Up until recently, there were no races in tabletop role-playing
games, only caricatures.
As you worldbuild, you are faced with several fundamental choices.
First and foremost among those is the choice to invent new races to
populate your world, or keep the Human races we know and love, and
simply reinsert them into your creation. There is an abyss of
difference between Empire of the Petal Throne and Warhammer’s
Old World, and making a list of every fantasy setting in that
intermediate space would be a daunting, herculean task. I like to
think of Robert E. Howard’s “Hyborian
Age,” one of the very
first fantasy worlds, as being centrist – more or less.
Howard’s races were inspired by the multifarious people and empires
of real History (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, et cetera), while
Gloomhaven came up with a bunch of original, new races. Both
choices work, mind you; but if you keep the Human races, the
difference between your world’s social dynamics and Real Earth
dynamics is really going to matter. If your world map resembles Real
Earth geography but with no “Africa”
(like Toril) or no “Israel”
(like the Old World), you might get in trouble sooner than later. If
the people with dark skin are Emperor, First Sword of Empire, and
High Mage – like in Steven Erikson’s books – your worldbuilding
is obviously more positive and modern. If there are no people of
color anywhere except in far-off, uncivilized parts, your model is
indeed outdated. The Hyborian Age of Conan was created in the 1930s.
Middle-Earth was fleshed out in the 1940s. It is now 2019.
Gloomhaven is basically the TV show Grimm, except that
everyone is Bauerschwein, Ziegevolk, Blutbaden, et cetera, and
“woged”
permanently. There are no Humans, or perhaps they only appear much
later in the story. The Inox look like Chaos Beastmen from Warhammer.
The Vermlings look like Men of Leng from Call of Cthulhu. The
Orchids are a fuchsia version of Avatar’s Blue People. Race problem
solved, right? Well, it may be an easy way out after all, but still
much better than Tolkien’s “swarthy”
Easterlings and REH’s “mongrel”
Stygians.
Yet, basically, they’re still caricatures. All Inox are the same;
there is no Inox scientist trying to figure out why the equinoxes
drift along the world’s ecliptic.
Caricatures are easy. They’re a template. It’s like choosing a
class. You’re a ranger in Dungeons & Dragons or a good
old P.I. in Call of Cthulhu or a kickass bounty hunter in Star
Wars. Rangers and P.I.s and sci-fi bounty hunters are all the
same. The rendering is automatic, and you can “see”
the character almost instantly. Add a race to it, and it’s even
faster. Elf ranger. Irish P.I. Trandoshan bounty hunter. Hobbit
thief. There, you’re done!
You can also create something
completely new and challenging – but it requires a little more
work. For the past 20 years, one of my friends have been playing a
Human fighter who believes
he is a Dwarf. His mother died somewhere close to a mountain pass,
and the Dwarves who rescued the infant decided to raise him as one of
their own. Klorghan is now a hulking, bearded, six-foot-tall warrior.
Don’t tell him he’s Human, though, if you want to keep your head,
that is.
We’re also quite fond of
caricatures when it comes to iconic enemies. “A necromancer lives
in that old tower, and he’s got scores of Orcs under his command.”
What DM never used that hook? Orcs got a raw deal very early on, aye;
after decades of bad rap, they’re slowly and finally breaking out
of that washed-out one-dimensional straitjacket.
Now that we’re able to play a Lawful Good Orc paladin, or a Sun Elf
assassin, is there any race left to be the iconic enemy? One answer
is: choose anything not alive; golems, gargoyles, elementals, the
undead... Another answer is: fight other “normal”
people, and this one is rather interesting. Just get rid of
Alignment. You’re going to square off against other people – not
Evil people, but folks who want (or need) to achieve the opposite of
what you want to achieve.
Take Steven Erikson’s The Malazan Book of the Fallen, for
example. In book #1, you have real, multi-faceted people (the
Malazans) fighting against other real, multi-faceted people (the
population of Darujhistan). Book #1 is awesome. In book #3,
Darujhistan and the Malazans unite to defeat evil, disgusting
cannibals. Book #3 is crap. In book #4, everyone unite (even the
undead!) to defeat disgusting, evil child molesters. Book #4 is
mostly crap. In book #5, normal people (the Tiste Edur) clash against
other normal people (the Letherii). Book #5 is the best of the
series: you read it and you literally hurt.
