Not to mention that it's insanely ripe for mechanical abuse. While I am of the opinion that we shouldn't let fear of min-maxers drive us away from changes and improvements, there is a massive difference between that and actively handing them a system that may as well have a 'To Minmaxers, from WotC, Merry Christmas' tag on it.
I'll just quote myself from a different thread:
"It's fine to say "you have to pick one and only one of flight, stonecunning, and magical resistance" or whatever (let's assume those are all reasonably balanced against each other or packaged in such a way to be balanced...). That would stop the "munchkins" just as well as the current solutions.
"The underlying problem (in the "problematic" sense) is forcing those traits to be tied to your identity as a person. And in a high magic setting (with all the assorted magitech and artifact stuff that comes with), there's no good argument to make them exclusively biological, either. There's no good game reason to say you can't gain darkvision from a feat or gain wings from an epic potion... those things would still be governed by the game, the game's balance, and the DM's judgement."
Basically, a good species design system won't have any more problems with "minmaxers" than D&D does, already.
They LIKE that their dragonborn has a breath weapon because it's something that makes them feel distinctive and unique. Something special to THEM! If every halfling, human, centaur, and Gith could fart out a thunder breath it takes away that uniqueness and distinctiveness and robs being a dragonborn of meaning.
That doesn't really add up. One dragonborn in the game isn't screwed over by a second dragonborn in the game.
Also, if a character's "uniqueness" is so defined by a single ability that anyone else having it makes it meaningless...then that system is horribly designed, or all the characters are too shallow to have distinctiveness in the first place.
I can take the mechanics for a wizard and call them a barbarian. That doesn't make them a barbarian. That makes them a wizard with a barbarian paint job.
I disagree, but mostly because "barbarian" can mean many things, but also because mechanics only have flavors because we decide they have flavors. To only proscribe one flavor to mechanics because that's what you're used to is pretty limited and uncreative. I can absolutely make a barbarian wizard like a shamanistic caster of spells. Would be a barbarian and a wizard.
You take tabaxi rules for a halfling you don't have a halfling, you have a tabaxi flavored as a halfling.
"Cousin Tibbets has always been fast on his feet and is always climbing trees. He might as well be a cat." There, done. Perfectly fine as a halfling.
Not to mention that it's insanely ripe for mechanical abuse. While I am of the opinion that we shouldn't let fear of min-maxers drive us away from changes and improvements, there is a massive difference between that and actively handing them a system that may as well have a 'To Minmaxers, from WotC, Merry Christmas' tag on it.
I've heard this kind of slippery slope, sky is falling kind of complaint for a lot of the changes and it honestly hasn't panned out at all.
I've made a barbarian wizard before. Was one of my favorite characters in fact. She was a wizard girl who relied on magic guns but carried a rapier for back up. Only problem was she 'freaked out' (her barbarian rage) whenever an enemy got close. Yes, this was a Gestalt character. Thing is, I won't deny for a second that the barbarian aspect of her only existed because I was so terrified of the GM's being killer GM's (later proved insanely justified) and wanted the health pool and to not die. Character-wise she was a wizard through and through and I never tried to justify her barbarian skills beyond it being her freaking out.
I would also suggest Cousin Tibbles is orange, has stripes, and an addiction to moon sugar and tuna. Heck, TBH, I think a tabaxi adopted by halflings who considers himself to be a halfling despite being a tabaxi would be more potent a story/character than just a halfling with tabaxi racials. But no, if someone was suggesting that as justification for just a halfling, unless said abilities were relating to his class in some way, as a GM I would not allow that.
And it's a slippery slope the other way as well. Do you seriously think that this solution WON'T lead to a loss of identity and result in a bunch of players being dissatisfied and so-forth? That species shouldn't have any form of things special to them and it WON'T cause problems?
If they think this is important to stop it race (as a man of science I have long though it should be species or break it down to Family > Genus > Species )
They should remove gender from the character sheet as well. Call it Identifier or something
Remove size and weight. we don't need body shaming.
1.) "Gender" is a form fillable section of the sheet. Players can put anything they like in that section of the sheet, to match whatever they consider their character's identity to be. Hell, since the gender shows up right under the character name front and center on the sheet, I've sometimes hacked the sheet a twitch by putting character traits I want front and center to remind me how to play a tricky character in the 'Gender' field in front of the actual gender. It's a handy trick.
