Homogenized Races?

[TheSessionTapes]

Okay, folks... here's a good discussion topic for you;

Racial languages/religions/alignments.

I personally really dislike the "homogenous" races idea which seems to be present in a lot of TTRPGs, (D&D in particular). The idea that an entire race follows the same pantheon or speaks the same language, regardless of where in the world they're from just doesn't ring very true to me. This is why the idea of "racial" anything seems very incongruous to me. I have a hard time believing that the Elves of Silverymoon and the Elves of Cormyr speak the same language, let alone worship the same pantheon or have the same cultural structure.

Throughout history, we've seen dozens of instances of similar ethnotypes or even communities deeply (and sometimes violently) divided by language, religion, or cultural mores. So why not fantasy worlds? The Forgotten Realms in particular, the only race which seems to follow any sort of "realistic" ethnic divergence are humans. Everyone else seems to just get a new subrace thrown at them for each new region discovered.

As for Alignments, I don't use them anyway... I think they're WAY too "mechanical" to reflect true morality. I think the devs themselves even realised this; adding characters like Drizzt and gods like Eilistraee to pay lip-service to "moral complexity" within the cultures. But for people who use them, do you ever have issues with the idea of an entire race having the same moral compass? Or does it just not come up?

TL;DR, I'm looking for other people's opinions of the "WizardDidIt" way in which non-human FRPG societies seem to be racially homogenous across the world. Is this something you're okay with? Do you mix it up? Take different approaches? What are they?

(Oh, and don't even get me started on the fact that there's a language called "Common" )

[Grim Portent]

I'm with you on this front, I think it's silly to have 15 subraces of elves who all speak the same language and worship the same gods scattered about the world.

I lean more towards multi-racial realms with their own cultures and often their own gods, unless there's a particularly powerful creed that's spread around. The elven ghetto in a given city might not be the same as the human neighbourhoods around it, but they're probably more similar to the locals than to the elves from three kingdoms over. Every language has local dialects, there's no 'common' tongue shared by everyone. The gods also vary by location, even religions that span through multiple lands change based on the customs and former religion of the locals.

There is a trend for cultures to spread through multiple lands, inspired by things like the German panoply that dominated Europe in the early middle ages, or the Celtic diaspora that dominated central Europe and Britain prior to that. So there might be multiple kingdoms of 'X' culture, but each has its' own language from the same family, differing customs and some variation in how they revere the gods.

[gkathellar]

Of course it's silly. It's also really convenient, both from a worldbuilding and an in-game perspective, because it cuts out a lot of hassle.

[Draconi Redfir]

i think the idea is that the different races kind of count towards the non-homogenized thing sortof.

like say in a more realistic setting, you might have two tribes of humans. one who speaks Spiggish and likes to pasture animals while praising Nir, the goddess of nature, while the other tribe speaks Gibber and likes to hunt and scavenge for their supplies while praising tol, kol, and bol, the ancestral spirits of stone, wood, and dirt. These two tribes tend to fight a lot, and have trouble understanding one another.


in common D&D, you just take one of these tribes and make them Orcs or something. same thing, they just look different.

[MoiMagnus]

Okay, folks... here's a good discussion topic for you;

Racial languages/religions/alignments.

I personally really dislike the "homogenous" races idea which seems to be present in a lot of TTRPGs, (D&D in particular). The idea that an entire race follows the same pantheon or speaks the same language, regardless of where in the world they're from just doesn't ring very true to me. This is why the idea of "racial" anything seems very incongruous to me. I have a hard time believing that the Elves of Silverymoon and the Elves of Cormyr speak the same language, let alone worship the same pantheon or have the same cultural structure.

Throughout history, we've seen dozens of instances of similar ethnotypes or even communities deeply (and sometimes violently) divided by language, religion, or cultural mores. So why not fantasy worlds? The Forgotten Realms in particular, the only race which seems to follow any sort of "realistic" ethnic divergence are humans. Everyone else seems to just get a new subrace thrown at them for each new region discovered.

As for Alignments, I don't use them anyway... I think they're WAY too "mechanical" to reflect true morality. I think the devs themselves even realised this; adding characters like Drizzt and gods like Eilistraee to pay lip-service to "moral complexity" within the cultures. But for people who use them, do you ever have issues with the idea of an entire race having the same moral compass? Or does it just not come up?

TL;DR, I'm looking for other people's opinions of the "WizardDidIt" way in which non-human FRPG societies seem to be racially homogenous across the world. Is this something you're okay with? Do you mix it up? Take different approaches? What are they?

