Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
REGENDarySumanai said:
Somehow, I managed to get banned for fantasy racism. Played an elf and called drow a bunch of disgusting black creatures. Repeatedly. How the hell do you get offended by drow racism, they are one of the worst races in terms of lore and writing.
Click to expand...
Feels bad man. Unless you're talking shit on a PC to their face that's just good roleplaying considering drow really are despised and hated for all their slaving and murdering and all that.
 
Snekposter said:
Feels bad man. Unless you're talking shit on a PC to their face that's just good roleplaying considering drow really are despised and hated for all their slaving and murdering and all that.
Click to expand...
Don't like drow in character, don't like them in real life. Total drow death.
 
Mega Black said:
I hate that modern fantasy completely drops fantastical racism. It is one of the most fun elements of the genre. Airing out that sort of negative feeling in a safe and removed environment.

It's also funny. Shitting on gnomes is my passion.
Click to expand...
Careful. They've got those pointy hats so if you get too close you'll get jabbed in a sensitive spot by a shit-covered gnome.
 
Mega Black said:
I hate that modern fantasy completely drops fantastical racism. It is one of the most fun elements of the genre. Airing out that sort of negative feeling in a safe and removed environment.

It's also funny. Shitting on gnomes is my passion.
Click to expand...

I like to have my Fantasy Racism in general set at "Twitter Karen" levels. That is, patronizing rather than outright hostility. Its always fun to have people laughing while they slowly realize "wait this actually more demeaning than just calling the Dwarf a hard-R Digger and being done with it".

The real fun of course is having some other race with enough gold & power to 'buy in' to the power elite, and working out the logical hoops the monied class need to jump through to justify it.
 
Had a brief urban campaign once where I played a kobold thief and the main fence for our turf was a gnome. Every interaction started off with racial slurs followed by small scale slap fights that went nowhere because we both had a strength malus.
 
Mega Black said:
I hate that modern fantasy completely drops fantastical racism.
Click to expand...
I'm fine with it. It's such a cheap form of conflict that gets dropped a couple of sessions in anyway.

I more object to why it's dropped.


Since I'm posting, might as well mention my PathFinder 2 game survived and went smoothly.

One thing I'm considering if I run another campaign is dropping to-hit rolls. I can't drop them from PF2 due to how baked into the system they are, but if I use another system like OSE, I'm tempted to use some rule where AC can be spent to ignore hits or something. Because constant misses really slow the game down and drag it out. I've heard Into The Odd has no to-hit rolls, but that game and it's oh-so-quirky setting don't appeal to me at all. Worlds Without Number has "shock damage" where missed melee attacks do reduced damage, which might be a better compromise.
 
Judge Dredd said:
I'm fine with it. It's such a cheap form of conflict that gets dropped a couple of sessions in anyway.
Click to expand...
It gets dropped because the GM usually forgets about it. If he's paying attention and maintaining consistency, the players will remember that the dwarf will be getting a lot of elves looking down their noses at him (get it?) and that most places will demand the tiefling sleep in the stables (a merciful inn will provide a blanket). It can be very good set dressing, and it doesn't have to be specific about race either ("It'll be 10 coin. Oh, you're from the Dead Marsh? 15 coin."), but it requires some effort.

Hell, it doesn't even have to be about prejudice. Simply having a world where people look different between regions gives you plenty of opportunities to make things more interesting. The group rescuing Random Generic NPC #338, Type: Woman from a monster's hideout is one thing. The group finding a young woman whose tanned skin and intricate tattoos clearly point towards her being from the Sultanate of Kharim, halfway across the Known World, gives the party plenty of opportunities to speculate even before they spend a healing spell to wake her up.