If you fight a caricature, chances are, it’s gonna be crappy. If
your opponents are real, multi-faceted people, it’s gonna be
awesome. This recipe works. Just try it.
Speaking of the undead – may I remind you that we all played
vampires for ten years during the ‘90s? I even played a friggin’
mummy for a while! Vampires are nuanced and conflicted. Some
of them couldn’t kill Humans. Some of them even acted as humanity’s
guardians. So, “evil”
or not? If a vampire can be nuanced and conflicted like that, why not
a ghoul, a wight, a ghast or a wraith? Skeletons and zombies are not
as evil as they are dumb. Evil requires an intent. Zombies are
mindless: they have little to no intent.
I
can picture a whole party of undead. The magic-user is a lich, the
thief is a Nosferatu vampire, the cleric is a ghost, and the dumb
fighter is some sort of Bugbear zombie in splintered mail. Maybe
their sworn enemies are a bunch of flesh and blood Humans.
There ought to be good Orcs and evil Orcs, just as there are good
Humans and wicked, evil Humans. And Hobgoblins. And Kobolds. If a
race is monolithic, it is almost always a caricature. For instance,
why would Elves be immune to mental illness? There are Elves with
schizophrenia and psychosis, right? Why not an Elf serial killer? An
Elven Hannibal Lecter? Why not a gay Dwarf scholar who never touched
a battle-axe or a hammer in his entire life?
When they needed evil Dwarves, instead of taking ordinary, Gimli-like
Dwarves, and giving them wicked intentions, they came up with the
Duergars. When they needed evil Elves, they did the same – and came
up with the Drow. That is absurd. You can have so much more depth
than that, and it really isn’t such a big endeavor. Tolkien’s
original Moriquendi did not have dark skin, and weren’t any more
evil than the cruel and obnoxious Noldor. The “Dark
Elves” are the ones who
never saw the light of the Trees in Valinor: it’s a metaphor.
Back in the day, a French role-playing game called Bloodlust
dealt with those stubborn caricatures in a very caricatural way –
and then proceeded to replace the expunged crap with complex, nuanced
races. Because that’s precisely the point, isn’t it? Nuances. Do
you think all Illithids are the same? There has to be
different social groups in their society: individuals with high
psionic powers, and individuals with low psionic powers. It’s like
our IQ. Only the high-psionic / high-IQ Illithids ever get to fly
spelljammers and probability-travel around the Prime Material Plane.
The others are stuck on the Illithid homeworld, toiling away. Why not
play one of those? An escaped psionic slave. A Mind Flayer Spartacus.
And what about nuances in Call of Cthulhu – why not play a
“good”
Deep One, or a tolerant and worldly Mi-Go? A Drizzt from Yuggoth,
if you will.
Mammalocentrism dictates that we favor mammals. Cats are cute, not
spiders. The Mi-Go are insectoid in nature, and the Deep Ones are
fish-like. Human is much closer to Goblin or Ogre than it is to Mi-Go
or Serpent Man. Yet, you have played a Dragonborn, and that’s
already half reptilian right there. Just keep going in that same
direction, is what I’m trying to say.
If there is a Mind Flayer Spartacus, then Mind Flayers really
are a “true”
race, and not just a caricature. If there is a Sun Elf serial
killer, then Sun Elves are a race, and not a caricature. If there is
a humanophile, worldly Mi-Go, then the Mi-Go are a race, and not a
caricature.
But it requires more work on the DM’s part, that’s for sure. No
longer can he or she say: “You
see a bunch of Orcs, and they immediately charge towards you.”
If you use the nuances filter, whenever somebody – anybody really –
is charging the party, they’re gonna need their own agenda, motives
and motivations. Again: real, multi-faceted people against real,
multi-faceted people.
It isn’t a caricature anymore.
I believe Dungeon Masters / Gamemasters / Keepers are ready to go the
extra mile. I know I am.