(Oh, and don't even get me started on the fact that there's a language called "Common" )

1) I personally like "Common". Well, to be fair, I don't like it from a world-building point of view (because it doesn't make sense), but from a gameplay point of view, I almost never enjoyed any of the consequences of not being able to talk the same language as other creatures. The only situation where I enjoyed it was in a parody of RPG where it was used for comical purposes, and only during one session. Language barrier is something that just restrict your options without giving you anything interesting in exchange. That would be like having different money system each time you travel around the universe, and have to deal with conversion rates, inflation, forgery, ... [Moreover, most DM don't have the linguistic knowledge to actually make foreign language works in a realistic way, so they it doesn't even give me additional immersion]. As a consequence, if the whole "language" stuff could be deleted from D&D (no list of languages, no number of language known, ...), I would be pretty happy.

2) This is not reasonable to have a universe with 10 or more major races, each of them with a large variety of behavior and complex culture. First, this is a monumental work for the DM, and second, that's too much information for the players. To this problem, I see 3 solutions:
+ Every race is homogeneous. You have countless race, since you essentially have one race per kind of behavior. This is the easiest to write, most players have no problem with it, but does not lead to a very deep universe.
+ Races are complex and well-developed, but you only have 3-4 of them that are relevant. This is probably the best if you want a well-written world, but some players might be frustrated by the apparent "lack of variety".
+ Races are essentially all the same, without strong cultural differences between them. However, their cultures are as complex and various as the real world culture. In other words, "fantasy race" is essentially "real-world hair color", you have some stereotype for some of them, some have some region of the world where one is dominant and one is rare, but there is more differences inside the groups than between the groups.

[NRSASD]

1. Common works from a gameplay perspective. It can kinda be handwaved as "the trade language everyone knows at least a little", but yeah, it's not super realistic. Ah well.

In my own setting, racial languages are the "Common" of other species. Most nations have their own language. Human Common just happens to be the most prevalent.

2. Of the three options proposed by MoiMagnus, I'm definitely a fan of option 3. If you strip culture away from the character races, it's very hard to make them distinct without accidentally being "racist", because you're implying that their species has a bigger influence on their behavior than their training or culture; which is a massive, wriggling bucket of worms I have no interest in opening without very specific plot-centric reasons.

In my setting, almost all nations are mixes of races, and an elf from the not-roman empire to the north is more likely to side with the not-romans than with an elf to the south. Culture is definitely the dominant trait, although some species' traits do shine through. Like the fact that elves are renegade fey and not really subject to things like disease, or that dwarves are prone to going mad if they go too deep.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

A couple random thoughts:

When I DM i'll follow the stereotypes to some extent. Once I had halflings and orcs working together though and it blew my player's mind. Honest, the back story made it make sense!

In a longer campaign mixing in non typical characters keeps things fresh in my opinion. Make it noteworthy if you have a lawful good female drow who just wants to run an honest overnight childcare facility in a village though!

Far as the language thing goes, I've played with isolated continents no one knew about where the players had a heck of a time communicating with the ppl because of a language difference. The way high level magic characters can zip around different planes I'd at least have the more educated of every culture be somewhat likely to speak common.

[Max_Killjoy]

I've long thought that D&D's "race" should be split into Species and Culture. So for character creation, it would go Species, Culture, Background, Class, etc.

Problem for D&D is that it's trying hard to be THE fantasy RPG, and that makes getting into potentially setting specific things like culture a tight rope to walk.

[Pleh]

To be fair, racial diversity should depend somewhat on the species' relative longevity.

The Elves, living for centuries, would branch off and and diversify far more slowly than the relatively short lived humans.

With humans, we're barly speaking the same language as relatives from 200 years ago, but for an elf, that's just the difference between their teen years and their adulthood, speak nothing of the fact that they can probably go across the street and talk to their grandparents who were born in the last millenia.

Elves living in human cultures (or cultures shared with humans) would be more adapted to the rapid rate of change in culture, but that wouldn't mean they had forgotten the older ways they used to live. In fact, humans that live alongside elves in commune likely would see their culture change more gradually, since they would have reliable access to neighbors who are consistently "old fashioned".

I mean, America is about 200 years old. Imagine if a portion of American society were young in those days and nearing retirement today? Sure, they've learned to adapt to the change of each century, but imagine how well they would preserve the old ways things used to be done?

[awa]

1) I personally like "Common". Well, to be fair, I don't like it from a world-building point of view (because it doesn't make sense), but from a gameplay point of view, I almost never enjoyed any of the consequences of not being able to talk the same language as other creatures. The only situation where I enjoyed it was in a parody of RPG where it was used for comical purposes, and only during one session. Language barrier is something that just restrict your options without giving you anything interesting in exchange. That would be like having different money system each time you travel around the universe, and have to deal with conversion rates, inflation, forgery, ... [Moreover, most DM don't have the linguistic knowledge to actually make foreign language works in a realistic way, so they it doesn't even give me additional immersion]. As a consequence, if the whole "language" stuff could be deleted from D&D (no list of languages, no number of language known, ...), I would be pretty happy.

