I personally think this has more to due with thumbs and language then how big brain humans consider themselves ** I don't particularly like any of this terminology, intelligent is a nebulous concept along with sentience that humans don't have a monopoly on, anyone with half a brain can recognize a dog as intelligent, many animals have traits that could pretty reasonably be considered sentience, and civilized is not great either, since humans tend to be bad at recognizing societies as such without getting all snobish about it. Even relatively similar Aliens can have radically different mindsets, as much do to history as Biology. ![]() *this is also the norm of SciFi writing, as intelligent life is often recognized as developing entirely independently. A common red flag I use for my evil characters is killing the monsters without concern, because in my mind, that alone is sufficient for a character to be evil. And I am concerned that Wotc may be moving in that second direction.Īnd to be clear, I personally reject the idea that target is evil is a justification, at any level of this discussion. ![]() A sidebar to clarify such is fine, removing all context seeing it as a disservice to players is what I would definitely be against. Drow are evil, adept at magic and have a revulsion to sunlight is a true statement, taken as common, not compulsory. Some of them are strong, and some of them are weak."Īnd so for me at least, I haven't had much of an issue with D&D as it has been, since most of its language has been for the most part generalization (generally, generalizations are false and whatnot). The Klingons are as diverse a people as any other. Orcs are resilient, and orcs are evil have similar truth value in game terms, but we have no issue referring to orcs as resilient because that is true more often than not.įrom a DS9 episode I rather like to illustrate: And for it to have value in the species block it doesn't need to be always true, just dominant. ![]() One, as mentioned we are talking about cultures, while a claim that an intelligent species can be Immutably Evil*** is dubious, a culture or society has a lot less of a hurdle to hit this claim. are the ones that have been represented as having dominant cultures that trend to what the game considers 'Evil.' I don't have issues generally with this, for a couple reasons. And at that point it is a matter of degrees, for example humans in most fantasies are the "read error" to non specific to make any claims about either by culture or region. What this means is at the species level games should include cultural information at the species level, even if it is setting specific. D&D maps to feudal, so it at least makes sense that different species would have distinct cultures.* Essentially the mechanics of how cultures form in reality, applied to a world with more than one, intelligent? sentient? civilized? eh, human-ish species** Thematic tend to be things like culture, and behavior.įrom a realism standpoint, if two species are isolated from each other for an extended period they will develop differently, in the modern world this is a difficult proposition but in Feudal times this is a simple fact of geography. for D&D specifically, it has always struggled with this mechanically, as it is perceived that a species must be limited in scope, and so the ones that reach interest to me are treated as outliers in need of balance adjustment (Volo's Yuan-ti is evocative but powerful, so it got the nerf bat), so we need some amount of thematic compliment. ![]() But if what they want are orcs and drow to be acceptable targets then homebrew is the only option, and rightly so.I can only speak for myself, but my ultimate goal is for species to have value, either mechanical or thematic. Because if they're actually okay with no races that are acceptable targets then we can put this whole tangent to bed. I'm not asking for a universal desire, I'm asking them what they specifically want.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |