartmentalize races the less individuality each has.

Now having Goblinoids as a group is actually superior to having three entirely different races, because it means that they can share some of the camera time to get some distinctions in between them and others. I mean, the fact that Legolas and Elrond are both in there being "elves" gets a lot more breadth into "elves" than we get out of "dwarves" even though they are specifically different kinds of elves. Similarly, Goblins, Bug Bears, and Hobgoblins can reinforce their presence as a range of Goblinoids in a way that for example Orcs and Kobolds cannot.

But you're still kind of up a creek when you throw down too many races, even sub races. The fact is that you don't spend enough time among Grey Elves or Sun Elves for them to be any more than a stereotype. Seriously, Mountain Dwarves and Gold Dwarves don't improve the Dwarven image at all.

-Username17

Elennsar wrote:So instead of rewarding someone for coming from a race with certain advantages, you make it so that anyone can have any numbers they like and it doesn't matter if you call the result an elf.

Remind me how "elf" suddenly means something when you get nothing distinct from it other than fluff that you can ignore too because we don't even want PCs following cultural standards if the player wants to be unconventional that badly?

You don't understand that this "just fluff" is actually what's most important for a race in a roleplaying game. And you don't understand that yes, player characters get to ignore cultural straightjackets by vurtue of being special.

A crazy rumor doesn't gain traction if it doesn't have a grain of truth, though. If Joe is all about fucking with his friends, and he gets his enjoyment out of making everyone deal with his interruptions, then he will definitely screw up a game where everyone else was all up on the idea of getting into character voices and motives. He'll be playing off of the players while everyone else is trying to play off of imaginary characters, and it probably won't mesh.

That's how the Gamist/Narrativist/Simulationist theory got translated into computer games... Completely in a different way. Gamist are people looking to gain an advantage in the system; they don't care how their character looks or acts, they just want the best advantage. A small number of these guys just want to fuck with people. Narrativist don't care how badly their character sucks, just as long as they get to see the story. They'll use game advantages to gain access to things they haven't done or seen, and they'll attempt to anything to make a story about something. You screw up the text, you've lost these guys. They'll burn up anything to get to a new book or special outfit. Simulationist are all about the world. They want to know what's behind the screen. They get into areas they aren't supposed to, only to test the bounds of the world - not to take advantage of it, like the first group. They'll do things like drop twenty gnomes down a mine shaft just to see what happens, and will gladly burn through all their resources to access different mechanics in the game.

Guess what all these have in common? They're all people who screw up the game! Group one uses hacks. Group two rides the story or playerbase to death. Group three makes hacks! And while Group two and three won't kill an online game - tho they have - group one is not the most common type of griefer.

So the grain of truth is that yeah, if players aren't expecting the same game, it fucks things up. Which is why it's important to give a game that needs the fewest tweaks by the GM to fit those players - else they'll ditch it to find something simpler for the GM to run.

-Crissa

You don't understand that this "just fluff" is actually what's most important for a race in a roleplaying game. And you don't understand that yes, player characters get to ignore cultural straightjackets by vurtue of being special.

When that fluff has no impact on anything, and PCs can ignore it entirely even if it somehow did find meaning, then you are ignoring ALL of the traits of your kind.

There are plenty of nonblonde Scandinavians, so being a redhaired Dane won't hurt anything. But if your Viking is a pacifist, I'm starting to wonder what "Norseman." meant other than eight letters on the character sheet.

Are you unable to imagine how such fluff gets meaning through interaction between the non-conforming PC and the conforming NPC?

Do you even understand the difference between a PC being able not to follow a trait, and being able to avoid dealing with those who do follow that trait in a culture?

Or to use an example E might understand: Just because Drizzt is not chaotic evil doesn't mean he is not affected by most drow being chaotic evil. He has to deal with them, and with the world's view of all drow.

Drizzt doesn't get to ignore that drow trait, he just gets to be the one drow that doesn't follow that trait - but it still shapes his life.

It's a razor edge. The more you compartmentalize races the less individuality each has.

Now having Goblinoids as a group is actually superior to having three entirely different races, because it means that they can share some of the camera time to get some distinctions in between them and others. I mean, the fact that Legolas and Elrond are both in there being "elves" gets a lot more breadth into "elves" than we get out of "dwarves" even though they are specifically different kinds of elves. Similarly, Goblins, Bug Bears, and Hobgoblins can reinforce their presence as a range of Goblinoids in a way that for example Orcs and Kobolds cannot.

But you're still kind of up a creek when you throw down too many races, even sub races. The fact is that you don't spend enough time among Grey Elves or Sun Elves for them to be any more than a stereotype. Seriously, Mountain Dwarves and Gold Dwarves don't improve the Dwarven image at all.

-Username17

Well what if you just made the goblinoids really just one race. They all get darkvision and hide as a class skill. Then you can select from a list of racial abilities to customize the kind of goblinoid you are. You might take 'strong build' to use weapons a size larger, or you might take 'dark camouflage' that negates darkvision for purposes of detecting you at night
or... you get the idea. have a list of abilities that could be arguably useful to all classes though perhaps some slightly more useful for certain ones.

Eliminating your racial penalty to Intelligence as an orc in exchange for feeling annoyed at how stupid other orcs are is not a trade of one consequence for another.

Now, if you had something like "orc nerd: You gain +2 to Intelligence (meaning you suffer no racial penalty to Intelligence). However, you suffer () to balance this out and also have to deal with how orcs think smart people are suspiciously elf like, which may cause 'interesting times'."

