Why are beast races always backwards savages instead of adopting ideas and customs from the more advanced races living around them?
Fantasy settings aren't usually the happy-go-lucky rainbow faggot communal hippie parades that Wizards of the Coast puts in its illustrations. If it were like that, why would anyone need a team of heroes to save anything?Savage races are savage because savagery is adaptive and useful in the chaotic, violent world that they life in.
>>97547190>Why are beast races always backwards savages instead of adopting ideas and customs from the more advanced races living around them?A paucity of imagination and an inability to conceive of anything that isnt human looking to be intelligent or civilized.It is an animal headed thing therefore it must be like an animal in nature, is how they "think".Basically, a lot of people--especially here--are retarded.Of course, D&D and it various settings and the systems derived from it have no problem with intelligent beast races. Red Steel, as an example, had the Lupin, wolf/dog people who had a vaguely Renaissance French nation called Reynardy. There was also the Rakasta, vaguely Japanese cat people from the moon.Pathfinder has catfolk, ratfolk, lizardfolk, and others being intelligent and building civilization.And orcs and goblins arent beastfolk.
>>97547190This >>97547204It's boring if you've got all these fantasy races, but they all just work at a coffee shop because there's no difference between a minotaur and a gnome.Having Centaurs as nomads, Skaven as shifty sewer dwellers, Lizardfolk as autistic cannibals, etc. is just how you make a fantasy setting interesting.
>>97547445>A paucity of imagination and an inability to conceive of anything that isn't human looking to be intelligent or civilized.>It is an animal headed thing therefore it must be like an animal in nature, is how they "think".It's hard to tell them apart sometimes, but they're not retarded anon - they're just British. It's how they "think".>>97547190A simplest question of why?Are they a dying people, suffering day and night in their squalor?No? Why should they change their ways then? Simply because? That's not how it works.You either make them change, or they find their current system lacking and adopt something better adapted.>>97547204 anon put it well, at least for the savages.
i like to do the>where are they now?if its a city with gambling and organized crime and a family of orcs are from there and have only known city living they won't be knuckle drag neaderthals instead of maybe green people who use their phsyical abilities to their benfit (like being in the mob or construction or security) and if they aren't using those abilities having a reason for it. I mean we're making games not writing books you can have stereotypes for races/ancestry whatever as shorthand for a character type and make exceptions as the game requires. I don't know why people bring their politics into this topic btw seems pretty cut and dry to me.
>>97547204fpbp
>why are beast people so beastly?How does one end up this retarded?
>>97548120Indeed. Beastly fantasy races are analogues to the savages found in real life. You can take the the orc out of Mordor, but you cannot take Mordor out of the orc.
>Normal civilization but a beast guy
>>97547190>orcs slowly evolving into american basketball playersKek
>>97547190Generally adopting the traits of foreign cultures requires some degree of veneration for the culture, akin to weeabooism if you will.>Japs and Koreans see China as the core of Eastern civilization and copied it in many ways>Arabs and Turks saw Iranians as more civilized and developed than their semi-nomadic or fully nomadic lifestyle and adopted their language and to some extent customs>Franks were the biggest niggers of the West Germanic peoples and decided better to leave the thinkin man jobs to the Latins, eventually adopting their religion and a bastardized version of their culture>Romans saw Greeks as the peak of civilization even if they thought they were pussies compared to themselves and copied several aspects of their culture with Greek language being seen as the language of educated men
>>97547190>lwft and middle is the best (for porn) on both>uses the completely humanized versions insteadGod I hate lazy gooners.
>>97548417Cram it up your ass, faggot.