2.) Nobody's shaming anybody else over size and weight. Most of the time other players don't even know what those figures are, since the "Description" field is hidden from other players. Height and weight have no in-game impact beyond the mass limits for certain spells and items, which are more impacted by gear than by character weight most of the time anyways, and nobody's making a big societal deal about a player deciding their character's indulged in a few extra waffles over the years and carrying an extra pound or three.
3.) Most of my characters like having skin. All of them, in fact. Whether "skin" should be its own field is up for debate, but the field is once again form fillable and has no in-game impact, positive or negative. That last bit's the important one, and the one you seem to be having trouble with. That and the fact that none of these things are socially charged terms that carry tense connotations with them no matter what the players or writers of the game might otherwise wish.
This isn't rocket science. It isn't even hard. Just say "species" whenever you might previously have said "race". Give it a little bit to acclimate and you'll never notice again. Nor is this matter one that deserves the constant hue and cry and spittle and hullabaloo it keeps getting. It's changing out a charged word for an equivalent/better less charged word. The only reaction that truly warrants is a brief "Kudos" before everybody moves on to actually important things.
If they think this is important to stop it race (as a man of science I have long though it should be species or break it down to Family > Genus > Species )
They should remove gender from the character sheet as well. Call it Identifier or something
Remove size and weight. we don't need body shaming.
Skin that should go as well
Faith
Candidly, 4/10. Would've scored lower, but you already got Yurei apparently.
To be clear to everyone else: In order to argue against bobberuchi here, you would be forced to take the position of a person criticizing a supposedly progressive stance. However, that stance is so poorly defined and so seemingly absurd that it practically begs for criticism. This is a classic structure for trolling. Does that mean it's necessarily trolling? Well, any decent attempt at trolling is by definition ambiguous, so you really can't know. And for what it's worth, bobberuchi has an older account here and I'm not seeing a history of obvious trolling behavior from a cursory glance, so maybe it isn't. Fortunately, we can gracefully handle situations like these, by focusing in and remaining neutral.
Call on bobberuchi to elaborate their position, and contain your natural desire to verbally dunk on someone, to *only* ask bobberuchi to elaborate on their position. Example:
Bobberuchi, I find that I don't fully understand your position. Could you explain why 1) removing gender, size, weight, skin, and faith would be good to do, and 2) removing gender, size, weight, skin, and faith would be logical next steps after changing race to species?
The survey is up and I got a question asking me to rank my choices of "Type (Subtype)", "Kind", and "Species. Soo ... they're taking suggestions on this.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Real talk: 'Type (Subtype)' and 'Kind' suck. They're bad. They don't really speak at all to the thing being described. 'Type/subtype' is even more clinical and "modern-y" than species and will irritate all the same people who're irritated by species without any useful gains in clarity or meaning, and 'Kind' is needlessly ambiguous in a ruleset already plagued by needless ambiguity. When someone asks "What species are you?" a clear and unambiguous question has been given with a concise and definitive answer. Outside of Custom Lineage stuff, everybody can easily answer what species they are. When someone asks "what kind are you?", the question is inherently so unclear and confusing that any natural, reasonable listener would seek clarification. Clarification that would come when the term "species" or a close equivalent is used.
People really need to get over their dislike of the word "species". Species is the right word. It's clear, it's intuitive and easy to understand, it speaks naturally to the thing it's describing, and it cannot be mistaken for a hundred other things the way words like Type or Kind can.
Real talk: 'Type (Subtype)' and 'Kind' suck. They're bad. They don't really speak at all to the thing being described. 'Type/subtype' is even more clinical and "modern-y" than species and will irritate all the same people who're irritated by species without any useful gains in clarity or meaning, and 'Kind' is needlessly ambiguous in a ruleset already plagued by needless ambiguity. When someone asks "What species are you?" a clear and unambiguous question has been given with a concise and definitive answer. Outside of Custom Lineage stuff, everybody can easily answer what species they are. When someone asks "what kind are you?", the question is inherently so unclear and confusing that any natural, reasonable listener would seek clarification. Clarification that would come when the term "species" or a close equivalent is used.
People really need to get over their dislike of the word "species". Species is the right word. It's clear, it's intuitive and easy to understand, it speaks naturally to the thing it's describing, and it cannot be mistaken for a hundred other things the way words like Type or Kind can.
