The drow are a culture as are orcs or mindflayers or goblins or whatever. They are also not really races but rather different species.
Pick one. It can be a race, or it can be a culture, but it can't be both. On your second point, the drow are a race of elves; elves are probably a different subspecies from humans, though applying modern genetics to fantasy races is dubious.
well it depends on campaign setting, in Forgotten Realms....I'm pretty sure Elves are not a subspecies of Humans. In fact idk if there are any human subspecies at all. Elves, dwarves, dragonborn, yuan-ti etc...are all separate species.
Guys seriously... it is a game with fantasy races, we are not talking about real people real cultures, and real races... we start really debating the feelings of orcs elves gnomes when we should really start debating the real stuff, in the real world many those problems can be solved, this is a fantasy game, play to have joy and fun, because debating how the elves may feel offended by humans will not solve real racism, debating how orcs are offended will not solve as well. debate the real stuff in the correct channels, not in a game.
everyone runs games differently but for my games this type of stuff is important for world building
well it depends on campaign setting, in Forgotten Realms....I'm pretty sure Elves are not a subspecies of Humans. In fact idk if there are any human subspecies at all. Elves, dwarves, dragonborn, yuan-ti etc...are all separate species.
Correct. Elves aren't even mammals, not really - the original elves sprang up from the blood of Corellon (a god) after he bled everywhere after Gruumsh (another god) hit him really hard (different cultures get into the details differently, but you can safely assume he was using some sort of deity-grade axe). Dwarves were handcrafted by Moradin. Kobolds are the mutant offspring of Tiamat. I don't think we canonically know where Dragonborn originally came from, so they could be a lot of things. Certainly nowadays they're fundamentally non-human, even if their backstory ends up being that that they used to be.
Now, yuan-ti, yuan-ti are ex-humans. Long ago a bunch of yuan-ti (which was just a specific human culture at the time) used sorcery to breed with snakes. The bloodline now breeds true-ish - you don't get humans born of yuan-ti parents any more, but much like Khajit from the Elder Scrolls, you do get different individuals born with radically different body shapes. The magic and the snake DNA are supposed to be why yuan-ti share certain distinctive personality traits, similarly to the explanation behind why all gnolls are the way that gnolls are.
well it depends on campaign setting, in Forgotten Realms....I'm pretty sure Elves are not a subspecies of Humans.
Definition of species is based on the ability to produce fertile offspring, by which definition elves, humans, and orcs are all the same species (others might be, but only half-orc and half-elf are consistent canon). (best to say ~magic~ for half-celestial, half-dragon, half-fiend).
well it depends on campaign setting, in Forgotten Realms....I'm pretty sure Elves are not a subspecies of Humans.
Definition of species is based on the ability to produce fertile offspring, by which definition elves, humans, and orcs are all the same species (others might be, but only half-orc and half-elf are consistent canon). (best to say ~magic~ for half-celestial, half-dragon, half-fiend).
WELL you can't handwave one and not the others....elves have innate magic, their darkvision comes directly from the weave....so why can they be by magic as well....there is no where in the lore that supports them being a sub-species as is how it works on earth here.
WELL you can't handwave one and not the others....elves have innate magic, their darkvision comes directly from the weave....so why can they be by magic as well....there is no where in the lore that supports them being a sub-species as is how it works on earth here.
The lore doesn't support using real-world evolutionary biology to describe D&D in the first place, but if you're going to use terms from real-world biology, your choices are "they're the same species" or "talking about species is nonsense". It's pretty clear that talking about species in the case of fiends and celestials is nonsense, and half-dragons appear to involve the dragon polymorphing itself first (so clearly magic, and probably an open method for any type of creature with enough magic to polymorph itself like that), but as far as we know half-elves and half-orcs are created the normal way.
well it depends on campaign setting, in Forgotten Realms....I'm pretty sure Elves are not a subspecies of Humans.
Definition of species is based on the ability to produce fertile offspring, by which definition elves, humans, and orcs are all the same species (others might be, but only half-orc and half-elf are consistent canon). (best to say ~magic~ for half-celestial, half-dragon, half-fiend).
This, alas, tends to be ignored in most fiction, under the assumption that anything can breed with anything if they look similar enough. (Most alien species, for example, would also be subspecies of human by this logic, regardless of whether it's even possible for them to have anything even slightly resembling a human genome.)
well it depends on campaign setting, in Forgotten Realms....I'm pretty sure Elves are not a subspecies of Humans.
Definition of species is based on the ability to produce fertile offspring, by which definition elves, humans, and orcs are all the same species (others might be, but only half-orc and half-elf are consistent canon). (best to say ~magic~ for half-celestial, half-dragon, half-fiend).
oh how does this work for mules? sorry side question....
im just asking because horses and donkeys can make a mule but hybrids are all infertile....so they would not be the same species correct?
well it depends on campaign setting, in Forgotten Realms....I'm pretty sure Elves are not a subspecies of Humans.
