Community

SYB wrote:

You know, I am going to use one of my favorite examples to make a point.

Imagine you are a bunch of aliens playing Humans & Technology, a roleplaying game set in 21st century Earth. As the DM, you are only somewhat familiar with the setting. You know Humans come in multiple skin tones and that humans tend to be afraid of other skin tones. You also know that the primary three skin tones on Earth are black, asian, and middle eastern (sorta like humans, elves and dwarves).

You are running a game for the Alien Gamers Association titled "Fun with Politics in Washington, DC" and decide to use your "common sense" to apply racism to the "scary" PCs. Your players have all read the canon on the setting and know the cultural views of every area very well. Your players are going to be VERY upset when the white PCs are being treated very badly while the middle eastern PC is being treated like royalty.

This is a really cheap strawman argument. First, you have created a setting that runs on principles that have nothing in common with the game or setting we are discussing. Sure, it would be inappropriate to play a game of 'Washington Politics' with random and obvious racism. On the other hand, it would also be inappropriate to beat you opponent to death with a flail. Are you advocating that, based on this example, physical violence is inappropriate in D&D?

Second, it tries to equate differing uses of the word 'race' to imply that there isn't actually any differences between the races in D&D. After all, since there isn't any real difference between white people and black people and brown people it automatically follows that Gnolls are exactly like Elves, only misunderstood. Have you read Dragon #367 where the Gnoll rules come from? The first three pages of the article are devoted to describing how much most Gnolls enjoying slaughtering as many people as they can. This includes details on how they enjoying torturing their victims extensively before eating them. Gnolls are not misunderstood misfits.

So, every Gnoll in the world is automaticly treated like a monster because they are monsters in every sense of the word. Every Gnoll except PCs? Because they are being played as a player character everyone automatically treats them the same as they would a dwarf or elf or human? That implies that in your mind when played as a PC, races and backgrounds are just a statblock, and not actually connected to the world.

Telvin3d wrote:

So, every Gnoll in the world is automaticly treated like a monster because they are monsters in every sense of the word. Every Gnoll except PCs? Because they are being played as a player character everyone automatically treats them the same as they would a dwarf or elf or human? That implies that in your mind when played as a PC, races and backgrounds are just a statblock, and not actually connected to the world.

Actually, by automatically treating a gnoll like a monster, you are ignoring the connections that exist in the world. Sure, that approach makes some sense in a Dalelands adventure (I am not trying to pick on Gomez here), because the Dalelands are the most generic, Tolkeinesque setting in the Forgotten Realms. But, almost every other location in the Forgotten Realms has its own unique feel.

Gnolls are common in some areas and unheard of in others. Even in places where they are common, a gnoll traveling with a dwarf, a genasi, a human, and an elf is pretty clearly not a ravenous monster. Areas that are used to seeing adventuring parties will have a relatively easy time differentiating between raiding party and adventurer/mercenary.

In areas where gnolls are uncommon (or where they basically don't exist) will unlikely be able to identify a gnoll on sight. In fact, it is just as likely that someone might just think a gnoll was a poor unfortunate victim of the spellplague, someone to be pitied, but not feared. In about a month, a gnoll could easily be mistaken for a shifter. Heck, furry tiefling is another possibility.

The point is simple. The world has a well documented background and each area is different. Using the assumptions for any one area (or all areas in general) about another area is irresponsible, at best. A good example is Westgate. Westgate is a very cosmopolitan city-state. It has seen a wide variety of races of just about every sort. Gnolls, orcs, and other similar raider-style monsters have never been a threat to Westgate. Any of them in the city are treated just as legitimately as any other race. In fact, the main threat to Westgate has been the non-monster races. Fire Knives (mostly made up of humans) are the biggest threat. The average Westgate resident is more likely to be afraid of a human with a pair of daggers at his waist than of a gnoll with a greataxe strapped to his back. Halflings also have a pretty bad reputation in Westgate, too (little sneak thieves).

Race is definitely connected to the world. In fact, it is so well connected, that I am disappointed when a DM ignores those connections and simply assumes that one general rule can cover every situation. Every location in the Forgotten Realms is NOT the Dalelands (Middle Earth), Cormyr (Camelot), or Calimshan (Arabian Nights). The world is simply too diverse (my compliments to the authors) to apply any single rubric to it.

-SYB

SYB wrote:

And, be honest, most of the DMs who are treating monster races differently are doing it because they, as players, are "punishing" the players for playing what they believe to be optimized or cheesy races.