I agree, but... Idk, I just *like* kind. It's a strictly aesthetic opinion, so I don't expect many people to agree with me, but I like the connotations and vibes of it.
I put kind first, then species. Species is a fine option. Nothing wrong with it. Will probably satisfy the largest number of people, and for good reason.
It is interesting that they introduced more choices after the video. I wonder where these came from and why they weren't there to begin with. Not like, in a way where I'm trying to suggest that they're shady or something. Just curious.
Real talk: 'Type (Subtype)' and 'Kind' suck. They're bad. They don't really speak at all to the thing being described. 'Type/subtype' is even more clinical and "modern-y" than species and will irritate all the same people who're irritated by species without any useful gains in clarity or meaning, and 'Kind' is needlessly ambiguous in a ruleset already plagued by needless ambiguity. When someone asks "What species are you?" a clear and unambiguous question has been given with a concise and definitive answer. Outside of Custom Lineage stuff, everybody can easily answer what species they are. When someone asks "what kind are you?", the question is inherently so unclear and confusing that any natural, reasonable listener would seek clarification. Clarification that would come when the term "species" or a close equivalent is used.
People really need to get over their dislike of the word "species". Species is the right word. It's clear, it's intuitive and easy to understand, it speaks naturally to the thing it's describing, and it cannot be mistaken for a hundred other things the way words like Type or Kind can.
I agree. From a language stand point Kind and Subtype is awkward.
The party settles down at the table and the Fighter looks across the tavern and asks "What kind is that?" nope sounds bad. "What subtype is that?" nope, even worse.
I actually picked Type (Subtype) as my highest choice because if we're going detached and technical we may as well go all the way. I think the fact that it is nakedly a rules only term is a benefit. It has no associations with anything outside the rules so there are no uncomfortable or off brand subconscious feelings to go along with them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
The issue is that a "nakedly rules-only term" just leads to everybody still calling everything 'Race' because people will use the term that makes sense to them instead of the weird rules-only term that doesn't really describe the thing it's describing. If someone were to ask me "what type are you?" I'd be confused and ask for clarification. If someone were to ask me "what's your type?", I would be concerned, and any prospective answers would not have anything to do with my species.
The issue is that a "nakedly rules-only term" just leads to everybody still calling everything 'Race' because people will use the term that makes sense to them instead of the weird rules-only term that doesn't really describe the thing it's describing.
I mean... Citation needed? We've been running with 'class' for quite a while, but I don't see a lot of people saying that it actually describes what it's describing. And 'level' is certainly a nakedly rules-only term, and one that's even ambiguous because there's also spell levels, and yet we still use that too. Heck, one of the alignments in the game is called 'good,' for crying out loud; you can't get much more ambiguous than that, can you? "Are you good?"
People need to get over themselves when it comes to the term 'species'.
I wouldn't say that 'Kind' is particularly wrong as such. But I think that it does leave open the inevitable situation where you will have NPCs say things like 'you know what their kind is like' and that's, like, a suuuuuuper loaded and uncomfortable way of phrasing things for PoC, given that that is exactly the kind of thing that racists who know enough to know that replacing 'kind' with 'race' in that sentence is real bad, but not enough to know that replacing 'race' with 'kind' there isn't any dang better.
Type (Subtype) serves as a perfectly good non diegetic term for use with the game part of RPG. That leaves the diegetic term up to IC reasons, which I'm perfectly fine with.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I haven't been able to do the survey yet, but I can't help but agree that terms such as "Type" and "Kind" are way too vague. The fact that these terms would be used in every day conversations both inside and outside of the D&D world without having a dual meaning in mechanics combines to make them nowhere near as good as "species" is in terms of being a replacement for "race".
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BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
But I think that it does leave open the inevitable situation where you will have NPCs say things like 'you know what their kind is like' and that's, like, a suuuuuuper loaded and uncomfortable way of phrasing things for PoC,
Sorry, please clarify: do you think when an NPC says something racist, it's a problem for it to sound as racist as it is?
Sorry, please clarify: do you think when an NPC says something racist, it's a problem for it to sound as racist as it is?
No, I think that's it's a problem that when an NPC says anything about a playable species, it sounds racist, because referring to a group of people as 'that kind' sounds racist even when it's otherwise innocuous.
