[Poll] Metahumans

[Jason Liang]

In your ideal RPG game, for example if you made your ideal rpg game, do metahumans (elves, dwarves, halflings, kalar, poppins, mutants, furries felpurrs) exist, or do exotic intelligent humanoid creatures exist (nezumi, naga, kenku)? Would they be playable, or NPCs only, or enemies only (Orcs, Trolls)? Are they as common and populous as humans or are they rare?

Human PCs only would be like Darklands, Age of Decadence, Conan
Exotic NPCs would be like L5R/ Rokugan, Exalted
Rare metahumans would be like Lord of the Rings, Rance
Common metahumans would be like Faerun, Planescape, Starjammer, Shadowrun/ Earthdawn

 

[Melcar]

Role playing game game

 

[just]

only as enemies
except maybe races with hot females, like elves for example, which your main character( human, body type 1, light brown hair and largest uncut penis) can take as concubines
furs, scales, hooves, midget races and other shitty mutants are only good for your sword, in a literal sense

 

[behold_a_man]

Does it even matter? I want to have variability among possible enemies and character builds; the means to achieve that are immaterial.
As for the other things, well, they could exist, but are not necessary? I want to explore diverse places and - if there is any writing - see distinct sets of problems and perspectives on them; and, guess what, the means to achieve those are extraneous too.

 

[NecroLord]

Fuck your demihumans and other humanoid scumbags.
Human Supremacy!
Make it Greyhawk-like.
Dwarves and Elves are insular and their kingdoms are often secluded and not as welcoming to outsiders.
Kill Orcs on sight.
Make it like this.

 

[Butter]

Monsters only. Death to snowflake faggotry.

 

[JarlFrank]

Human PCs only, most of the time "metahumans" are just humans inspired by certain human cultures. There's no reason they just can't be humans of a different culture.
Dwarves = Scottish people or vikings, most of the time.
Elves = hippies who live in forests or nerds who study magic
Orcs = barbarians, sometimes with a noble savage vibe

None of them ever come across as being genuinely a different race from man. They're clearly just humans, but pointy ears, or humans, but short.
So you may as well just make them humans.

 

[NecroLord]

Orcs = niggers

 

[VerSacrum]

Don't care as long as there are no blacks in the setting. Specifically black elves and dwarves. BG3 was full of those abominations.

Now just booted up the new Dragon's Dogma and within 1 minute of "Start Game" you see some jiggaboo larping as a knight. I'm sick of that shit.

 

[Jason Liang]

So I've been working on my pet rpg project, and originally I envisioned it as humans only, no elves or dwarves etc... but now that I've gotten to fleshing out the setting, specifically the bestiary/ monster's compendium, there does seem to be a void that needs to be filled by other intelligent races. Yes, there are things like undead, angels, devils, demons and other outsiders, as well as I suppose mythic creatures like dragons, phoenixes, minotaurs, mermaids and sirens, but I'm having a hard time committing to how civilized they should be. Should they have towns and kingdoms? Language and writing? Religions, Gods, cosmology? Should they have character classes, or are those human only structures?

For example Wizardry 6/7/8 (I think a lot about Wiz 7) has clear division between the PC races (Human, Elf, Dwarf, Felpurr, Rawulf, Mook, Faerie), the non-PC spacefaring races (Umpani, T'Rang and Helazoid) and the native races (Ratkin, Munks, Danes, Gorns) but they all have character classes (Alchemist, Psionic, Samurai, Ninja, etc).

Anyway, its a bit of a paradox that even if I want a human-centric game, there is still a need to include nonhuman civilizations, at which point its hard to justify not letting them be PC races, even if they are not standard fantasy trope races (for example Wheel of Time has Ogier, Trollocs, Myrdaal and more exotic stuff like Green Men for example, even if the setting is otherwise overwhelmingly human centric). It makes me understand why Elves and Dwarves are there own classes in the original D&D design (besides the origin in fantasy miniature wargaming) and when even AD&D had different class rulesets for humans vs nonhumans.

Like, let's say my rpg has a Nezumi (rat-men) civilization. So shouldn't Nezumi be a playable character race? But Paladin is one of the character classes in the game (as is Valkyrie) and it doesn't make sense for Nezumi to be Valkyries or Paladins.

Hm. But having wrote that I just figured out the solution for my game. Still implementing it for nonhuman PCs is going to take a lot of nonessential work.

 

[thesecret1]

If a human can roleplay a non-human race well without spending a week trying to understand its thought processes and general mindset, then said race is most likely just a shitty human reskin.

 

[Jason Liang]

If a human can roleplay a non-human race well without spending a week trying to understand its thought processes and general mindset, then said race is most likely just a shitty human reskin.

For example, in Rance Quest Magnum, even though the Kalar are basically a rare NPC race, the game does have Kalar (Aegis, Pastel, Reset) and Youkai (Noir) PCs who have character classes just like the human PCs (as well as whatever Athena 2.0 is). Kalar and Youkai aren't human reskins, are they?

 

[PlayerEmers]

Yes to other humanoids, BUT they need a different flavour: they cant just be "humans with X" and follow the same dynamics fro.m humans on a story/gameplay context. Devs love to do that shit, making fantasy worlds feel like post-modern california/new york cities where people from different backgrounds live in "harmony".

 

[NecroLord]

Devs love to do that shit, making fantasy worlds feel like post-modern california/new york cities where people from different backgrounds live in "harmony".

Oh, kinda like a lesser known indie game called BG3, you mean?