2) This is not reasonable to have a universe with 10 or more major races, each of them with a large variety of behavior and complex culture. First, this is a monumental work for the DM, and second, that's too much information for the players. To this problem, I see 3 solutions:
+ Every race is homogeneous. You have countless race, since you essentially have one race per kind of behavior. This is the easiest to write, most players have no problem with it, but does not lead to a very deep universe.
+ Races are complex and well-developed, but you only have 3-4 of them that are relevant. This is probably the best if you want a well-written world, but some players might be frustrated by the apparent "lack of variety".
+ Races are essentially all the same, without strong cultural differences between them. However, their cultures are as complex and various as the real world culture. In other words, "fantasy race" is essentially "real-world hair color", you have some stereotype for some of them, some have some region of the world where one is dominant and one is rare, but there is more differences inside the groups than between the groups.

edit some of this was ninja i did not write this quick

I would say you can do a combination of the three, a major race like humans that is diverse and dominated by culture, a few diversified by race and culture (like elves wood, grey, high) and then a number of isolated races that have little cultural variety.

If I had to pick one of the three, 3 would be my least favorite, I prefer species to matter. A dwarf should not just be a short human with a beard and if it is.

Also just to nip this in the bud yes D&D uses the word race wrong it uses a lot of words wrong, but there are very real differences between these species and it seems more or less inconceivable that say an elf centuries old would act the same way as a nezumi who is middle aged at 15. You have differences in life span differences in whether they function best during the day at twilight or at night. All these things would affect how they act and react even if everything else about them fell within the human spectrum. Only a very specialized culture could accommodate each of these varied needs.

On top of that for some of these extremes races these variations in biology would heavily interact how they exist in the society. Let’s take a life time appointment to a government position, a nezumi reaches adulthood by 6 (minimum starting age) and is always dead by 40 while an elf could hold that position for over 500 years. Think about that, imagine if a portion of the population was alive when Columbus arrived in the new world and was acquiring wealth that entire time. If one of the founding fathers was still alive imagine of Cortez was still alive with all the cultural baggage their long distant upbringing entailed.
Think about the culture divide when some of the population’s generational time is 15 years and some of it is nearly 2 centuries.
Saying while an elf or elan American is basically interchangeable with a nezumi or orc American makes no sense

numbers taken from 3rd edition

[Jay R]

I personally really dislike the "homogenous" races idea which seems to be present in a lot of TTRPGs, (D&D in particular). The idea that an entire race follows the same pantheon or speaks the same language, regardless of where in the world they're from just doesn't ring very true to me. This is why the idea of "racial" anything seems very incongruous to me. I have a hard time believing that the Elves of Silverymoon and the Elves of Cormyr speak the same language, let alone worship the same pantheon or have the same cultural structure.

This problem disappears if you don't make assumptions about the 99% of the world that the adventurers never see.

The goblins nearby speak a language that you call Goblin, and are an evil raiding tribal culture. On other continents there may be peaceful goblin farming communities, or goblin trading empires. I don't care, and I don't guess.

The elves in the nearby forest speak a language that you call Elvish, and they call Sindarin. There are other elves elsewhere who might speak Quenya, Khuzdul , Dothraki, Valyrian, Osage, Old Norse, Basque, Attic Greek, Hittite, Martian, Hero's Tongue, Kryptonian, Na'vi, Klingon, or English with bad French accents. Since they never show up on stage, I never have to decide what language(s) they know.

The gnomes you will meet worship Garl Glittergold, Gelf Darkhearth, or a few others. But there could be gnomes you don't meet who worship Loki, Coyote, Gwydion, Bugs Bunny, Gaea, Osiris, Ba'al, Moloch, Manitou, Rao, Chernobog, Lolth, Crom, Yog-Sothoth, Aslan, Shardik, Galactus, Sredni Vashtar, or The Powers That Be.

The homogenous race problem is strictly DM-created, by making an unneeded and unused assumption about the vast majority of peoples who are on that world but not in that game.

[Particle_Man]

They tried different languages with 7th Sea first edition and then had to backpedal with a linguist advantage and pidgin language rules. Players want to talk to each other and to important npcs.

As for variants, Kingdoms of Kalamar did a good job with six types of humans. And drow do seem different from other elves in most versions of D&D.

[Anonymouswizard]

Of course it's silly. It's also really convenient, both from a worldbuilding and an in-game perspective, because it cuts out a lot of hassle.

The average campaign probably Covers am area roughly equal to England, maybe France. Yes, there are campaigns over a larger geographic area, but most stay within that rough area.

