Can the presence of interspecies couples in a setting ever be okay, or does it always have to indicate the DM's magical realm?
What are some interesting ideas revolving around interspecies couples that don't have to make the setting into a magical realm?
For example, what about a magocratic human city ruled by a gynosphinx god-queen, who ceremonially takes the most talented wizard produced by the city as her royal consort? Is that magical realm, or just a quirky aspect of the setting?
Kevin Thompson
I'd imagine it depends on how different the species are. Like, nobody really thinks it's weird that Aragorn hooked up with Arwen, but if Bilbo was fucking an orc it would be pretty weird.
Hudson Sanders
When I make NPCs I just roll on a random table, if the NPC gets the "married" status then I roll a D% for how common it'd be for them to be married to someone outside their species (so a large city would be a 50% chance in some cases). Then I roll on the species table (which has a small chance of landing on someone of the same species as well).
RNJesus is probably the furthest you can get from magical realm if you're worried about that.
Thomas Bell
I wonder who is behind this post?
Dominic Thompson
In regards to magical realm, just take the comic where the term originated from as an example. The DM didn't want to put them through the piss forest because he thought it a strange, creative or just different idea or because he wanted to gross out his players, etc.. He did it because piss was his fetish and it turned him on and he put that into his game and he forced his players to encounter stuff that is directly tied to it.
If you want to add interspecies stuff for any reason other than you want to constantly keep talking about how humans have hot steamy sex with all kinds of non-human species, then you're golden.
Jace Robinson
The pasta's extra starchy today.
Mason Morris
...I do not get this reference at all.
Grayson Edwards
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that anything that can be fetishized must be fetishized.
In a world with multiple different species, some of which can be described as 'basically X, but with green skin/pointy ears/short and bearded, inter-species couples are inevitable over time.
Even if there are biological or social barriers between wildly different species, sooner or later two people are going to meet up, talk, fall in love, and try to find a way to make it work. There's nothing magical realmy about it.
Your example will be taken as magical realm or setting fluff entirely on the reasons behind it and how it's presented.
Wyatt Fisher
Let's take half orcs as an example.
Let's say, in *a setting* orcs have had a "we are the master race" attitude for a long time. They thought themselves the best and would never lay a hand on any slave whatsoever because of muh pure genes and so on, and if one did and that resulted in a baby, they would most often kill them or treat them as slaves as well. Until at some point, a chieftain noticed that these half breeds though not as strong as a pureblood, are still very strong, but also much smarter than your average orc (kinda like the pathfinder orcs). That's why nowadays, these orcs tend to try to fertilize as many females from as many species as possible to increase their numbers drastically, to find suitable species to mate with and find out which combinations of genes are the most preferable.
Ian Jenkins
...
Daniel Rogers
Half-orcs Half-ogres Half-elves Mul That ogre/elf hybrid race
Thomas Edwards
>it's okay because it talks
No it's not.
Andrew Young
You can't stop two sentient, adult individuals from having fun together in the privacy of their own home during their own private time. It's fine.
Easton Thompson
It's a tabletop RPG, you bet your fucking ass I can.
Juan Flores
Sapient user, sapient.
Samuel Foster
Oh, I mean, in an tabletop RPG I would hope you're not playing out sex scenes anyways. There still will be interspecies couples if you want to have any believability in your worldbuilding, unless it's a 40k setting. Doesn't mean you have to throw it in people's faces or make it a significant plot point, though.
Nicholas Martin
You say in the privacy of their own home, but look at those kids in the fag parades. The slippery slope is real, so grab my hand before it gets too steep.
Mason Gutierrez
he knows what he meant he probably fucks dogs
Angel Jackson
>There still will be interspecies couples if you want to have any believability in your worldbuilding And there can always be that one player who believes it's his duty to stop degeneracy where ever it may spawn.
Carter Cox
Even in 40k it happens. Fuck, in real life people have sex with other, non-sapient species even. Even if you don't explicitly state it in your setting's bio, there will be people sticking their dicklets into all kinds of holes. And even if you say "Well the gods of my setting nuke everyone who dicks outside of their own species", that just means there will be a hell of a lot of nukes going off around the world all the fucking time.
Matthew Taylor
>he wastes the one life he has being alive desperately trying to police other people Selfishness in moderation can be a virtue, user. One must focus on the self, rather than the irrelevant actions of others.
Aiden Gonzalez
If an RPG is about having fun, what's wrong with me having fun by being a genocidal extremist. I have just as much right to kill all filthy ratfuckers as those ratfuckers have dying by a righteous swing in the name of god.
Adrian Perez
That's kind of the thing-the more attention you draw to that sort of thing in the game, the more likely it's indicating SOMETHING about the GM. Of course, it also depends a bit on the players; some will be yelling blue murder the moment a dwarf looks at an elf, while others won't bat an eye if the local baker is married to a seven-foot wolverine lady.
William Reyes
half breeds don’t exist, they take the race of the mother in my settings
I did have a group of xenophile aliens in my game. They where a bunch of Wheatley looking robots built by the precursors. They were immortal and as such went around being not bored. They had a native curiosity and interest in other races.
One of them is a game show host on a planet, and he’s a helpful character
Joshua Gonzalez
Dont really find it magical realmy, since Im fairly positive if humans met another fully sapient species who they thought it coukd be possibke to fuck, theyd try to.
Landon Martinez
I figure it is an aspect that usually doesn't need further elaboration. It probably happens to some small scale, especially mixed race cities/communities and is probably looked down upon, and some cases are alcohol-fueled curiosity (sometimes) free of fear of pregnancy or STDs, some platonic love and some just a fetish/preference.