 

[thesecret1]

If a human can roleplay a non-human race well without spending a week trying to understand its thought processes and general mindset, then said race is most likely just a shitty human reskin.

For example, in Rance Quest Magnum, even though the Kalar are basically a rare NPC race, the game does have Kalar (Aegis, Pastel, Reset) and Youkai (Noir) PCs who have character classes just like the human PCs (as well as whatever Athena 2.0 is). Kalar and Youkai aren't human reskins, are they?

Of course they are. They think like humans do. If the game had them be some a reclusive tribe of humans, would the narrative really change that much? A non-human race should be somewhat incomprehensible, valuing strange, seemingly pointless things while shrugging when it comes to stuff that a human would consider to be of paramount importance. To give a quick example, a non-human race could engage in horrible cruelty and torture without seeing it as anything strange or even noteworthy (and expressing surprise that a human would care at all about something so mundane), but be shocked and appaled should they see a person wear anything blue. There should be logic to how they perceive the world, but it should be strange and foreign to a human.

 

[Serus]

I suppose, in my hypothetical Darklands-like i'm planning and will never make, I would allow metahumans as monsters - but very rarely and not the usual Tolkienesque kind if i can. Possibly, even more rarely, like once or twice in the game, a metahuman NPC. A character similar to Lady of the Lake from Arthurian legends as exemple.

I voted drowcomrade, obviously.

 

[rogueknight333]

Metahumans are helpful in gameplay terms in that they provide more variety in character building and more variety in NPC cultures the PC can interact with. In theory one could achieve the same result by just having a lot of different human cultures, but there are a number of problems with that.

One is that the standard fantasy races (elves, dwarves etc.) come with a whole bunch of tropes associated with them, very famililar to anyone with even a passing familiarity with fantasy literature, that make a character from those races easy to roleplay, or easy to know how to interact with if an NPC. Note that this applies even for a very non-standard member of those races, e.g. an elf who hates tress, a dwarf who hates living underground, a half-orc who is a bookish intellectual, etc. Characters like that are still getting a lot of mileage out of the standard stereotypes specifically by playing against them.

Trying to use different human cultures for the same purpose requires one to either model them on actually existing, well-known cultures, or make some up for the game. If you do the first a lot of people are likely to object that the portrayal is inaccurate or offensive, and even someone who does not agree or prefers not to care is likely to distracted by such controversies, breaking the immersion in a fantasy world. If the second is done, the culture will not have well-known tropes associated with it, losing an important advantage of the standard metahuman races.

Another issue is that using something other than the standard fantasy races would require a developer to:

1) put a lot of thought and effort into designing alternative cultures to use instead, and
2) not come up with something deeply stupid as a result

What are the odds of a dev successfully doing both those things?

 

[Baron Tahn]

I like the classics, svartalfar, duergar - that sort of thing derived from Tolkien's modernisation of mythology etc. Can get into most things from most cultures, like giants, centaurs, djinn etc etc.

I draw the line at PC furries and other such shit that just exists for stupid teddy bear fetishist fantasy reasons. The line is probably at lizardmen. (Exists in plenty of folklore but not to be included if its just incloosive for fetishists).

 

[NecroLord]

Furries are fit to be exterminated.
I would rather prefer to have those creatures like Mind Flayers, Aboleths and Beholders, creatures with alien mindsets and motivations, obviously inspired by the works of Lovecraft...

 

[NecroLord]

 

[destinae vomitus]

Depends entirely on the game and its setting. I like how you can make your party in Wiz 6-8 look like a menagerie or circus troupe for instance, but besides contributing to the party building aspect it's in line with the tone (not very grounded or self-serious). And on top of that your gaggle of furries/fairies, at least in 7 and 8, along with a lot of the NPC races are literal aliens, making it more or less cohesive. Conversely I'm completely fine with humans being the only playable option or sapient race in the world even, and prefer that in some ways. Fantasy RPG races tend to just be monocultures based off of actual human ones anyhow and in terms of gameplay usually boil down to simple pros/cons to stats, that more often than not wouldn't be out of the question for a human.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

It's demi-human. While I'm OK with the PC getting to be a snowflake, I prefer demihumans to be uncommon NPCs. It keeps them exotic and wonderous. Something made common ceases to be fantastic. It also enforces that they're also culturally different, which staves off the modern interpretation that all peoples and cultures are 21st century California. Contrast human cities like Baldur's Gate with elven Suldenessalar. Both are really cool but the evoke entirely different reactions and present the player with something unique. The same can be said about the dwarven city Orzammar in Dragon's Age.

The only time I thought having demihumans as abundantly common was a positive was in well-done subversions like Arcanum and Planescape Torment. In those games, differences were the focus, so it made it interesting. Everywhere else having constant exposure to demihumans just makes them background noise. It's entirely possible to make characters have different bonuses and affinities without resorting to other races.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Yes to Arcanum and Planescape Torment

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Like, let's say my rpg has a Nezumi (rat-men) civilization. So shouldn't Nezumi be a playable character race? But Paladin is one of the character classes in the game (as is Valkyrie) and it doesn't make sense for Nezumi to be Valkyries or Paladins.

They can have their own Paladin/Valkyrie variant that adapts the cultural aspects to make sense for RRATS, but keeps the mechanics. Call the paladin a warden and give it a shaman flavor, etc. Otherwise you'll have to explain why nobody from that race is interested in being a tanky warrior who can heal, or come up with entirely new concepts for their classes, too much effort for little gain.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Have the ratmen be getting purged like vermin. Can play rogues but not much else. Creates all sorts of good hooks to explore genocide and racism, lots of good RP oppourtunities for players.