So, major ethic groups in 1200s British Isles. I count:
Anglo-Saxons
Normans
Scottish
Welsh
Irish
Probably still some Norsemen
Maybe a smattering of smaller ethnic groups.

In terms of cultures that's about six. Less than the number of races in the Player's Handbook, but I'm probably missing some and we likely already have more cultural differences developing. If anything the problem is too social groups once you take into account subraces.

[Max_Killjoy]

This problem disappears if you don't make assumptions about the 99% of the world that the adventurers never see.

The goblins nearby speak a language that you call Goblin, and are an evil raiding tribal culture. On other continents there may be peaceful goblin farming communities, or goblin trading empires. I don't care, and I don't guess.

The elves in the nearby forest speak a language that you call Elvish, and they call Sindarin. There are other elves elsewhere who might speak Quenya, Khuzdul , Dothraki, Valyrian, Osage, Old Norse, Basque, Attic Greek, Hittite, Martian, Hero's Tongue, Kryptonian, Na'vi, Klingon, or English with bad French accents. Since they never show up on stage, I never have to decide what language(s) they know.

The gnomes you will meet worship Garl Glittergold, Gelf Darkhearth, or a few others. But there could be gnomes you don't meet who worship Loki, Coyote, Gwydion, Bugs Bunny, Gaea, Osiris, Ba'al, Moloch, Manitou, Rao, Chernobog, Lolth, Crom, Yog-Sothoth, Aslan, Shardik, Galactus, Sredni Vashtar, or The Powers That Be.

The homogenous race problem is strictly DM-created, by making an unneeded and unused assumption about the vast majority of peoples who are on that world but not in that game.

To me that's drawing an artificial distinction where "we're just telling you about the goblins that make for good mooks and foes".

[PhoenixPhyre]

This is something I've worked hard to avoid in my setting. Things I've done:

1. Languages. There is a Common, but it's explicitly only for people in the main area[1], and it's a second language for some of them. And it results from a very strongly dominant empire that broke up a while ago. There are significant dialects within it, but it's still basically mutually understandable. All player characters get it because of how the central campaign premise works[2]. And I do enforce language boundaries for player/NPC interactions.

2. Racial lifespans. There are no super-long-lived player races in my setting. That's actually a recent historical event--200 years ago, as part of the consequences of a cataclysmic event, the longest-lived race (high elves) got knocked back to ~200 years max. Everyone else tops out at the ~150 range (dwarves), ~100 range (wood elves), ~80 range (just about everyone else), ~60 range (goblins, sort of).

3. Races and Cultures. There are no mono-racial nations. Each has a group of races that participate. Some races are only found in one nation (e.g. halflings, yuan-ti, dragonborn), some are more wide-spread. Many racial groups are pretty small, worldwide. There are only a few hundred thousand halflings, period. Possibly fewer dragonborn. There are lots of humans, orcs, wood elves, dwarves, and goblinoids (all the more ancient races). The total number of kobolds is in the low 500 range (they were just created about 10 years ago).

And each of the nations has one or more different cultures in it. For example, the humans and wood elves of Byssia share a common culture and there are lots of half-elves there. The Council Lands are much more racially and culturally diverse, but the humans and halflings there share a common culture, while the elves (both kinds) and dwarves are more culturally distant. In the Stone Throne, the humans and elves have interbred so much that everyone has at least a bit of elven heritage. The "half-elves" there are those in whom the heritage manifests visibly, while the "humans" are those where it didn't. There are no true elves there at all, really. Etc.

4. No racial alignment. Alignment isn't a thing for me at all, and fixed/dominant alignments are right out. Orcs are just as often good people as bad people. Sure, they have a racial tendency toward uncontrollable anger, but some of their cultures/tribes glorify that and others find ways to bind it to service. Even dragons, while they may be elementally color-coded, are not alignment-coded at all. Heck, even outsiders aren't aligned in any fixed way. Sure, demons[3] tend to be nasty, but that's because they chose to become that way.

[1] an area about the size of Western Europe-ish. Where all the PCs are from, 4 nations that have formed an international cooperation agreement.
[2] PCs are all Sanctioned Adventurers, "troubleshooters" for the international pact organization. They see trouble, they shoot trouble.
[3] demons, for me, are what happens when someone replaces their normal soul-operation-system with the devoured souls of others. Not generally considered polite behavior.

[Pleh]

The average campaign probably Covers am area roughly equal to England, maybe France.

Right up until it's time to go to the other Planes. Another reason the Planes often bother me in TTRPGs is we see barely a fraction of the material plane before we level past its siginificance.