Generally I'd call magical realm if you put way too much spotlight on it or involve players in way that makes them uncomfortable. Or if you have a sneaky one while DMing. I think it is perfectly reasonable for creatures to have a sexuality, but I don't think it needs to be explored in most games or settings - unless that is what your group is in for.
Ayden James
Isn't that pretty much what led to the terminators taking over in Nemesis? I like this idea. Let me go put on my grand wizard's hat and robes.
Ryder Robinson
In sci fi/ space operas it doesnt matter, just Kirk/Shepard that shit.
Ryan Smith
I enjoy making sure he gets a grenade round in his asshole the first time you see him.
Alexander Rivera
how do you fug a dragon?
Christian Phillips
Joke's on you; having a romantic partner chosen through the use of randomized tables is my magical realm!
Sebastian Torres
Well, first, you need to find a dragon that's willing...
Carson Gomez
Have a dragon fall in love with you by showing it your hoard of treasures. Marry it so it can add your hoard to its hoard.
To make the marriage valid you have to stick your dick inside of it.
Asher Long
swipe right on the new new grimoire enchant-app HoardR till you match with a dragon. Ask her over for some mead n chill. break out your hoard of board games or your mtg collection. dem scales moist.
Luis Sullivan
Lurk moar
Andrew Taylor
You don't, user. The dragon lays eggs which you fertilize. They work like fish, not lizards. Isn't that sad?
Thomas Diaz
or turtles...
Brayden Watson
>dragons are fish not lizards stop being silly
Lincoln Nguyen
iIt's all in the execution, bruh.
but if you feel the need to ask that kind of question on Veeky Forums, you need to grow a pair and be less insecure about your settings, and/or jerk off before posting. That should solve most of your issues.
>grimoire enchant-app fuck, that's an awesome idea. Books where each pagehas a different enchantment on it, from automap to glyph translation and real-time dungeon rating. judging by my boolkmarks, tho, if old wizards are anything like me their tomes will be a complete clusterfuck.
Brayden Gonzalez
The smart tome, is a collection of intricately laid runes, seals, enchantments and cantrips for the discerning spell slinger. Through enchant apps, a wax seal of layered ingredients and spell diagrams that can be added or removed from the tomes pages, A wizard can preform previously inaccessible or tedious tasks. Some of the Enchant-apps that come with our smart-tome include "Phantom scribe" "dungeoneer's query" "Ancient to common" and "Float note"~our most popular enchant-app the ability to write a note that will fold into a bird and float on the magic winds till it finds the recipient.
Dylan Rogers
Competing alchemists and mystics have band together to craft and develop their own smart-tome the "Liber-Automatica" promising that any curious spellcrafter will have open source diagrams to adjust and write their enchant-apps to their exacting specifications.
Jack Gray
In our 5E party I play a shy wizard and my GF plays a shortstack goblin bard who teases him a lot.
It only gets magical realm when the game sessions over and we get home to the bedroom to start the femdom session.
Isaiah Cox
Fuck you for living my dream.
Kayden Thompson
>femdom
Jayden Martin
Short, curvy horny girls taking charge = the best.
Isaac Cooper
This is the only reasonable reply, what the fuck are you doing OP?
Benjamin Stewart
Id imagine alternate form helps the dragons there
Gavin Flores
Anything is better than
>halfbreed only exist because one half likes to rape so goddamn much
Kind of sick of Half-Orcs being 100% the product of rape. Because I run Pathfinder, I have to write them into the world somehow. So I just say that loads of them are slaves and gladiators, which accounts for a lot of Half-Orcs in the city. The barbarians on the border still rape, obviously.
With Elves, I explain it by Elves liking Humans as "practice people". Elves are long-lived bastards, and they have a perception to match. Having a Human side-fuck for 20 years is nothing to them. In their own nations and provinces they lowkey stimulate the breeding of Half-Elves because they like them as intermediaries between them, and the Humans in their territory. A typical Elven kingdom functions a lot like ancient Greece, where they form the 10% upper layer of society and the rest just have to listen. To the Humans, having Half-Elven progeny basically means their family gets an instant step up in society.
Jace Fisher
I would prefer a book where you cant remove apps when they've been written on a page unless you rip the page off. Gives it a homemade schtick, and differenciates it from "Smartphone, but medieval".
Michael Ramirez
It's not that the thing he inserted happened to be his fetish that's the problem (why would anyone care?) but that he refused to stop when asked. His magical realm was really just a rape dungeon.
"No means no" solves all problems of this kind.
Benjamin King
>Hating on the second best character in the game, next to Joshua Graham of course Faggot
Luke Martin
Here's the thing everyone seems to have forgotten. inserting your magical realm isn't inherently bad.
Unless your players really don't want whatever it is to be in there nothing is wrong with it.
Ryan Wood
Thats pure heresy.
I like it though.
Robert Fisher
OP here. On the "sphinx-ruled city" example in the OP, this is what I'd tell the PCs if it came up:
"The city of X is renowned as a center of learning and academia; its universities are some of the best in the land, and its magical guilds are second to none. All of its civil leaders are skilled in arcane magic to some degree, and its denizens pride themselves in their education. Ultimate authority rests in the city's Eternal Queen, a gynosphinx, although she selects a worthy representative from the human population to share her authority - this individual is invariably a highly intelligent figure and usually a powerful mage in the bargain. The city's population is predominantly human, although there are also many maftet clans who traditionally hold responsibility for the city's defense."
If the party goes there, they just see a city like any other. Well, if you ignore the high presence of magic and the practically-clad winged catgirl city guard, anyway.