Definition of species is based on the ability to produce fertile offspring, by which definition elves, humans, and orcs are all the same species (others might be, but only half-orc and half-elf are consistent canon). (best to say ~magic~ for half-celestial, half-dragon, half-fiend).
oh how does this work for mules? sorry side question....
im just asking because horses and donkeys can make a mule but hybrids are all infertile....so they would not be the same species correct?
That's correct (there's various edge cases, because actual nature is messier than our convenient definitions).
If half elves and half orcs are infertile (not specified either way in the game rules) then humans, elves and orcs are separate species. I guess that's a DM decision at the table, as is whether or not some of these species are inherently evil, aka Tolkien's orcs and such, or not. My biggest problem is that they call them Races at all. Call them species, and eliminate the "D&D is racist" problem, please. If we would do that as a human species...stop denoting peoples by race, which is an artificial and completely ridiculous concept from a biological and anthropological standpoint, we could solve a lot of problems.
But race and species are the same things, the problem is a lot of people still use the term race from different cultures etc. in the real life. Is wrong to apply in this case to the cho, or the Mulan but, not between orcs, elves, and gnomes, that is my take on it. and by using the term race is not creating racism in the game.
No they aren't; 'race' is generally a much narrower division than species. However, as has been discussed ad nauseum, changing 'race' to 'species' doesn't fix anything.
Jesus. Let the sourcebooks have more complex characters and races. If you want in your game one race being completely evil then do that.
This is not a multiplayer game. Just do whatever the **** you want. Maybe you want all gnomes to be the evil guys, how about that? Is Crawford going to break into your house and shatter your kneecaps over it? I doubt that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Nugz - Kobold Level 4 Bloodhunter/Order of the Mutant - Out there looking for snacks and evil monsters.
Ultrix Schwarzdorn - Human Level 6 Artificer/Armorer - Retired and works in his new shop.
Quercus Espenkiel - Gnome Level 9 Wizard/Order of Scribes - Turned into a book and sits on a shelf.
Artin - Fairy Level 4 Sorcerer/Wild Magic - Busy with annoying the townsfolk. Again.
Jabor - Fire Genasi - Level 4 Wizard/School of Evocation - The First Flame, The Last Chaos. Probably in jail, again.
Race is a completely artificial concept that makes no scientific sense. It divides a species into categories based on completely subjective characteristics. Species, on the other hand, have genetic makeups so different that they cannot interbreed, or can but produce sterile offspring. Hence Homo Sapiens is a species, as all can interbreed, and the artificial concept of race is used by racists to assert superiority of some characteristics, such as blue eyes, over others. That being said, yeah, do whatever you want in your homegame. I'd just like it more if we didn't have them listed as races, as that is an inaccuracy that feels very out of place in our enlightened society today.
The point that I thought got danced around a bit: "human" is not a culture. Humans have lots of cultures.
"Orc" should not be a culture. "Elf" should not be a culture. To me, that's boring and weird.
If you want to make them all evil or all good, that's fine! The rules say you can do that. The rules also say we don't need to do that.
It's a win-win.
(And a bit off topic, but I saw a lot here about it: the definition of species is ***not*** lifeforms that can breed together. That's a simplification we tell kids in school to help them grasp the concept (a bit like electrons being little solid blobs that spin around - in reality, they are very much not that). There are, for example, sets of species such that species A can breed with species B, species B can breed with species C, but C cannot breed with A.
Plus: would that mean people born infertile would not be "human", since they can't interbreed? Most individual ants can't breed. etc etc.
Double plus: we humans bred with neanderthals, and had viable offspring. They are not the same species as us.
Breeding together is an important and interesting factor in determining species, but it is not the only one).
Pick one. It can be a race, or it can be a culture, but it can't be both. On your second point, the drow are a race of elves; elves are probably a different subspecies from humans, though applying modern genetics to fantasy races is dubious.
well it depends on campaign setting, in Forgotten Realms....I'm pretty sure Elves are not a subspecies of Humans. In fact idk if there are any human subspecies at all. Elves, dwarves, dragonborn, yuan-ti etc...are all separate species.
everyone runs games differently but for my games this type of stuff is important for world building
Correct. Elves aren't even mammals, not really - the original elves sprang up from the blood of Corellon (a god) after he bled everywhere after Gruumsh (another god) hit him really hard (different cultures get into the details differently, but you can safely assume he was using some sort of deity-grade axe). Dwarves were handcrafted by Moradin. Kobolds are the mutant offspring of Tiamat. I don't think we canonically know where Dragonborn originally came from, so they could be a lot of things. Certainly nowadays they're fundamentally non-human, even if their backstory ends up being that that they used to be.
Now, yuan-ti, yuan-ti are ex-humans. Long ago a bunch of yuan-ti (which was just a specific human culture at the time) used sorcery to breed with snakes. The bloodline now breeds true-ish - you don't get humans born of yuan-ti parents any more, but much like Khajit from the Elder Scrolls, you do get different individuals born with radically different body shapes. The magic and the snake DNA are supposed to be why yuan-ti share certain distinctive personality traits, similarly to the explanation behind why all gnolls are the way that gnolls are.