[VoxRationis]

This is not reasonable to have a universe with 10 or more major races, each of them with a large variety of behavior and complex culture. First, this is a monumental work for the DM, and second, that's too much information for the players. To this problem, I see 3 solutions:
+ Races are essentially all the same, without strong cultural differences between them. However, their cultures are as complex and various as the real world culture. In other words, "fantasy race" is essentially "real-world hair color", you have some stereotype for some of them, some have some region of the world where one is dominant and one is rare, but there is more differences inside the groups than between the groups.

I'm not very fond of this option. It not only lends itself, but wholeheartedly offers itself to the "humans in funny hats" idea, which makes the inclusion of fantasy races at all seem rather superfluous. If there's no particular difference between a halfling, a human, and an orc and every NPC could be rotated between those three without changing their role in the setting and story, what's the point?

Moreover, from a purely in-universe perspective, such a setup doesn't make sense unless in a very modern sort of setting where a large amount of migration and urban mixture has taken place. It stands to reason that in most cases, most cultures are going to develop as racially homogeneous (in the D&D sense, which I will be using for "race" here). If a tribe of 50-150 individuals is composed of humans and elves, for instance, either a) the two will interbreed, being interfertile, until they become a largely homogeneous population of half- (or likely quarter-) elves, or b) the tribe is actually composed of two populations which are not interfertile, each of 25-75 individuals, and the stochastic nature of population dynamics makes it likely that one or both of them will go extinct because each population is that much closer to 0 and cannot be reinforced with individuals from the other half of the tribe. These two outcomes also assume good faith and no competition or animosity between the two populations, and if that does exist, it only makes the homogeneous outcome more likely. Therefore, for so long as you have people living in small units, which is true for most of the human population through history and prehistory, those units are likely to be mostly made up of the same race. Cultures will develop based on assumptions about biology and common experiences, and while some more open cultures may be fine with having individuals in the group that don't fit those assumptions, the overall pace of life will still reflect the majority. A village of elven orchard-keepers may be fine with the halfling family that moved in, but their cultural practices are still going to reflect the assumption of a centuries-long lifespan and their physical environment will be built for taller individuals. (They might include accommodations if they're being particularly considerate, but they still will be going out of their way to do so; when they make something, they will be naturally inclined to make it for the use of someone 5-6 feet tall, not 3 feet tall, so they'll need to actively decide to make it for the halflings if the item is to be useful for them.) Those cultures, initially separated due to reasons of demography and ergonomics, will then be likely to diverge from each other in ways that aren't purely because of these elements of necessity, but rather due to their separation. There's no particular intrinsic reason why the orcs wear quail feathers in their hats and their gnomish neighbors do not (certainly, orcs are not biologically obligated to wear quail feathers, and gnomes are perfectly capable of doing so), but each culture developed its particular customary headgear without feeling the need to consult the other, and now norms have been formed. These norms, in turn, serve to help reinforce group identity and make the gnomish and orcish cultures more distinct from one another.

Now, larger communities are going to be more willing and able to support diversity, but those communities developed out of smaller, homogeneous communities, either due to natural population growth or immigration, and so they will, at least initially, bear those elements of distinction which defined the cultures they stem from. People moving to the big city will be inclined to treat each other at least partially as members of another race and culture, not just equivalent fellow city-dwellers. Moreover, fantasy races tend to have reasonably significant distinctions in physical and mental capability which lend themselves to not blindly filling all roles in the community in the same way, particularly if those roles are competitive or naturally restricted to a small portion of the population. An unusually intelligent orc might be smarter than 90% of the elf population, but he's not competing with them for space as a wizard's apprentice or entry into some intellectual field; he's competing with the top 5% of the natural elven talent pool, probably combined with another good portion of applicants trying their hand because of their social positions. The rare orc who does break into such a field will be very much an exception, and even in an accepting environment free from racial animosity or stereotyping, which is unlikely, will draw a lot of notice and probably some degree of comment. Conversely, the unusually strong, bulky elf who wants to become a mercenary doppelsoldner, hewing through the front lines in heavy armor, will find the field full of people who can fight in that way better than he can; since military units are always in need of bodies, they might accept him without too much question, but he's unlikely to find noteworthy success. Consequently, you'll see people gravitate to particular fields and patterns of living, and this will be inevitably exacerbated by stereotyping and social norms.

[LibraryOgre]

Possibly.

Consider, for example, that having a singular pantheon of deities would help to make the long-lived elves even more culturally conservative than a race who lives forever is likely to be in the first place.

One of the factors in human diversity is relatively short generations, combined with the challenges of living. I need to find a way to deal with the place I am living in now, in ways that make sense for the current climate (physical and political), using the tools I have available. My grandparents are likely dead by the time I am an adult; my great-grandparents almost certainly are. This creates a cultural churn, as new ideas come in, old ideas fade away, and then get rediscovered, possibly with new vocabulary or shades of nuance.

