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brushwolfI read through this Kobold Quarterly article and it got me thinking.
I have mixed ideas about how much a player should get into their character being non-human. On the one hand, I'm an anthropology and animal behavior geek; part of the appeal of Werewolf the Apocalypse was the idea of a werewolf culture which at times could very much reflect wolf nature instead of human.
On the other hand, games are supposed to be fun. If your character is just like every other PC in the party only with pointier ears, a fuzzier body, or shorter, it shouldn't matter if everyone's having a great time. And most of the time, I figure, it should be enough. There are surely differences between how gnolls or halflings think and how humans think, but unless you're really doing very specific roleplaying, the pocket guide summary - "dwarves value their beards and solid craftsmanship greatly, gnolls have keen senses of smell, halflings are community oriented" - will probably work fine.
Digging deeper gets me to two problem areas. I figure that the biggest difference between any non-human race and humans is how they relate to groups.
For creatures which are essentially social, this is a great tie-in to an adventuring group. Size and strength means halflings might be community spirited, and that works with Tolkien (halflings love group activities but can be guilty of group think) and later D&D suggestions (halflings relate well to dogs, and a heritage of being preyed upon may lead them to being very clannish - not all halflings are automatically trusted, but any fellow halfling is trustworthy compared to a dwarf or human). A halfling PC on the road might see his adventuring group as her in group, and might be horrified the first time she fought an evil-aligned halfling. If gnolls are similar to spotted hyenas, then they're matriarchal, used to big groups and the way male hyenas disperse to find mates might reflect in roving war bands or pirate crews of young, all-male gnolls, out to gain glory and treasure as a step towards family. It's not too hard to take that as a model for a young, male gnoll adventuring with a batch of humans and dwarves - the larger the better - and deferring to the wishes of that group's females. A PC troll might join a group for plunder, pure and simple, and might be actively contemptuous of the healer cleric who nominally leads the party but defer automatically to the physically weakest character in the group, the mage who has fire and acid magic most accessible. And so on.
But what about more solitary types? Most PC races are people who frame their identity as very much part of the larger group (gnolls, halflings, kobolds) or who might have a culture which was very balanced between individual and community (dwarves, gnomes). But I can see how elves might be highly individualistic - they have a low birth rate, a long life span, and are usually portrayed as a nearly extinct group. What's to keep an elf PC from blithely wandering away from the group at random, informed by a cultural perspective that 25 years away from your friends is not a big deal and that you need to follow your own whims first and foremost? What about dryad or unicorn PCs?
Also, players are notorious for coming up with individualistic characters. Gnolls and halflings may be group-dwelling creatures, but what happens when you play the halfling who got kicked out of her caravan for accidentally poisoning her siblings, or the gnoll raised in a traveling circus? Once your character has a background which bucks the trend, aren't you right back to having a PC so motivated by their own individual notions of gain, honor, good, or knowledge, that they're basically a human with a few "pocket guide" traits?
I have mixed ideas about how much a player should get into their character being non-human. On the one hand, I'm an anthropology and animal behavior geek; part of the appeal of Werewolf the Apocalypse was the idea of a werewolf culture which at times could very much reflect wolf nature instead of human.
On the other hand, games are supposed to be fun. If your character is just like every other PC in the party only with pointier ears, a fuzzier body, or shorter, it shouldn't matter if everyone's having a great time. And most of the time, I figure, it should be enough. There are surely differences between how gnolls or halflings think and how humans think, but unless you're really doing very specific roleplaying, the pocket guide summary - "dwarves value their beards and solid craftsmanship greatly, gnolls have keen senses of smell, halflings are community oriented" - will probably work fine.
Digging deeper gets me to two problem areas. I figure that the biggest difference between any non-human race and humans is how they relate to groups.
For creatures which are essentially social, this is a great tie-in to an adventuring group. Size and strength means halflings might be community spirited, and that works with Tolkien (halflings love group activities but can be guilty of group think) and later D&D suggestions (halflings relate well to dogs, and a heritage of being preyed upon may lead them to being very clannish - not all halflings are automatically trusted, but any fellow halfling is trustworthy compared to a dwarf or human). A halfling PC on the road might see his adventuring group as her in group, and might be horrified the first time she fought an evil-aligned halfling. If gnolls are similar to spotted hyenas, then they're matriarchal, used to big groups and the way male hyenas disperse to find mates might reflect in roving war bands or pirate crews of young, all-male gnolls, out to gain glory and treasure as a step towards family. It's not too hard to take that as a model for a young, male gnoll adventuring with a batch of humans and dwarves - the larger the better - and deferring to the wishes of that group's females. A PC troll might join a group for plunder, pure and simple, and might be actively contemptuous of the healer cleric who nominally leads the party but defer automatically to the physically weakest character in the group, the mage who has fire and acid magic most accessible. And so on.
But what about more solitary types? Most PC races are people who frame their identity as very much part of the larger group (gnolls, halflings, kobolds) or who might have a culture which was very balanced between individual and community (dwarves, gnomes). But I can see how elves might be highly individualistic - they have a low birth rate, a long life span, and are usually portrayed as a nearly extinct group. What's to keep an elf PC from blithely wandering away from the group at random, informed by a cultural perspective that 25 years away from your friends is not a big deal and that you need to follow your own whims first and foremost? What about dryad or unicorn PCs?
Also, players are notorious for coming up with individualistic characters. Gnolls and halflings may be group-dwelling creatures, but what happens when you play the halfling who got kicked out of her caravan for accidentally poisoning her siblings, or the gnoll raised in a traveling circus? Once your character has a background which bucks the trend, aren't you right back to having a PC so motivated by their own individual notions of gain, honor, good, or knowledge, that they're basically a human with a few "pocket guide" traits?