Wolf Link đșCultural differences in fantasy races instead of the plain "good vs. evil"
AK77The thing is, this is still tying culture to race. If there is no racial essentialism to the traits you describe, then thereâs no reason to say that some goblin cultures / sub-cultures do understand the concept of property - and disagree with what they understand to be stealing. Etc.
I donât see how this just doesnât create nuance, which is fantastic
Sure, it adds nuance - and if thatâs all you care about then youâre all set. But it doesnât address The Problem, which is painting âracesâ as monoliths with essential characteristics. Just because you can explain why All X Are Evil, doesnât solve for it being boring/lame/tending-toward-offensive that they all are. Seems like we dealt with this in other contexts, why not include it in lore?
Think of it more as culture tied to community. A village of goblins is going to behave one way, but a goblin raised in a human city will behave another way. Yes there are characteristics that are generally associated with a species (I shy away from âracesâ generally, too loaded of a word). But thatâs just because those species generally form their own communities. Are all goblins like this? Of course not. Are all goblins that the small town cleric has met like this? Yes.
Itâs not really that different from a native Californian thinking a native New Yorker is rude and interrupts all of the time, and the New Yorker thinking the Californian doesnât engage in conversation, simply because their conversational speeds differ enough that it creates underlying tension. In that example, did I paint all New Yorkers as rapid speakers? Yes. Is it generally true of native New Yorkers? You tell me.
There will always be generalizations, and there will always be nuance that disproves the generalization. When telling a story the secret is knowing WHY the generalization exists and how the character relates to it.
You are saying what Iâm saying. This is not the traditional view.
MillieI think in most cases when you zoom in on one of these admittedly poorly named âracesâ in D&D, you see the breaking of molds almost more often than not. What they allow is an extreme contrast in behavior being packed into a smaller terrain that isnât simply viewed as another community by the surrounding people. A bunch of kobolds living in the mountain near your village isnât seen as having bad neighbors, itâs seen as an infestation. The kobolds, likewise, donât view the human village the same way they view another kobold settlement. That, in and of itself, highlights some of the problems with an expanding civilization, but it also provides smaller contexts that can clash heavily against one another within the âestablishedâ territories of various countries.
You do have many examples in D&D of cities populated by a huge diversity of different types of creatures. Looking at Forgotten Realms, most cities arenât limited to just humans or just dwarves or elves. Those exist, but theyâre not whatâs most common. Youâve even got places like Westgate where humans, elves, halfings, and what not are living with orcs, drow, ogres, bugbears, and all sorts of other folks that would typically be attacked on sight in otherwise similar cities.
Thereâs a lot of nuance and room for nuance in D&D. Even in the case of outer-planar beings like fiends, there are cases where characters have a major turn-around. Iâd say that most of the most popular characters are actually subverting some trope rather than living up to it.