When you're talking extremely long-lived, magically-capable races, however, this pressure lessens. If an elven generation (from birth to reproduction) is 150-200 years, on a lifespan that may regularly reach 1000, that churn of culture slows way down. If they are communicating with actually immortal beings (gods), that's another conservative pressure on culture... you talk to the gods in Elven, and they talk back in Elven, then Elven is going to drift a lot less. Since you're talking to your great-great-grandmother in Elven, and she spoke to her great-great-grandfather in Elven, and he spoke to HIS great-great-grandmother in Elven, you're looking at a linguistic history that stretches back to when MY ancestors were speaking proto-Indo-European. Add in magic as a means to overcome a lot of difficulties, and you don't have to reinvent science to adapt to new situations... Control Weather controls weather, whether it is a long drought or a flood season.

You also have the reality of the deities to deal with. If Labelas Enoreth wants to be worshiped in a certain way, he can unambiguously tell people across the continent. In a way, you can actually see this in modern culture, with the English language. While not gone, you see fewer people with pronounced regional accents these days, because of standard American English being used in all the shows.* If the medium of exchange is a God, well, that adds a bit of force that you don't get from kids learning to talk from Sesame Street.

So, while you might have a degree of drift, and probably have more than you see in standard D&D, you also have a lot of conservative pressures on language and culture... things that will tend to keep language the same, and cultures defragmented, in ways that just don't happen in a mundane world of short-lived hominds.

*Funny story: If my kids watch too much Peppa Pig, they start picking up a BBC-voice accent for a while.

[awa]

More things that would complicate a mixed society preventing the different races from being interchangeable

Another aspect disease resistance something like a nezumi with both a good con and an additional bonus against disease and a short life span is likely not going to worry about disease in the same way that an elf with a con penalty and an extremely long life would.

Even if they did the literal rat person covered in fur is likely going to have to work real hard to overcome a reputation for being dirty.

Another thought how would a society deal with mixed groups where some have innate weapons or combat magic. Do you want your children going to school with the lizard man, hes got scary claws and teeth. How do the guards deal with it, a lizard man cant disarm.

[Honest Tiefling]

To be fair, racial diversity should depend somewhat on the species' relative longevity.

The Elves, living for centuries, would branch off and and diversify far more slowly than the relatively short lived humans.

I don't disagree with this point, but I think this is often handwaved via fey connections or godly intervention. In many editions of Dungeons and Dragons elves are touched by fey magic, so spontaneous subraces probably make more sense if you just assume that fey magic just plain does that.

I'm with you on this front, I think it's silly to have 15 subraces of elves who all speak the same language and worship the same gods scattered about the world.

This...Could be a very foreboding plot point in a setting. Why do the elves all worship the same god? What happens to those who don't? Why do they not stray in huge numbers? But yes, it is quite silly when it ISN'T supposed to be a creepy aspect of elves.

In the Points of Light setting for 4e, I think many of the 'racial' gods of older settings were re-purposed as gods that often appealed to that race, but were also a part of the main pantheon and had plenty of followers outside of that race. It worked well for a setting with a smaller focus, I think.

To me that's drawing an artificial distinction where "we're just telling you about the goblins that make for good mooks and foes".

Again, not disagreeing with you, Max_Killjoy, but there is going to be a lot of cases where you need to introduce things slowly. Goblins being more neutral might pan out really badly for some players learning about the setting or tabletop RPGs in general.

[Mordar]

Of course it's silly. It's also really convenient, both from a worldbuilding and an in-game perspective, because it cuts out a lot of hassle.

And frankly I think it makes some degree of sense historically as well...in "developing" worlds the culture/religion spreads with the migratory pattern of the people. A particular kingdom supporting a particular religion had a much greater role in expansion to a given southern locale, while a different kingdom supporting a slightly, but significantly, different religion had a greater role in expansion of a more northerly locale. Those impacts are still easily visible hundreds of years later and people currently transitioning from one locale to the other carry their religion with them. Migration across island chains shows a similar pattern.

Basically look at our world 500-1000+ years ago. Clear and distinct religions and cultures in certain areas, and many of those people attempting to maintain their cultural identity even when in non-traditional areas. And that's with people that are all the same race (from this discussion's intent of "race").

That said, the more developed/cosmopolitan things become the more room there is for elves worshipping dwarf gods, or halflings from the equivalent of Australia worshipping Thor and Odin.

- M

[awa]

This...Could be a very foreboding plot point in a setting. Why do the elves all worship the same god? What happens to those who don't? Why do they not stray in huge numbers? But yes, it is quite silly when it ISN'T supposed to be a creepy aspect of elves.