Compare:
"The local courier is a Centaur. It's really useful, because their species can run a lot faster than those of us who only have two legs."
"The local courier is a Centaur. It's really useful, because their kind can run a lot faster than those of us who only have two legs."
"The local courier is a Centaur. It's really useful, because their type can run a lot faster than those of us who only have two legs."
None of those is actually racist, but the second and third one sound pretty damned racist. Especially if you grew up hearing 'that kind' or 'that type' used in a racist or otherwise pejorative way a lot.
But I think that it does leave open the inevitable situation where you will have NPCs say things like 'you know what their kind is like' and that's, like, a suuuuuuper loaded and uncomfortable way of phrasing things for PoC,
Sorry, please clarify: do you think when an NPC says something racist, it's a problem for it to sound as racist as it is?
Using "kind" or "type" has carried racist and homophobic undertones for my whole life. It doesn't even have to be overtly so. I had an Aunt say "I didn't know your kind liked beer! I just thought your type went for those fruity drinks." and she never in her wildest dreams thought she was being offensive. Personally, I would prefer to avoid these two options if possible. Species works just fine.
Sorry, please clarify: do you think when an NPC says something racist, it's a problem for it to sound as racist as it is?
No, I think that's it's a problem that when an NPC says anything about a playable species, it sounds racist, because referring to a group of people as 'that kind' sounds racist even when it's otherwise innocuous.
Especially if you grew up hearing 'that kind' or 'that type' used in a racist or otherwise pejorative way a lot.
I still for the life of me don't get the controversy behind "species" being used.
Some people just don't want to change from "race," but honestly that's silly. As for me, like I said in the first post, "species" is not the word I would have chosen. Because I don't like how it feels too scifi. I understand that this is not a reasoned feeling since the word is actually quite old, but I am influenced on a subconscious level by many things in the collective unconscious, not the least of which is high school biology. I understand that it is reasonably quite a good choice, but I also just don't like it because it doesn't feel right. I wouldn't say it is a controversy, I would say it is a quibble.
I would choose Type (Subtype) as a rules term and take with it the association free mechanical-ness of it and leave the IC, diegetic, term for each DM to determine on their own. Probably just have it be different depending on who is talking. Meaning I wouldn't even use it as a term in character at all. It would just be something for a character sheet. Humanoid (Human), for instance. Or Ooze (Plasmoid), Fey (Satyr), Humanoid (High Elf).
I'll just quote myself from a different thread:
"It's fine to say "you have to pick one and only one of flight, stonecunning, and magical resistance" or whatever (let's assume those are all reasonably balanced against each other or packaged in such a way to be balanced...). That would stop the "munchkins" just as well as the current solutions.
"The underlying problem (in the "problematic" sense) is forcing those traits to be tied to your identity as a person. And in a high magic setting (with all the assorted magitech and artifact stuff that comes with), there's no good argument to make them exclusively biological, either. There's no good game reason to say you can't gain darkvision from a feat or gain wings from an epic potion... those things would still be governed by the game, the game's balance, and the DM's judgement."
Basically, a good species design system won't have any more problems with "minmaxers" than D&D does, already.
That doesn't really add up. One dragonborn in the game isn't screwed over by a second dragonborn in the game.
Also, if a character's "uniqueness" is so defined by a single ability that anyone else having it makes it meaningless...then that system is horribly designed, or all the characters are too shallow to have distinctiveness in the first place.
I've made a barbarian wizard before. Was one of my favorite characters in fact. She was a wizard girl who relied on magic guns but carried a rapier for back up. Only problem was she 'freaked out' (her barbarian rage) whenever an enemy got close. Yes, this was a Gestalt character. Thing is, I won't deny for a second that the barbarian aspect of her only existed because I was so terrified of the GM's being killer GM's (later proved insanely justified) and wanted the health pool and to not die. Character-wise she was a wizard through and through and I never tried to justify her barbarian skills beyond it being her freaking out.
I would also suggest Cousin Tibbles is orange, has stripes, and an addiction to moon sugar and tuna. Heck, TBH, I think a tabaxi adopted by halflings who considers himself to be a halfling despite being a tabaxi would be more potent a story/character than just a halfling with tabaxi racials. But no, if someone was suggesting that as justification for just a halfling, unless said abilities were relating to his class in some way, as a GM I would not allow that.
