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Post by geoffrey on Jan 17, 2015 9:41:38 GMT -6
What ethnicities do you think of when you think of the demi-human races? Here's my list:
dwarves: pre-Christian Scandinavians gnomes: pre-Christian Scandinavians elves: pre-Christian Scandinavians hobbits: Victorian Englishmen (I in fact like to think of hobbits as having names from Charles Dickens novels.)
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Post by snorri on Jan 17, 2015 9:57:07 GMT -6
My elves have wuxia chinese / japanese civilisation.
Tea ceremonies, acrobatic styles of fencing, ideograms and emphasis on grammar and poetry, extensive use of silk...
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Post by jcstephens on Jan 17, 2015 15:08:36 GMT -6
My elves are very much like Grey Aliens: visitors from another realm, with mysterious powers and an unknown agenda. And yes, they have been know to abduct people from time to time, though accounts vary wildly as to what they do with them.
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Post by tkdco2 on Jan 17, 2015 16:34:33 GMT -6
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Post by talysman on Jan 17, 2015 17:09:26 GMT -6
My elves have wuxia chinese / japanese civilisation. Tea ceremonies, acrobatic styles of fencing, ideograms and emphasis on grammar and poetry, extensive use of silk... I sometimes think of elves as anarchist hippies with a lot of eastern philosophy trappings. Their "religion" resembles Taoism as practiced in Berkeley. But on the other hand, I keep thinking of making them more like Victorian English with some eastern influences. I feel it's important to hybridize two cultures when making up nonhuman cultures, so that they don't feel completely ordinary, but something a tiny bit different. I think I mostly just see dwarves as Scandinavian or German, though, and halflings as folksy English villagers, same as most everyone else. And gnomes? I kind of think of them as not being any different than halflings. I'd rather just use the name "gnomes" and keep "halfling" as an alternative, possibly derogatory name other people apply to the gnomes.
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Post by tkdco2 on Jan 17, 2015 18:44:57 GMT -6
Elves can also be Irish, if you base them on the Daoine Sidhe.
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otiv
Level 4 Theurgist
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Post by otiv on Jan 17, 2015 20:49:07 GMT -6
Dwarves in my campaign are the Kiriath from The Steel Remains.
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Post by tetramorph on Jan 17, 2015 21:07:56 GMT -6
geoffrey, I take it you are making a Jackson interp of middle earth joke here, right? I gotta say I don't really like the term "demi-human." When does that first start getting used? I like fell and fay with Elves and Dwarves and things like that being "fay." Ethnicity? I don't know man, their just elves and dwarves!
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Post by archersix on Jan 17, 2015 23:09:17 GMT -6
How about: Elves=French(the foppish, snuff snorting, let them eat cake type) Dwarves=German(I really didn't care for the Scottish sounding Drarves in Jackon's LOTR, except for Billy Connolly on his war-pig) Hobbits=English (it's the waistcoats and handkerchiefs as much as the pipes and gardens) Gnomes=Crazy Dutch(like Goldmember)
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Post by coffee on Jan 18, 2015 9:06:22 GMT -6
I always saw the Dwarves as germanic (good miners, beer drinkers). And I agree that hobbits are upper-class english (or at least middle class).
But after some thought, I find the Elves resonate most with the Italians. They seem flighty to outsiders, they have an obsession with clothing and food, and the things they make are magical (I'm probably thinking of Italian cars, here, but there are other things...)
Oh, and they're dangerous warriors when aroused.
Anyway, that's they way I see it.
But I do agree with Talysman about hybridizing two cultures. That's a very good point.
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Post by geoffrey on Jan 18, 2015 9:11:28 GMT -6
geoffrey, I take it you are making a Jackson interp of middle earth joke here, right? No joke. I don't even get it! Dwarves and elves are right out of the Elder Edda, and thus Scandinavian. Gnomes (in OD&D) are virtually identical to dwarves, and thus Scandinavian as well. Hobbits are Bilbo Baggins, who was as English as they come.
