Why have different races when you can just have different humans

Love the 90-degree counter-clockwise rotation you've put on that map of western Eurasia.

I'm going with advanced shitposting. It's too golden to be mere idiocy.
This is obviously a level of feigned retardation that has been honed over years of practice.
He should be honored and respected for his skills and achievement.

>Why have different races when you can just have different humans
Admitting different races of humans have different pros and cons based on their genetics makes you a racist and people in the West today think being racist is bad.

I feel you misunderstand the core concept of the fantasy genre.

>not having both

Because giving different human ethnicities different stats has been increasingly unpopular since the 1960s.

...

Why not have lots of different types of other races?

My game has 3 types of gnolls alone, not to mention all the types of orcs, kobolds, lizardfolk, treant and heck even drider (And this is only monsters)

You're basically asking why the genre of high fantasy exists at all? Because dragons, magic and elves are cool. One of the main reasons people enjoy fantasy is the escapism element, and these fantastic components help paint the image of a world very unlike our own. Variety helps further color said world, and in the case of races give clear ideas as the varying capabilities of each major population and why they might have different world-views which could play off of each other. Sure you could accomplish this with humans, but the presence of races helps delineate the borders between populations as they are clearly morphologically distinct.

>dragons instead of immortals, or fey instead of sorcerers
"Why not both"
These things don't occupy the same roles in most worlds. Dragons tend to be seen as tyrants, a threat to kingdoms, known for the toughness of their scales, the flames they breathe, and the size of their horde. Immortals of course could do these things, but are more immediately connoted with simply humanoids who have somehow achieved immortality, which makes people think they'll have a more human mindset (or possibly a bored/cynical one, based on their age).

Similarly, fey oscillate between happy-go-lucky fairies and leprechauns, and nightmare-monsters that are quite literally what's hiding under Timmy's bed. Sorcerers are a type of spellcaster, and the term alone isn't even descriptive of what kind of magic they use (D&D/PF says it's innate/wild magic, but I have more of a connotation with ritual/subtle magic, personally). These aren't just substitutions.

This

You want different races of humans just paint them blue and call them something else. Nobody's going to get pissy that your blueberries are a bunch of violent savages that never progressed past the stone age and are prone to bouts of hysteria

It comes from extremely lazy world-building. Rather than adding actual variety to the setting, it's just a collection of humans, short humans, green skinned humans, pointy eared humans, humans with gills, humans with cat ears and so on and forth. But aside different looks and stat-block, there is zero fucking difference.

He asked why different, half-baked races are thrown into game. Work on your reading comprehension, rather than jumping to retarded conclusion worth 2k signs.

Different races have different trappings and stat modifiers attached to them.

Doing that with actual real world human races would be... "problematic"

nah, your thread is clear enough. It's all those who misunderstood it who are morons.

As opposed to humans.

As opposed to varied cultures, local variables, religious influences and stratification of society in different parts of the world, along with importance (or not) of wealth.
If your variety boils down to having just humans with X, then you shouldnt be worldbuilding

Just check fucking Balkans. Everyone is human, right?
Try fucking talk with each other or read another alphabet

>It comes from extremely lazy world-building
No, it comes from pragmatism.
>Rather than adding actual variety to the setting, it's just a collection of humans, short humans, green skinned humans, pointy eared humans, humans with gills, humans with cat ears and so on and forth.
And "different humans" is not a variety how?Because you don't like?
>But aside different looks and stat-block, there is zero fucking difference.
>As opposed to varied cultures, local variables, religious influences and stratification of society in different parts of the world, along with importance (or not) of wealth.
If your variety boils down to having just humans with X, then you shouldnt be worldbuilding
How would they different outside of stat block?
inb4 by giving them different cultures.
I have never seen a setting that would not give every race some aesthetics, and this is what the cultural difference is, from the perspective of everyman.

Because of traditions,mythology and mechanics of an average system.
>For pizazz, style points.
No, it's because otherwise all characters would be a carbon copy of each other.