Of course. Naturally, the true motives of those who disagree with you must be without any validity and stem only from malign intentions. Good to know.

Optimized? Personally (since I'm not arrogant enough to speak for anyone other than myself), I consider the monster races to be, in the long run, less powerful than civilized races. Sure, they might have some nice stat bonuses and such, but whatever you see in one paltry magazine article is pretty much what you're going to get, while new books will continue to provide the mainstream races with racial feats, paragon paths and other benefits. Cheesy? Gnolls aren't worthy to carry the cheddar of the army of paladins of Tempus, as far as I'm concerned.

Why do I treat monster races differently? Because treating gnolls like they're just funny-looking humans doesn't make any sense. I don't want to play a tactical miniatures game; I want to play a roleplaying game, and that requires the world and those in it to behave according to how the DM thinks it makes sense for them to behave.

I have absolutely nothing against the idea of playing particular races or character concepts. I'm fine if someone wants to play a Jedi; it's just a problem if they want to play it in a D&D game. And, as a matter of fact, a D&D campaign with Jedi PCs might be a lot of fun; it would just require that the DM plan for that, as a D&D campaign designed for generic fantasy characters isn't going to work for Star Wars characters.

A gnoll ranger might be a great character in a campaign set entirely in Durpar or some other savage setting. A home campaign in which part of the focus was on the gnoll trying to overcome prejudice and the reputation of his race would also be interesting. The character, however, would be a poor fit for an underwater campaign focused on aquatic races, or in a human-only Asian-based setting.

It's not about the character, it's about whether the character fits the campaign.

LFR is a lowest common denominator, generic fantasy campaign. PCs wander randomly from place to place, doing good and righting wrongs. Complete strangers amble up to the PCs and entrust vital tasks to them; government officials (even of governments hostile to the countries the PCs come from) endow the PCs with power and authority as emissaries of the government.

The basic premise of LFR already stretches the limits of logic and coherency. You can, I suppose, say "**** it; none of this makes sense. Go ahead, play a gnoll. Do you want to have a lightsaber, too?" I'd prefer to hang on to logic by my fingernails and use common sense where I can.

Madfox11 wrote:

There is common sense in the game, but it is good to keep in mind that it is still a game Common sense has been let go on purpose on more then a few spots because it is a game and we make up the world.

Then make up the world.

You (WOTC, RPGA, various levels of campaign staff) are the DMs of the campaign. As far as players are concerned, you have complete authority to put out official campaign documents detailing what you want this campaign to be. Indeed, you practically have players begging you to do so.

Give us regional flavor. Tell us that, in a module set in Waterdeep (large cosmopolitan city) gnolls barely get an eyebrow raised, but that in a module set near Elturel (city ruled by paladins of Torm situated next to a forest filled with demon-worshiping gnolls who have killed and eaten all of the other inhabitants of the forest and are starting to get hungry), a gnoll PC better disguise himself and stay calm. Tell us that shadar-kai need to be on their best behavior in Cormyr, and that any humans going into Hullack Forest better have an elf there to vouch for them. Tell us, as the DM of the campaign, where race matters and where it doesn't; tell us what is different from region to region, and how you want us to run NPCs in these regions.

Or, alternatively, tell us that everyone in the Realms is one big happy family, that DMs should ignore common sense, logic and everything we know about the Realms, and that even if it doesn't make the least bit of sense, allowing every last shred of Dragon Magazine is more important that maintaining internal consistency and immersion.

In that case, give us modules that mesh with your view of Faerun. If everyone is just a funny-looking human, then stop putting out modules where the right thing a PC is supposed to do when seeing a band of armed is to roll initiative and charge. Have PCs end up in the Kingdom of Many-Arrows (makes about as much sense as any other random location we end up in), helping a group of peaceful orcs fight off invasions of human bandits. Have a module where we help a tribe of vegetarian gnolls against a force of predatory gnomes.

You (WOTC/RPGA/campaign staff) have chosen to give us generic fantasy modules set in canon Forgotten Realms, a number of which require us to immediately want to help total strangers (who happen to be members of civilized races) against other total strangers (who happen to be members of monster races). You have chosen not to allow module authors to take into account monster races, and chosen not to give any instructions to DMs or players as to how these races fit into the world.

As a DM, if I'm left with either trying to run a module in a way that has the world make sense and further immersion and internal consistency, or jettisoning all of that to run it as a tactical miniatures game so that no one ever has to tell WOTC that, just maybe, everything that comes out in Dragon Magazine doesn't fit in every single campaign, I'm going with Option A.