And it's a slippery slope the other way as well. Do you seriously think that this solution WON'T lead to a loss of identity and result in a bunch of players being dissatisfied and so-forth? That species shouldn't have any form of things special to them and it WON'T cause problems?
If they think this is important to stop it race (as a man of science I have long though it should be species or break it down to Family > Genus > Species )
They should remove gender from the character sheet as well. Call it Identifier or something
Remove size and weight. we don't need body shaming.
Skin that should go as well
Faith
1.) "Gender" is a form fillable section of the sheet. Players can put anything they like in that section of the sheet, to match whatever they consider their character's identity to be. Hell, since the gender shows up right under the character name front and center on the sheet, I've sometimes hacked the sheet a twitch by putting character traits I want front and center to remind me how to play a tricky character in the 'Gender' field in front of the actual gender. It's a handy trick.
2.) Nobody's shaming anybody else over size and weight. Most of the time other players don't even know what those figures are, since the "Description" field is hidden from other players. Height and weight have no in-game impact beyond the mass limits for certain spells and items, which are more impacted by gear than by character weight most of the time anyways, and nobody's making a big societal deal about a player deciding their character's indulged in a few extra waffles over the years and carrying an extra pound or three.
3.) Most of my characters like having skin. All of them, in fact. Whether "skin" should be its own field is up for debate, but the field is once again form fillable and has no in-game impact, positive or negative. That last bit's the important one, and the one you seem to be having trouble with. That and the fact that none of these things are socially charged terms that carry tense connotations with them no matter what the players or writers of the game might otherwise wish.
This isn't rocket science. It isn't even hard. Just say "species" whenever you might previously have said "race". Give it a little bit to acclimate and you'll never notice again. Nor is this matter one that deserves the constant hue and cry and spittle and hullabaloo it keeps getting. It's changing out a charged word for an equivalent/better less charged word. The only reaction that truly warrants is a brief "Kudos" before everybody moves on to actually important things.
Please do not contact or message me.
Candidly, 4/10. Would've scored lower, but you already got Yurei apparently.
To be clear to everyone else: In order to argue against bobberuchi here, you would be forced to take the position of a person criticizing a supposedly progressive stance. However, that stance is so poorly defined and so seemingly absurd that it practically begs for criticism. This is a classic structure for trolling. Does that mean it's necessarily trolling? Well, any decent attempt at trolling is by definition ambiguous, so you really can't know. And for what it's worth, bobberuchi has an older account here and I'm not seeing a history of obvious trolling behavior from a cursory glance, so maybe it isn't. Fortunately, we can gracefully handle situations like these, by focusing in and remaining neutral.
Call on bobberuchi to elaborate their position, and contain your natural desire to verbally dunk on someone, to *only* ask bobberuchi to elaborate on their position. Example:
Bobberuchi, I find that I don't fully understand your position. Could you explain why 1) removing gender, size, weight, skin, and faith would be good to do, and 2) removing gender, size, weight, skin, and faith would be logical next steps after changing race to species?
The survey is up and I got a question asking me to rank my choices of "Type (Subtype)", "Kind", and "Species. Soo ... they're taking suggestions on this.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Real talk: 'Type (Subtype)' and 'Kind' suck. They're bad. They don't really speak at all to the thing being described. 'Type/subtype' is even more clinical and "modern-y" than species and will irritate all the same people who're irritated by species without any useful gains in clarity or meaning, and 'Kind' is needlessly ambiguous in a ruleset already plagued by needless ambiguity. When someone asks "What species are you?" a clear and unambiguous question has been given with a concise and definitive answer. Outside of Custom Lineage stuff, everybody can easily answer what species they are. When someone asks "what kind are you?", the question is inherently so unclear and confusing that any natural, reasonable listener would seek clarification. Clarification that would come when the term "species" or a close equivalent is used.
People really need to get over their dislike of the word "species". Species is the right word. It's clear, it's intuitive and easy to understand, it speaks naturally to the thing it's describing, and it cannot be mistaken for a hundred other things the way words like Type or Kind can.
Please do not contact or message me.
I agree, but... Idk, I just *like* kind. It's a strictly aesthetic opinion, so I don't expect many people to agree with me, but I like the connotations and vibes of it.
I put kind first, then species. Species is a fine option. Nothing wrong with it. Will probably satisfy the largest number of people, and for good reason.