>>97548661Ahhh, mad because nogames
>>97547190Because beasts are part of nature, the opposite of civilization which is by and for man.Even if beasts were to walk like men, they are still beasts, and thus will never be civilized until they lose their bestial traits and just become men.Or, tldr: >>97548134
>>97547190>uses evolution to explain coomer brainThe first thing they would lose are those tusks though,
>>97547190>Breeding with humansNot even once
>>97548022I don't disagree, but it's worth noting that they don't have to just be different-colored otherwise identical humans to be able to cooperate and interact, and their physical differences can be used to make the cooperation a bit more interesting.For a hypothetical example:>semiaquatic marine race: adapted to hunt by diving for fish/crustaceans/etc in the ocean, occasionally hanging out on the coast to rest>earliest prehistoric interactions with humans were just herding shoals of fish into fishing boats' nets in exchange for a share of the catch, reducing effort for both parties involved; while once spontaneous, it has since become a typical practice planned and coordinated in advance>their biology can't really handle dry heat due to being adapted for cold and wet environments, leaving them dependent on commerce with terrestrial peoples for goods made of materials like glass, ceramic, and metal (in particular valuing bronze/brass tools; iron and steel are obviously of questionable value to them due to suscepibility to saltwater corrosion)>superior diving abilities give them an economic niche enabling them to effectively trade for goods likewise less attainable for themselves: this includes gathering/cultivating food like crustaceans/urchins and materials like sponge/nacre/pearl, but also skilled work in human maritime commerce, doing the bulk of salvage work recovering sunken ships and cargo, and being commonly found on ships' payrolls for management of the hull beneath the waterline (inspection, maintenance, and repairs)
>>97548856just to add on to what this anon put so well these things should influence the rest of your setting too from like if you had magical research like wizards making new spells or magic might focus on magic to preserve metals underwater, transormation magic might be more common on the coast maybe the human countries came under attack from a third party but the semiaquatic race helps them in naval battles and the countries unite or maybe the opposite happens with coastal people in certain areas resenting the amphibious people for being inherently better at something than them because I dunno racism (just imagine I wrote something better thought out)
>>97547190>millennia of inter-species breedingWho the fuck would want to fuck orcs or goblins?
>>97549006Me.
>>97548856Sure, but not being hostile and interacting with their neighbors is different than adopting their culture.Like for your example, an aquatic race trading with their terrestrial neighbors makes plenty of sense. But there's plenty of reasons why it wouldn't be a perfect partnership. They're likely to be able to figure out the concept of using nets to trap fish themselves. Nets and tridents are popular weapons to give aquatic races.And if they have their own nets, that makes it more likely that there's competition with human fishermen, or at the very least that they don't want to actively help humans spread across the sea when fixing up their ships. They have a lot of incentive not to, because they're way better at salvaging shipwrecks.I wouldn't be surprised if they would have a reputation of humans having bad craftsmanship because some initial trades were with iron or metal which all rusted to hell. That doesn't mean there wouldn't still be trade, or that the aquatic race needs to be actively hostile where they sink ships on purpose, but it's pretty clear they'd have reasons why for not immediately submitting themselves to human rule just because they can get bronze swords.
>>97547190>domesticated orcs with crossbreeding until they are just latinx
>>97547190>I want Fantasy Portlandno
How evolved is this orc?
In the games I run, I usually give elves animal ears and animal tails, and reserve the traditional pointy-eared look for half-elves.Elves already have nature-themed associations, so I do not find this to be too great a stretch.And yes, I often wind up giving them touches of East Asian culture, mostly China due to gacha brain rot.
Lots of humanoid creatures simply lack the genetic capacity to be properly domesticated.Like Welshmen. Or Serbs.You might be looking at a wolfman and thinking "oh it can't be THAAAAT bad, we eventually managed to housebreak the Finns, and sometimes even some dutchmen have been taught to bathe!" but I assure you when you look into the eyes of most of those wolf breeds a predator as vicious and terrible as any gaunt Dardanian Kosovar is likely staring back.
>>97547204>Savage races are savage because savagery is adaptive and useful in the chaotic, violent world that they life in.But why not steal shit from the more advanced people around them? Those city dwellers have advanced metals and magic and shit, why not try to get your hands on that knowledge? It seems foolish to leave such things on the table just because you're committed to wearing bones and furs all the time.
>>97553165Walls make cowards.Writing debases and feminizes the soul.Dyed linens form lust and debauchery in the barracks.Gold, silver, fine pewter, poison cups and poison coins. Iron coinage, iron men.Written laws make men lawyers. Laws must be writ only into men's hearts if the law is to make men wise and proof against the world and its temptations.Nice things on the table? Tables are for women. Your bunkmates in the barracks are better.
>>9755311220%
>>97553165A lot of fantasy settings have nature magic or something similar. If you've got shamans or druids, is it worth whatever nature spirits abandoning your people because the spirits don't like strip-mining or blast furnaces?Your questions presuppose that not only have humans found all of the best magic and materials, but that everyone in the setting has meta-knowledge that what the humans have is better.
>>97547190>AlwaysShoddy generalization. It depends on the setting.For example, in Dungeons and Dragons, many races that live more wildly have lived that way because that's the lifestyle that suits the god that created them. It has nothing ado really with whether it would be "smarter" to borrow advancements, because their whole society is built around religious fervor and traditions passed down to them from their very creation. If the god of orcs is an evil, violent bastard, and your people draw their benefits from worship of him and his ways, it's going to be hard to un-stick those ideas from everyone's heads. Especially if, from your collective perspective, everything is working the way that it should.