Judge Dredd said:
One thing I'm considering if I run another campaign is dropping to-hit rolls. I can't drop them from PF2 due to how baked into the system they are, but if I use another system like OSE, I'm tempted to use some rule where AC can be spent to ignore hits or something. Because constant misses really slow the game down and drag it out. I've heard Into The Odd has no to-hit rolls, but that game and it's oh-so-quirky setting don't appeal to me at all. Worlds Without Number has "shock damage" where missed melee attacks do reduced damage, which might be a better compromise.
Click to expand...
You would have to add more "tactical" options for players like declaring they'll be dodging or fighting defensively at the start of the turn, and also offer more self-healing options (heal back up to the nearest quarter HP mark after combat, for example), but it's not hard to just have all attacks just roll damage directly with armor class reducing incoming damage, and only roll to hit in situations where the target is clearly obscured (darkness, magical fog, cover in ranged combat, etc). Balancing it is a numbers game that will require a bit of crunching for sure, but my DM has played with the concept a few times.
 
Last edited:
Judge Dredd said:
I'm fine with it. It's such a cheap form of conflict that gets dropped a couple of sessions in anyway.
Click to expand...
At the table between players? Sure, being racist to one another never goes very far. But having it be an element of the setting? I'd argue it is important to the worldbuilding. Because back before everyone got retarded they understood that race was an important element of wide scale conflict.
Corn Flakes said:
The group rescuing Random Generic NPC #338, Type: Woman from a monster's hideout is one thing. The group finding a young woman whose tanned skin and intricate tattoos clearly point towards her being from the Sultanate of Kharim, halfway across the Known World, gives the party plenty of opportunities to speculate even before they spend a healing spell to wake her up.
Click to expand...
This is why I hate kitchen soup racial demographics in fictional settings. It's fucking boring and makes your world feel less real/mysterious. Rescuing a white lady in whitesville? Okay. But now she is an exotic stranger from a mysterious land across the misty seas to the East. What brought her here? What is her homeland like? Are there any unique cultural differences?

Much more interesting.
 
I think it's more that people go into it thinking it's a great idea. Wanting a Lord of the Rings esc scene where all the races that hate each other come together to fight a common enemy, or to have the elf constantly bicker with the dwarf only to have a "how about a friend" moment.

In practice, it's just a lot of headache for not a lot of payoff, and results in players trying to disengage. Such as by having race X stand outside when race Y is around, or doing anything else to sidestep the problem. It's also boring because it's so played out.

Eberron did right with warforged. Mainly because there was actual meat to the bones and usable material to the ethical questions.

In my own setting, I make a point of saying that racial and magical hatred is a thing of the past. It allows for more interesting conflict without having to retread the same "elves hate dwarves" and "everybody hates wizards" nonsense for the billionth time and get to the fun stuff.
 
Different species should have opinions about each other if they've been living together in a shared world. Not necessarily negative opinions, but they would definitely have formed stereotypes over the generations. Like, if you have a Klingon neighbor named Ted, you probably wouldn't go to him to have him help with your taxes, but if you need someone to back you up in a fight... Tolkien elves are somewhat douchey but they're immortals with centuries of practice at their chosen fields, so their being convinced of their own superiority is not really unwarranted when they show up and start talking down to people, and it's not really a shock when a proud person like a dwarf should be rubbed the wrong way by that treatment. He wasn't writing it that way for the luls, he was thoughtfully putting himself in the shoes of the different characters and having them behave realistically for their perspectives.

That to me is the important distinction. If someone's being lazy and just doing a "lol fuck halflings" bit, that's not interesting. If they have a grudge because the local halflings were too busy being fat insular homebodies to lift a finger when wolves descended on the family farm and devoured their parents, that's a valid opinion for a character to have in that setting.
 
I just think it is unrealistic and generally less interesting than having racial division and elements at play within a setting. Everyone holding hands and singing kumbaya is certainly an option if you want it to be, but that's just a little too saccharine for my tastes.
 
This also goes back to the fact that all of these different races are all very different creatures. Elves, humans, dwarves, etc. should have very different views on the world, if not altogether alien mindsets. And this should translate to interspecies animosity and racism. If humans, who are all part of the same race, can be prejudice against each other for only perceived differences, cosmetic or not, then it stands to reason that when it comes to actual different races and species, there would be far more extreme prejudice.
 