It is interesting that they introduced more choices after the video. I wonder where these came from and why they weren't there to begin with. Not like, in a way where I'm trying to suggest that they're shady or something. Just curious.
I agree. From a language stand point Kind and Subtype is awkward.
The party settles down at the table and the Fighter looks across the tavern and asks "What kind is that?" nope sounds bad. "What subtype is that?" nope, even worse.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I actually picked Type (Subtype) as my highest choice because if we're going detached and technical we may as well go all the way. I think the fact that it is nakedly a rules only term is a benefit. It has no associations with anything outside the rules so there are no uncomfortable or off brand subconscious feelings to go along with them.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
The issue is that a "nakedly rules-only term" just leads to everybody still calling everything 'Race' because people will use the term that makes sense to them instead of the weird rules-only term that doesn't really describe the thing it's describing. If someone were to ask me "what type are you?" I'd be confused and ask for clarification. If someone were to ask me "what's your type?", I would be concerned, and any prospective answers would not have anything to do with my species.
Please do not contact or message me.
I mean... Citation needed? We've been running with 'class' for quite a while, but I don't see a lot of people saying that it actually describes what it's describing. And 'level' is certainly a nakedly rules-only term, and one that's even ambiguous because there's also spell levels, and yet we still use that too. Heck, one of the alignments in the game is called 'good,' for crying out loud; you can't get much more ambiguous than that, can you? "Are you good?"
I think that Yurei has the right of it.
People need to get over themselves when it comes to the term 'species'.
I wouldn't say that 'Kind' is particularly wrong as such. But I think that it does leave open the inevitable situation where you will have NPCs say things like 'you know what their kind is like' and that's, like, a suuuuuuper loaded and uncomfortable way of phrasing things for PoC, given that that is exactly the kind of thing that racists who know enough to know that replacing 'kind' with 'race' in that sentence is real bad, but not enough to know that replacing 'race' with 'kind' there isn't any dang better.
Type (Subtype) serves as a perfectly good non diegetic term for use with the game part of RPG. That leaves the diegetic term up to IC reasons, which I'm perfectly fine with.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I haven't been able to do the survey yet, but I can't help but agree that terms such as "Type" and "Kind" are way too vague. The fact that these terms would be used in every day conversations both inside and outside of the D&D world without having a dual meaning in mechanics combines to make them nowhere near as good as "species" is in terms of being a replacement for "race".
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Sorry, please clarify: do you think when an NPC says something racist, it's a problem for it to sound as racist as it is?
No, I think that's it's a problem that when an NPC says anything about a playable species, it sounds racist, because referring to a group of people as 'that kind' sounds racist even when it's otherwise innocuous.
Compare:
"The local courier is a Centaur. It's really useful, because their species can run a lot faster than those of us who only have two legs."
"The local courier is a Centaur. It's really useful, because their kind can run a lot faster than those of us who only have two legs."
"The local courier is a Centaur. It's really useful, because their type can run a lot faster than those of us who only have two legs."
None of those is actually racist, but the second and third one sound pretty damned racist.
Especially if you grew up hearing 'that kind' or 'that type' used in a racist or otherwise pejorative way a lot.
Using "kind" or "type" has carried racist and homophobic undertones for my whole life. It doesn't even have to be overtly so. I had an Aunt say "I didn't know your kind liked beer! I just thought your type went for those fruity drinks." and she never in her wildest dreams thought she was being offensive. Personally, I would prefer to avoid these two options if possible. Species works just fine.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Okay, I think I get it. Thanks.
Some people just don't want to change from "race," but honestly that's silly. As for me, like I said in the first post, "species" is not the word I would have chosen. Because I don't like how it feels too scifi. I understand that this is not a reasoned feeling since the word is actually quite old, but I am influenced on a subconscious level by many things in the collective unconscious, not the least of which is high school biology. I understand that it is reasonably quite a good choice, but I also just don't like it because it doesn't feel right. I wouldn't say it is a controversy, I would say it is a quibble.
I would choose Type (Subtype) as a rules term and take with it the association free mechanical-ness of it and leave the IC, diegetic, term for each DM to determine on their own. Probably just have it be different depending on who is talking. Meaning I wouldn't even use it as a term in character at all. It would just be something for a character sheet. Humanoid (Human), for instance. Or Ooze (Plasmoid), Fey (Satyr), Humanoid (High Elf).
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!