Why would it be, if the elven gods literally made the elves why wouldn't they worship them. Why would they stray to a more generic god when their own works perfectly well. Combined with how elves generally consider themselves better than "lesser" races and the fact that long lives would equal vastly slower cultural changes it makes perfect sense that all the elves would worship the same gods.

[Mechalich]

One thing about racial monocultures is that, in the average D&D setting, the non-human races simply aren't very numerous. The Forgotten Realms, according to the 3e FR Campaign Setting, only contains about 100 million people in a Europe-sized area, and the number of those who are members of any given non-human sub-race are actually quite small. In fact the total elven or dwarven population of the realms is probably smaller than that of individual populous human states like Calimshan. Considering that magical communication means that there's far less reason for geographic cultural fragmentation, it's actually quite reasonable for all of maybe a quarter-million Gold Elves to have a single culture, there are plenty of historical ethnic groups in that size range. Non-PHB races are going to be even less numerous. When I did the demographic design for Resvier - a nation of around 15 million people - I included all the playable PF races as having stable populations, but in order to make that work mathematically, the majority of those races had tiny relic populations of a mere 10,000 or 20,000 individuals, which meant they were concentrated in a county-sized homeland.

If you want to have a lot of cultural contrast between non-human ethnic groups, you need multiple isolated homelands with large populations and a lot of settings simply don't have enough non-humans to do that. An interesting comparison point here can be taken from Tolkien. In LotR all the elves and dwarves act with considerable cultural similarity - because they've been worn down by millennia of warfare and only exist as tiny relic populations that have necessarily homogenized. In the Simarillion, by contrast, there are large and significant cultural differences between the various elven kingdoms (and the dwarves also, though they get far less words) because they are so much bigger and most of the continent is under elven control.

[Jay R]

To me that's drawing an artificial distinction where "we're just telling you about the goblins that make for good mooks and foes".

Yes, of course. That's a feature, not a bug.

When the PCs travel through a forest, I draw a similar "artificial distinction", for the same purpose. I describe the bears, centaurs, ettercaps. leopards, treants and wolves that make for good foes, and ignore the deer, weasels, foxes, robins, crows, rabbits, and butterflies that don't. Are there magical creatures like griffons, hippogriffs, and chimeras but are herbivores and ignore people or flee from them? Probably, but there's no reason to describe these duckbunnies, molesparrows, and platypuses.

Similarly, there is no reason to describe the culture or language for the goblins who are not encounters for the party, and therefore no need to create the homogenized race problem. Peaceful farming goblins aren't an interesting encounter, so I don't put any in the way of the PCs.

And once you accept that idea, you can create the occasional offbeat adventure with one of the exceptions. I am currently creating a hidden valley filled with dwarves who are 8 feet tall. Since that height doesn't work well in underground mines, they are pit miners instead. I intend to introduce the idea by having the party discover some ruined carvings showing humans that are smaller than dwarves.

Someday I want to drop a party in a continent they've never heard of, in the middle of a human-goblin war. Over time I want them to be able to see that the humans are invading the lands of the peaceful goblins, not vice versa.

[Anonymouswizard]

Right up until it's time to go to the other Planes. Another reason the Planes often bother me in TTRPGs is we see barely a fraction of the material plane before we level past its siginificance.

Other planes of existence? People use those when not playing planescape?

In all seriousness, I'm currently running a game of Unknown Armies where otherspaces are fairly important. Specifically a Fairyland that's representative of the local psychological state, and in unspecified 'egological realm' that had to do with the campaign goal. But both were in there at the very beginning and don't have a 'you must be X level to interact' sign, crossing over between them is a primary pay of the game (the PCs just straight up don't have the rituals needed to let them cross at will yet, despite being the indirect cause of one of them).

I heavily dislike the idea of 'moving onto the Planes' because, as you say, there's almost always more of the world to explore. I care about them only on relation to in-setting religions.

[Beleriphon]

To be fair, racial diversity should depend somewhat on the species' relative longevity.

The Elves, living for centuries, would branch off and and diversify far more slowly than the relatively short lived humans.

With humans, we're barly speaking the same language as relatives from 200 years ago, but for an elf, that's just the difference between their teen years and their adulthood, speak nothing of the fact that they can probably go across the street and talk to their grandparents who were born in the last millenia.

Elves living in human cultures (or cultures shared with humans) would be more adapted to the rapid rate of change in culture, but that wouldn't mean they had forgotten the older ways they used to live. In fact, humans that live alongside elves in commune likely would see their culture change more gradually, since they would have reliable access to neighbors who are consistently "old fashioned".

I mean, America is about 200 years old. Imagine if a portion of American society were young in those days and nearing retirement today? Sure, they've learned to adapt to the change of each century, but imagine how well they would preserve the old ways things used to be done?