At the end of the day, remember that it's a fantasy world, so you get to write the rules for it. Whether it's kumbaya or full blown race war or somewhere in between, go with whatever you and your players like for your setting. Just make sure you keep it consistent.

That also goes the other way, too. If your players are pussies that get uncomfortable with elves and dwarves hurling racial epithets at each other, remind them that it's fiction and these are not stand-ins for any real world cultures. As mentioned above, it's a safe way to explore concepts that have become increasingly verboten in reality (though the issues are somehow still there even without talking about them).

This goes hand-in-hand with the recent attempts to change different races or monsters from being inherently evil. There's nothing special about a good-inclined drow if their entire society is no longer typically evil. You miss out on the ability to tell stories about redeemed creatures if there's no need for redemption. It's bland pussy shit.
Campaign update: we rescued a couple airship sailors from a bunch of ghouls and girallon zombies and learned about more of the map of Chult, including where we're pretty sure the next chunk of the campaign is set. We're getting close to the next level, which has me excited personally. As a Lore bard, I get my bonus Magical Secrets at that level, so it's time to start perusing spell lists for fun stuff to add to my repertoire.

Thus, I ask you: what are some good spells to consider? They can't be higher than level 3, and I only get two. As it stands, I'm more or less acting as the party's healer, although the druid can provide a bit of healing himself when he's not shapeshifted into a bear. As an aside, we might be adding another player to the campaign, and if he can be convinced to pick up the healer role, that could let me have more freedom with my Magical Secrets.
 
Judge Dredd said:
One thing I'm considering if I run another campaign is dropping to-hit rolls. I can't drop them from PF2 due to how baked into the system they are, but if I use another system like OSE, I'm tempted to use some rule where AC can be spent to ignore hits or something. Because constant misses really slow the game down and drag it out. I've heard Into The Odd has no to-hit rolls, but that game and it's oh-so-quirky setting don't appeal to me at all. Worlds Without Number has "shock damage" where missed melee attacks do reduced damage, which might be a better compromise.
Click to expand...

Somethings I've tried that didn't completely fall flat:
- For mooks, have the players roll a defense roll for the round instead of the mooks rolling attacks to speed up resolution.
- Attacks in melee auto-hit and armor grants a melee DR instead of AC.
- Add a "duel counter" every round two targets are engaged with each other in melee, they gain +2 att, -2 ac to each other.
 
The setting I use has not just racial dynamics but also religious dynamics, with worshippers of some evil deities having to hold their gatherings in the sewers or underground of major cities. Drow are less reclusive in that they send ambassadors/diplomats to potential "allies" (aka, future slaves) such as orc tribes, trolls, ogres, corrupt nobles, etc. and will sponsor and arm bandit groups along trade routes. They've also managed to weaponize those few good/neutral drow that don't want to live in backstabopolis by freely allowing them to leave and seeding the various groups with spies, assassins, saboteurs, and cultists. All this in the name of the Prince of Hate, the true and honest god-creator of the original unfractured elven race before that upstart usurper Mother of All corrupted their brethren and destroyed their once perfect society and rewrote history to make herself the creator. Suffice to say, the drow are treated with distrust at best and outright hostility most often.

Meanwhile, adherents of the god of war, who is also evil, tend to be more tolerated depending upon race. Being a patron of all warriors, you'd be more likely to find small shrines in homes or various barracks, as all the old temples are ancient ruins due to the sudden collapse of the empire built around his worship in the past and the curse placed upon the majority of his worshippers/creations (ogres, giants, goblins, and orcs). Showing adherence to his tenets may not guarantee safety amongst such creatures depending upon their mood (and level of hunger), but there's always that chance it can get a down on his luck adventurer out of the cooking pot/slave pens.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom