orcs and stuff
Apr. 29th, 2020 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chickadee_sunRecently someone on twitter brought up some D&D flavortext describing orcs and pointed out how it mirrored real-world racism while being presented as true in the setting. This sparked some interesting discussion about the history of TTRPGs and racism and various ways it's been handled. Of course the usual you're-not-allowed-to-talk-about-things crowd came in and tried to smother all discussion, but oh well.
Anyway, if folks are in a mood for talking about TTRPG races, Morathor is looking for feedback on his homebrew Pathfinder setting, including how it handles fantasy races. This Ascana setting has mostly no distinction between playable races and monster races, with a few exceptions for extremely powerful beings like dragons or supernatural ones like demons. Most cultures have multiple races among them, and most races can be found in multiple cultures. Cultures have good and bad aspects and reasons to fight each other sometimes, but it's a lighthearted humorous setting and none of them are simply evil. OK, there is an evil empire across the sea. But mostly players will encounter refugees who fled the evil empire to the Ascana peninsula.
The general Ascana information here is incomplete and can be rambly.
There's a separate document with race templates--the mechanics needed to create character in various races. It's also incomplete. The character creation rules are a bit complicated, but for good reason. Morathor is going for balancing races with each other, allowing flexibility within each race so individuals can be mechanically varied, and making each race flavorfully and mechanically distinct. It's tricky to balance these three goals against each other! He's also going against human-as-default and trying to give them a distinct feel. The closest to sourcebook humans in his setting is Hybrids--characters like half-elves who get characteristics from multiple parent races.
All this was created way before the the blowup on twitter. People have been talking about these issues and suggesting improvements for a long time. And yeah, the need for playgroups to improve not-great racial stuff has also been part of the conversation. Should it really be random players' jobs instead of a giant company's? Well, that's outside the scope of this post.
I'm part of a playtest game in this setting and it's a lot of fun. But feedback from more people than a few playtesters would be appreciated!
(Cool, I remembered the link tags without looking them up!)
Anyway, if folks are in a mood for talking about TTRPG races, Morathor is looking for feedback on his homebrew Pathfinder setting, including how it handles fantasy races. This Ascana setting has mostly no distinction between playable races and monster races, with a few exceptions for extremely powerful beings like dragons or supernatural ones like demons. Most cultures have multiple races among them, and most races can be found in multiple cultures. Cultures have good and bad aspects and reasons to fight each other sometimes, but it's a lighthearted humorous setting and none of them are simply evil. OK, there is an evil empire across the sea. But mostly players will encounter refugees who fled the evil empire to the Ascana peninsula.
The general Ascana information here is incomplete and can be rambly.
There's a separate document with race templates--the mechanics needed to create character in various races. It's also incomplete. The character creation rules are a bit complicated, but for good reason. Morathor is going for balancing races with each other, allowing flexibility within each race so individuals can be mechanically varied, and making each race flavorfully and mechanically distinct. It's tricky to balance these three goals against each other! He's also going against human-as-default and trying to give them a distinct feel. The closest to sourcebook humans in his setting is Hybrids--characters like half-elves who get characteristics from multiple parent races.
All this was created way before the the blowup on twitter. People have been talking about these issues and suggesting improvements for a long time. And yeah, the need for playgroups to improve not-great racial stuff has also been part of the conversation. Should it really be random players' jobs instead of a giant company's? Well, that's outside the scope of this post.
I'm part of a playtest game in this setting and it's a lot of fun. But feedback from more people than a few playtesters would be appreciated!
(Cool, I remembered the link tags without looking them up!)