I like the idea of monster races like orcs being irredeemable monsters like Tolkien orcs, but half orcs (whether they be from actual interbreeding or someone wanting to make a species with the best of both worlds) are the more friendly civilized ones that you can debate ethics on.
>>97553241>The context that they live in affects their outlooksThis is true of people in real life and in fiction. It's just that, in fiction, the circumstances are sometimes fantastic in nature. I wish that more people understood this.
Beastfolk often have a purpose in myths. Either as an embodiment of a force of nature (harpies), or as a moral warning regarding human nature (the Minotaur) or as a kind of moral instructor (Chiron). In all cases their connection to the beast is directly important. Removing their bestial cultural qualities reduces their purpose for existing in any form at all. D&D is a moral setting, far more than it is a technological epoch. Chaos fought Law as competing ethical systems even under Gygax, and nature spirits are knowable fundamental forces with direct manifestations less deniable than gravitation.One of the more interesting ideas that Tolkien's friend C.S. Lewis came up with and then immediately dropped was the idea of a gender-specific fall from grace. Lewis lays out this possibility in 'Perelandra' but goes nowhere with it in the end.In D&D there is often a kind of groping towards this concept, but from the redemptive rather than perditious direction. Orc women are barely ever effectively evil, even in 'always CE' settings. Similarly, the Drow are effectively depicted as divided between Evil and Normal along gender lines.It would be interesting to see an implementation of a fantasy race in which one gender remained in a state of grace, effectively Always Good, and the other Fell. I can see a particular possibility among a Dryad race, where the males are effectively worldly fallen mortals who find themselves increasingly separated from their otherworldly, incomprehensible nature spirit counterparts.Likewise I can see a space for a gender-segregated degree of technological adaptation. This is even seen in Tolkien; the Entwives were gardeners, plant tamers who taught agriculture to Men, while the Ents were wilding. The Entwives were of course all destroyed by Sauron with greater ease due to their greater association with Civilization.
>>97548678>and thus will never be civilized until they lose their bestial traits and just become men. But what if a race of, oh I don't know, DOGS were to end up living in a quasi-symbiotic relationship with man? Would they still be uncivilized? What if they were to submit to humanity, but not in the way a slave submits to a master but more in the way a WIFE submits to her husband. Would they still be uncivilized?
>>97553425This is written with such specific choices of emphasis that it HAS to be bait. It's very funny, though.>>97548678Notable that OP's choice of words is probably causing unnecessary confusion by comparing the likes of goblins and orcs to beasts. And also that they have no imagination for why people live the way that they do and not in what is the most apparently forward-thinking way that they can come up with.
>>97547190The Skaven are probably the most technological advanced species of their setting.
>>97547190the right most orc looks more black than some black people.
>>97553192>Writing debases and feminizes the soul.You're writing this right now, you insulted yourself, you moron.You're just cringeworthy.
>>97547190Why do Gorillas live in the wilderness instead of renting a flat and working a 9-to-5?
>>97553814>instead of renting a flat and working a 9-to-5?Section 8 amd welfare covers that for them
>>97553129Ngl I'd be more relaxed around an actual wolf-person than an one of the enderman or carteloids from IRL
>>97547190They're not. /thread.
>>97548022Repeating shit that already exists is how you make things interesting, totally bro! I can't imagine why your players are on their phones all session every session!
>>97553900He walked right into that one.
>>97547190
>>97553640>This is written with such specific choices of emphasis that it HAS to be bait.FAT chance
>>97548673You lost, even jannies hate you
>>97549006
>>97554531>Repeating shit that already existsLike having humans, and then turning orcs into green humans and elves into pointy-ear humans? I mean there's so much novelty in having everything in the setting be identical in terms of culture and technology.
>>97553165>But why not steal shit from the more advanced people around them?I don't know any setting where orcs and goblins DON'T steal from civilized races. This doesn't mean they stop being savages, they're just savages with stolen gear.
>>97554555What's the context here?
>>97558888Native American's are allowed to operate casinos on their tribal lands. Same with tax free booze, smokes, and illegal fireworks. Avatar was just "Dances with Wolves" but with blue cat people.
>>97547190So you’re saying that races and cultures don’t exist in a vacuum, and that if nothing else “savage” races should eventually start picking up weapons and tactics from others if nothing else? Makes sense to me.