>you should take an EQ test to see where you stand

Emotional Intelligence isn't really a thing, I mean it's a concept, but it doesn't really predict anything and seems to actually be a facet of IQ and personality type and not it's own little separate thing.

If you want, you can learn more by reading the wiki article about it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence

Also, in case you also placed stock in the Myers–Briggs personality tests, they're bunk too.

I realize I am coming to this party late, but here is what *I* see is wrong with this sentence, and discussion, as a whole:
* The "different races" are basically seen as this:
- Dwarves = short people with super-human(super being more than) strength
- Elves = extremely pretty people with a portent for magic and nature
- Humans= the "jack of all trades, master of none" people. they can do a bit of everything.

*This logic applied to "blue people", "Black people" etc. etc. Even dragonkin and mermaids are "people with attribute X"

So in other words: it is not any fucking different than if you played a hispanic, asian, blue people (which do exist - look up the family that had incest within itself tot the point their skin turned blue)

So really: Why fucking ask this in the first place? All you are doing is switching from one "person with an attribute" to "another person with an attribute".

You're thinking of it the wrong way

Why have different races or different humans when you can have one race of nonhumans that differs geographically?

>Who designed this, an alien?

My sides xD

The title you gave the thread was your mistake.

Most people don't read the contents of an article or post. Also, it's generally good form that your title actually informs your reader honestly on the contents of your post.

fuck you, negative 4 intelligence and proud

Some people like the visual a e s t h e t i c of difference to be pronounced in specific ways. Makes it more accessible, faster, etc.

From the OP
>to me we added different fantasy settings for the same reasons we added magic. For pizazz, style points
This seems to indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of high fantasy

My point wasn't that you cant have both, it was that it was easier to make a memorable giant hyper-intelligent lizard than it is to make some guy that lives very long memorable, hence why we have more dragons.

>I think that the OP should have put the thread title in quotation marks, because they seem to be taking the same position as you are. They don't understand people who say "Why have different races when you can just have different humans?" because having different fantasy races adds something to a setting in the same way that magic, dragons, and other fantasy elements do.

In this regard, I often use fantasy elements to be antagonistic elements for the PCs. The PCs don't get as much magic as the BBEG. They don't get to be dragons. They don't get to be giants or gods or demons, etc.

That's why I'm personally not a big fan of playable elves/dwarves/orcs. It makes them too personable and human-like and less alien and exotic.

Elves in LOTR were more mysterious when Legolas wasn't in the group. Orcs would have been looked at in an entirely different light if there had been a friendly Orc among the fellowship. The Ringwraiths would have totally lost their creepyness if we had intimate knowledge of what they were under those cloaks, their ecology, etc.

It's mostly because diffrent races add in a whole lot of shit. Compare black guy vs asian guy to Pale creatures from beyond the current plane with different emotional states and life cycle then humans. Or something like world destroying space perverts that murder an empire via granting them immortality with sterilization.

Different races allows you to add in alien creatures that humans can't really replicate just off of culture differences. Even if most people instead use it as a clutch to build hippies and short people.

Or you could just go with a more /pol/ take on things and have your setting populated by one species with a variety of religious and cultural traditional, complete with horrible prejudices between them. Why have Dwarves when you can have Jews? Why have Orcs when you can have Arabs? Why have Elves when you can have Nubians?

I think I'd still say that they fill fundamentally different roles in a given high-fantasy world. The immortals in Nine Princes of Amber are pretty damn memorable, but wouldn't work if replaced by dragons. I think most fantasy authors aren't using one of the other "because it would be more memorable" but instead using the right entity for the job. Dragons make good villains, good embodied sin/natural disasters for heroes to go and fight. Immortals by their nature require more finesse and nuance and don't so cleanly fall into "monster to be slain".