Definition of species is based on the ability to produce fertile offspring, by which definition elves, humans, and orcs are all the same species (others might be, but only half-orc and half-elf are consistent canon). (best to say ~magic~ for half-celestial, half-dragon, half-fiend).
WELL you can't handwave one and not the others....elves have innate magic, their darkvision comes directly from the weave....so why can they be by magic as well....there is no where in the lore that supports them being a sub-species as is how it works on earth here.
The lore doesn't support using real-world evolutionary biology to describe D&D in the first place, but if you're going to use terms from real-world biology, your choices are "they're the same species" or "talking about species is nonsense". It's pretty clear that talking about species in the case of fiends and celestials is nonsense, and half-dragons appear to involve the dragon polymorphing itself first (so clearly magic, and probably an open method for any type of creature with enough magic to polymorph itself like that), but as far as we know half-elves and half-orcs are created the normal way.
This, alas, tends to be ignored in most fiction, under the assumption that anything can breed with anything if they look similar enough. (Most alien species, for example, would also be subspecies of human by this logic, regardless of whether it's even possible for them to have anything even slightly resembling a human genome.)
oh how does this work for mules? sorry side question....
im just asking because horses and donkeys can make a mule but hybrids are all infertile....so they would not be the same species correct?
That's correct (there's various edge cases, because actual nature is messier than our convenient definitions).
I can manually compare them if needed, but how exactly was the Haunted One background changed?
If half elves and half orcs are infertile (not specified either way in the game rules) then humans, elves and orcs are separate species. I guess that's a DM decision at the table, as is whether or not some of these species are inherently evil, aka Tolkien's orcs and such, or not. My biggest problem is that they call them Races at all. Call them species, and eliminate the "D&D is racist" problem, please. If we would do that as a human species...stop denoting peoples by race, which is an artificial and completely ridiculous concept from a biological and anthropological standpoint, we could solve a lot of problems.
But race and species are the same things, the problem is a lot of people still use the term race from different cultures etc. in the real life. Is wrong to apply in this case to the cho, or the Mulan but, not between orcs, elves, and gnomes, that is my take on it. and by using the term race is not creating racism in the game.
No they aren't; 'race' is generally a much narrower division than species. However, as has been discussed ad nauseum, changing 'race' to 'species' doesn't fix anything.
I am still surprised this keeps showing up from time to time X)
Cool
Jesus. Let the sourcebooks have more complex characters and races. If you want in your game one race being completely evil then do that.
This is not a multiplayer game. Just do whatever the **** you want. Maybe you want all gnomes to be the evil guys, how about that? Is Crawford going to break into your house and shatter your kneecaps over it? I doubt that.
Nugz - Kobold Level 4 Bloodhunter/Order of the Mutant - Out there looking for snacks and evil monsters.
Ultrix Schwarzdorn - Human Level 6 Artificer/Armorer - Retired and works in his new shop.
Quercus Espenkiel - Gnome Level 9 Wizard/Order of Scribes - Turned into a book and sits on a shelf.
Artin - Fairy Level 4 Sorcerer/Wild Magic - Busy with annoying the townsfolk. Again.
Jabor - Fire Genasi - Level 4 Wizard/School of Evocation - The First Flame, The Last Chaos. Probably in jail, again.
Race is a completely artificial concept that makes no scientific sense. It divides a species into categories based on completely subjective characteristics. Species, on the other hand, have genetic makeups so different that they cannot interbreed, or can but produce sterile offspring. Hence Homo Sapiens is a species, as all can interbreed, and the artificial concept of race is used by racists to assert superiority of some characteristics, such as blue eyes, over others. That being said, yeah, do whatever you want in your homegame. I'd just like it more if we didn't have them listed as races, as that is an inaccuracy that feels very out of place in our enlightened society today.
The point that I thought got danced around a bit: "human" is not a culture. Humans have lots of cultures.
"Orc" should not be a culture. "Elf" should not be a culture. To me, that's boring and weird.
If you want to make them all evil or all good, that's fine! The rules say you can do that. The rules also say we don't need to do that.
It's a win-win.
(And a bit off topic, but I saw a lot here about it: the definition of species is ***not*** lifeforms that can breed together. That's a simplification we tell kids in school to help them grasp the concept (a bit like electrons being little solid blobs that spin around - in reality, they are very much not that). There are, for example, sets of species such that species A can breed with species B, species B can breed with species C, but C cannot breed with A.
Plus: would that mean people born infertile would not be "human", since they can't interbreed? Most individual ants can't breed. etc etc.
Double plus: we humans bred with neanderthals, and had viable offspring. They are not the same species as us.
Breeding together is an important and interesting factor in determining species, but it is not the only one).
A race's culture.
In the Forgotten Realms setting a race's culture is heavily intertwined with their religion.