That would be fine. I would celebrate having such traits if the -2 is merely a normal thing found in orcs and not something hardwired into orc limitations (the way "can't fly when flapping arms" is).

After all, a cultural penalty is perfectly legitimate (if different and not necessarily better than a racial-nature one).

So unless the social stuff actually means something either "interesting" or inconvenient, its not a consequence.

And it makes no sense for a PC to be able to fly by flapping his arms when the rest of his race can't. Same with any other hardwired limitation.

Cultural fluff is only relevant to the extent you have to deal with it, and "Well, if I did go back to the Bloody Maw Clan, I'd be teased or worse." is not relevant unless for some reason you do want to go back.

And of course, the odds of anyone who is dynamically different than their culture with cultures which don't tolerate unorthodox behavior peacefully surviving long enough to escape into adventurerhood are not good.

Not impossible, but not good.

Drizzt doesn't get to ignore that drow trait, he just gets to be the one drow that doesn't follow that trait - but it still shapes his life.

Dealing with the perceptions of others is considerably less handicapping than dealing with being a short sighted sadist.

Personally, were it not for my dislike of "entitled to be unique" and Drizzt clones, I'd be fine with a Drizzt like PC.

Well, that and the fact that like the majority of literary protagonists, he's a little too powerful for a cooperative rpg PC.

From reading his comments on the Space Jam thread, I think I know Elennsar's problem. His argument is basically:

A) The rules say orcs can't have 18 intelligence.
B) PC orcs shouldn't be able to have 18 intelligence, because they can't transcend the orcish maximum.

The problem is that the fundamental argument people are making is that the rules in fact should not give orcs intelligence penalties at all (or dex bonuses to elves for that matter).

The basic idea is that you're changing the rules. And honestly Elennsar seems to keep forgetting that, because he's accepting a -2 intelligence for orcs as a given, despite the fact that the whole idea is to eliminate that. Further he has provided no counter to why we shouldn't change the rules beyond: "you'll nullify the flavor text."

But that's just not true. Getting back to Space Jam, Yao Ming being really tall doesn't in any way hurt the stereotype that asians are short. It makes Ming seem more exceptional but we realize that he's an exception and not the rule. The same is true for an orc PC wizard. Just because he happens to be smart doesn't mean that the world can't still think of orcs as being stupid, because seriously most of them are.

Also I totally agree with Frank's argument about races as a min/maxing tool. It's really not a good thing for the game at all.

And why does "special" entitle you to go past the usual orc (or whatever applies, I'm standing by Yao Ming having the "human" limit on height because Chinese are not biologically cursed/blessed with less height)?

And if you want "we don't give bonuses/penalties at all", that's an entirely different arguement (with plenty of its own merits) to "we don't apply them to PCs".

I'm fine with the former (its not something I agree is nearly as necessary or good as others are saying, but you can certainly design things around it quite well), but I'm not fine with granting PCs immunity from inconvenience from racial choice .

because special=unusual. If you are confined to the usual (race of choice) your not special

Elennsar wrote:Now, if you had something like "orc nerd: You gain +2 to Intelligence (meaning you suffer no racial penalty to Intelligence). However, you suffer () to balance this out and also have to deal with how orcs think smart people are suspiciously elf like, which may cause 'interesting times'."

That would be fine. I would celebrate having such traits if the -2 is merely a normal thing found in orcs and not something hardwired into orc limitations (the way "can't fly when flapping arms" is).

After all, a cultural penalty is perfectly legitimate (if different and not necessarily better than a racial-nature one).

So unless the social stuff actually means something either "interesting" or inconvenient, its not a consequence.

Elennsar wrote:

Drizzt doesn't get to ignore that drow trait, he just gets to be the one drow that doesn't follow that trait - but it still shapes his life.

Dealing with the perceptions of others is considerably less handicapping than dealing with being a short sighted sadist.

Do you even read what you post?

There's a couple points there.

#1: I'm fine with "Personal background: Something that compensates for my penalty in exchange for something else."

#2: I'm not fine with "Personal Background: I lose the penalty because PCs don't deserve penalties."

Ckafrica: So, its not special enough to be a good knight in Pendragon, because there are lots of good knights? Nevermind how special it is relative to most people, you have to be special amongst the knights, and special in ways unrelated to what anyone has done before.

Drizzt would have to deal with "people hate drow" whether he deserved it or not, so he just lost "drow are less effective than they would be otherwise" in being a CG and sane individual.

Elennsar wrote: And if you want "we don't give bonuses/penalties at all", that's an entirely different arguement (with plenty of its own merits) to "we don't apply them to PCs".

I think that's pretty much been the argument all along, that we're going to remove the racial modifiers to prevent orcs from being inferior wizards and elves from being the best archers.

What isn't being applied to the PC is the stereotype "orcs are stupid". And yes, the DM if he wants can choose to make an exceptional orc NPC that ignores the stereotype as well. But for the most part, gameworld orcs are going to prioritize strength and have int as a dump stat. But you seriously don't need racial modifiers to do that. You can just use your typical point buy system and have them prioritize strength and have int as a dump stat.

And this really doesn't make orcs any smarter. If the average orc in your game world has 8 intelligence and the average human has 10, no flavor has been lost, and it doesn't matter if those numbers come from a point buy system or from racial modifiers.