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Post by scalydemon on Jan 18, 2015 10:47:44 GMT -6
No vote as I don't use demi-humans
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Post by derv on Jan 18, 2015 11:14:09 GMT -6
What ethnicities do you think of when you think of the demi-human races? Here's my list: dwarves: pre-Christian Scandinavians gnomes: pre-Christian Scandinavians elves: pre-Christian Scandinavians hobbits: Victorian Englishmen (I in fact like to think of hobbits as having names from Charles Dickens novels.) I can not say that I identify any with a particular ethnic stereotype. I would agree that Scandinavian or Nordic myth and legend probably informs many of my ideas though. But, I am curious why you found it necessary to qualify it as "pre-Christian" and how that differs from, say, "Christianized Scandinavian" myth of these same races? I'm not sure that I would know the distinction. Or are you simply pointing to the foundation of the myth?
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Post by Porphyre on Jan 18, 2015 11:30:57 GMT -6
True, Elves and Dwarves as we know them in D&D are heavily in debt with norse alfar and dvergar; however almost all cultures have their equivalent of "the Fair folk" and "the Small people". I try to avoid the idea of non-human folk depicted as some different ethnicity/culture (usually described with lovingly detail in some "Complete Book of ..." ) because , in the end, it finally deprives them of their "non-humanicity" reducing them to just some national stereotype ("scottish" dwarves being the most glaring example).
I rather prefer to play on the social classes than ethnicities. In most legends/tales, the human protagonist who reaches the "otherworld" is often strangely "at home" and the descriptions of teh fairy world often uses the terms of the more human world. D&D being a humanocentric world, I figure that non-human races are more "static", less creative (level limits, anyone? ) and tend to imitate in some way the human culture, but focusing on one aspect or one class of the human society, almost to the point of absurdity.
Elves will be an idealised version of the "Beautiful Elite" , with magic ! All is beautiful, all is graceful, and the use of magic helps to avoid the wear and tear and the "distateful" matter of money. And since averything is easy to them, they can't really understand the difficulties of human condition, which makes them sometimes sound callously indifferent and aloof.
Dwarfs are the working-class and capitalist merchants. Gnomes are craftsmen, industrious to an hectic degree (I envision them a little like squirrels running all the time). Hobbits, of course, are the bucolic rural folk.
To add to the "weirdness" maybe a littel anachronism will also do. So, if the campaign is set in High Middle Ages Europe, the elves will probably be like characters of chivalric romance, looking like they just came out of a pré-raphaelite painting. In a Sword & Sandal setting, they will be the Atlants or the Hyperboreans of Ultima Thulé. In a Sword&Planet world, robe and togas-wearing highly Advanced aliens (think Vulcans from Star trek or Minbari from B5).In a Pest & Plagues Blackadder-esque grim late Middle Ages world (ala WarhammerFantasy) they rather will look like contestants of the "Upper-class twit of the year show" or a decadent court (think of Prince Prospero in the Masque of the Red Death short story) Monstrous humanoids also imitate human behaviour, but in a more crude form, and picking up our most unsavoury traits: gluttony (trolls don't really need to eat: but they do indeed like the taste of human flesh!), avarice (they don't really have an economy , but they still pile up gold in their lairs), etc.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2015 11:44:54 GMT -6
I try to avoid the idea of non-human folk depicted as some different ethnicity/culture (usually described with lovingly detail in some "Complete Book of ..." ) because , in the end, it finally deprives them of their "non-humanicity" reducing them to just some national stereotype ("scottish" dwarves being the most glaring example). [...] Monstrous humanoids also imitate human behaviour, but in a more crude form, and picking up our most unsavoury traits: gluttony (trolls don't really need to eat: but they do indeed like the taste of human flesh!), avarice (they don't really have an economy , but they still pile up gold in their lairs), etc. There are also postcolonial aspects to portraying real ethnicities as inhuman, and in particular the attribution to monstrous humanoids of ethnic stereotypes.
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Post by snorri on Jan 18, 2015 13:35:27 GMT -6
How about: Elves=French(the foppish, snuff snorting, let them eat cake type) Dwarves=German(I really didn't care for the Scottish sounding Drarves in Jackon's LOTR, except for Billy Connolly on his war-pig) Hobbits=English (it's the waistcoats and handkerchiefs as much as the pipes and gardens) Gnomes=Crazy Dutch(like Goldmember) As a frenchmen, I'm sorry I can't view myself as an elf The french comics Donjon (Dungeon) depicts a kind of rabbits, which are obviously a mix of hobbits and french people. They alwatys gather in the same pub and chat about the same things. Even after the collpase of the multiverse, they still do. In my campaign world, i made a difference between halflings (the sly, pointed-heared, nomadic 3.x style) with a gypsy culture, and hoblings( more or less hobbits, with a more rural trend). My dwarf are rather germanic / viking style.