Honestly for me I've always instead preferred to throw nations of dragons at people. Nothing makes PCs flip out like hearing that the BBEG is planning on awakening an entire nation worth of dragons from stasis to invade a country.

Would you explore this fantasy setting?*

*naked man riding sea beast maybe not included

Jesus. That hilariously OP. I thought I was having a brain aneurysm after reading your post, reading their posts, and re-reading yours to make sure I haven't missed read something.

OP I agree actually. Though I prefer less human-only games as humans as the default where elves are a smaller percentage, orcs, dwarves etc, so you have to roll a d% to see what races you have "access" to. For example in my campaigns anyone can be a human, halflings need a 50+, dwarves, goblins and orcs need a 60+, elves and gnomes need a 70+, and meme races like tieflings, dragonborn, drow elves, kender, goliaths, et cetera, all need a 95+, so that way they are rare and only once in a while will a player have access to them. That way when they are played they actually are exotic, not just a mix of races that are all in equal number, like it's fucking star wars.

But you could have different varieties of humans from different regions with different strengths and weaknesses. I mean it would be difficult to give them that real character without falling back on real-world analogies. But it's interesting to think how it would work for real-life races:
- Whites: +2 Int, -2 Dex
- Blacks: +2 Str, -2 Int
- Asians: +2 Int, -2 Str
- Mexicans: +2 Con, -2 Wis
- Italians: +2 Cha, -2 Dex
- Arabs: +2 Con, +2 Wis, -2 Int, -2 Dex
- Native Americans: +2 Wis, -2 Con
- French: +2 Cha, -2 Cha
- Scottish: +2 Con, -2 Wis

Okay I know some of those are subsets of white people but they could be like subraces I guess. And for race mixing maybe it works where you pick one stat set or the other, i.e. mulattos get to choose from white stat adjustments or black stat adjustments.

Obligatory this is racist.
That out of the way, what's your thought process on giving Arabs +Wis -Int? If anything, I would have done it the other way around because of historical math and science centers.

I meant modern Arabs having strong will but being inbred retards cause of all the goats they fuck. Maybe a +2 on Will saves, but a -2 on Dex cause they can't shoot straight for shit.

well now its REALLY racist.

...Why not?

statistically they do fuck their cousins alot. And their armies arent known for being good shots

>French: +2 Cha, -2 Cha

Oh la la cen't une terribley drole

Well, Burroughs used basically different-colored humans for Barsoom, with a few weirdos like Green Martians, Hormads, and Kaldanes, which worked fine, so...

>that's_the_joke_.jpeg

But true

I think the sentiment comes from there being a lot of cheap fantasy (and scifi for that matter, it's the same thing with aliens) where there is no cultural depth, diversity or nuance, with the only real differentiating factor being race. Each one gets a few stereotypical cultural features. Essentially fantasy races are often used as a crutch to have a modicum of cultural diversity in a setting by hack writers.

Good worldbuilding and a variety of fantasy races are not at all mutually exclusive, though. You don't need to use them as a crutch, it's really just a question of setting flavor.

>you should only be polite to those weaker than you.
So being polite would then be considered an insult, as it means you believe the person to be weaker than you?

>*naked man riding sea beast maybe not included
no thanks

Usually different races are a stand-in for different cultures, like, why do any worldbuilding for your different factions when you can just call them elves and dwarves and use the connations of those archetypes? It's lazy and uninteresting.
There's also the fact that most fiction that uses non-humans picks them from some sort of established list of "races". With dragons and fey it's not so bad because you pick that from mythology and that's what fantasy is supposed to emulate most of the time. But there's just no excuse for Eragon, the sword of shannara and the like. Including "standard races" should only be done in kitchen-sink stuff for games or parodies.
Making a setting human-only might be throwing the baby with the bathwater but at least it eschews the absolute worst elements of fantasy.

But impoliteness is usually defined by giving offense and insulting the other party.
Maybe weakness isn't considered shameful, or power can be easily read from the body as to make the power relation undeniable.