Never mind the USA. Some settings have elves living for as much as 2000 years. Imagine a being able to talk to somebody that actually met Charlemagne, or saw the sack of Rome by Visigoths. That's a person that doesn't really see the need for all this fancy moveable type book business, handwritten scrolls works just fine thank you very much.

[jjordan]

1) I like Common. But I think of it, and treat it, as a creole/pidgin language created by the gathering of many cultures into one place or as a trade language used by several cultures that incorporates elements of all their native languages. It can be a crude pidgin (Him fella give lots gold or this fella chop-chop) or a complex creole (Du me geben oro au me te mata) And sometimes I redefine it. In one setting 'common' is Orcish. It's a language that's simple, consistent, and easy to learn. So it gets used by traders.

2) I mix my groups up. I have a setting with elves that consider they are superior to other species. This can take a lot of different forms. There are groups that are quite happy to work with humans, super polite, and still think they are superior. There are others that treat humans like non-sentient animals. At one level my elves are quite homogeneous, but at other levels quite different. In another example, they all all speak the same language. But their speech is littered with cultural references that leave it incomprehensible to people who don't share 150 years of extensive exposure to their culture. Variations in cultural references between different groups mean that some groups effectively speak separate languages. Which doesn't even begin to address the way humans and other groups speak Elvish or the reactions of the various Elvish groups to their attempts to communicate.

[MoiMagnus]

I'm not very fond of this option. It not only lends itself, but wholeheartedly offers itself to the "humans in funny hats" idea, which makes the inclusion of fantasy races at all seem rather superfluous. If there's no particular difference between a halfling, a human, and an orc and every NPC could be rotated between those three without changing their role in the setting and story, what's the point?

I understand your position. And I was not trying to convince you that this option was the best. All 3 options (on top of others that didn't come to my mind) can be used as a base of interesting campaign.

Though there is a point to the 3rd option compared to "no races": player experience. From my limited experience, players are much more happy in a medieval fantastic where races just exist as funny hats (so they give mechanical bonuses, but have have as much influence as a family name on the universe, which mean it rarely matter but sometimes it adds a lot to the relationship between the characters), rather than a universe where there is only humans.

World-building for a RPG, compared to "pure" world-building, has a social component (interaction with players), so appearances matters.
[And mechanics too, a lot of players actually care more about having a special power from their race than about "is the race has a place different than humans in the society".]

If you build a medieval-fantastic world, your players will expect to be able to play non-human races, independently of their relevance to the universe. While you can go against player expectations, you usually need a good reason to do so, and I don't think "races are useless worldbuilding-wise" is a reason good enough to not have races. The question then is:
+Do you worldbuild by taking in account all those different races with different cultures, at the cost of having less time to handle the details of each culture (and potentially reaching the maximal complexity you can handle as a creator before having finished)?
+Or do you restrict the number of relevant races in order to be able to have complex and interleaved cultures for each of them.
+Or do you concentrate all your energy on what make the cultures of the world deep (power struggle between families, empires, guilds, cities..., the different ideologies, the economic development, the past, ...) but disregarding the different races so that you don't need to artificially increase the number of different cultures above what you can manage.

[Luccan]

My problem with tossing out racial languages is now you have to replace them with something else. But a lot of games don't have a great many nations planned out or know what will be useful later in the adventure. If I know Goblin, I can always speak to goblinoids. If I know Amdelese, well that was useful in Amdel but now we're on the other side of the continent and none of us know any useful languages (even if they were an option at the beginning of the game). Fine for some games, not the majority of them. Plus, removing something like Common is just a good way to get PCs that can't actually communicate with each other.

As for deities and alignment, they kind of reinforce each other. Corellon is CG, elves are CG. It helps that in most settings, it is significantly easier to prove the gods exist. But I also think these are broad strokes to provide the basis of the game when you pick it up. It works fine most of the time and something more intricate in the rule books might feel restrictive, while just saying "do it yourself" from the get-go might feel overwhelming.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yes, of course. That's a feature, not a bug.

When the PCs travel through a forest, I draw a similar "artificial distinction", for the same purpose. I describe the bears, centaurs, ettercaps. leopards, treants and wolves that make for good foes, and ignore the deer, weasels, foxes, robins, crows, rabbits, and butterflies that don't. Are there magical creatures like griffons, hippogriffs, and chimeras but are herbivores and ignore people or flee from them? Probably, but there's no reason to describe these duckbunnies, molesparrows, and platypuses.

Similarly, there is no reason to describe the culture or language for the goblins who are not encounters for the party, and therefore no need to create the homogenized race problem. Peaceful farming goblins aren't an interesting encounter, so I don't put any in the way of the PCs.

I guess it's just personal taste, but I don't like worldbuilding that's distorted to the "player gaze".