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Post by tetramorph on Jan 18, 2015 15:40:47 GMT -6
Okay, geoffrey, my bad. I shouldn't be looking for sarcasm when there probably isn't any! I see "fay" as representing the Celtic and even pre-historic peoples that lived in Europe before the Germanic migration. I see it as the way the Germanic tribes saw them and Romanticized / Mythomorphed them after they took over. You know like, "who built stonehenge, papa?" "M'aargh, it was them elves, sonny-boy." Something like that. I am probably influenced by JRRT and maybe CSL on this one. I agree with Porphyre, of course, that almost all non-modern cultures have some equivalent. So, I suppose it depends upon the main culture of your campaign. An "oriental adventure," etc., would have different kinds of elves and dwarves. Maybe with different names. Etc. Most of the time I play and referee the standard western European medieval fantasy world. So I am with geoffrey and prophyre77 in the main on that one.
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Post by geoffrey on Jan 18, 2015 15:52:14 GMT -6
What ethnicities do you think of when you think of the demi-human races? Here's my list: dwarves: pre-Christian Scandinavians gnomes: pre-Christian Scandinavians elves: pre-Christian Scandinavians hobbits: Victorian Englishmen (I in fact like to think of hobbits as having names from Charles Dickens novels.) I can not say that I identify any with a particular ethnic stereotype. I would agree that Scandinavian or Nordic myth and legend probably informs many of my ideas though. But, I am curious why you found it necessary to qualify it as "pre-Christian" and how that differs from, say, "Christianized Scandinavian" myth of these same races? I'm not sure that I would know the distinction. Or are you simply pointing to the foundation of the myth? Yeah, I'm simply pointing to the foundation of the Scandinavian myths.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2015 18:28:06 GMT -6
No vote as I don't use demi-humans Me neither, demi-humans are an AD&Dism I'd rather not see retrofitted into OD&D.
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monk
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
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Post by monk on Jan 18, 2015 18:28:38 GMT -6
I feel it's important to hybridize two cultures when making up nonhuman cultures, so that they don't feel completely ordinary, but something a tiny bit different. Oh, I like this. That's a very simple fix for a problem I've been having as I create new ethnic groups on my Lost Continent. I know I've failed in creation when, about 3 sessions into contact with a group, I end up saying "you know, the guys that are basically Argentinians".
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Post by talysman on Jan 18, 2015 19:52:55 GMT -6
I feel it's important to hybridize two cultures when making up nonhuman cultures, so that they don't feel completely ordinary, but something a tiny bit different. Oh, I like this. That's a very simple fix for a problem I've been having as I create new ethnic groups on my Lost Continent. I know I've failed in creation when, about 3 sessions into contact with a group, I end up saying "you know, the guys that are basically Argentinians". I have no idea what an Argentinian would be like... Another idea is to think in terms of the single philosophical obsession of each culture that unifies it. For example, I remember John Wick's Orcworld RPG made dwarves obsessed with being perfect in one specific area. A dwarven smith would be obsessed with crafting the most perfect ironwares imaginable, and a dwarven axman would be obsessed with being the perfect axman. They'd go crazy if they felt thwarted. I forget what the Orcworld elves were like, but my *own* elves age normally and have human life spans when not in Elfland. Their agelessness and immortality is a feature of their homeland, but so is stasis; that's why they periodically go out into the world to adventure, to learn new things. But that means that, instead of having a thousand years to perfect their skills, what they have is a bunch of odd skills, some of which are obsolete. They are oddballs, almost time-travelers. And the presence of non-elves potentially interferes with the nature of Elfland, so they're isolationist, only allowing one or two human visitors at most, and those are usually captives taken when leaving a changeling (elven children can't grow up in Elfland, remember, they have to be fostered into a human home to reach adulthood.)
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Post by geoffrey on Jan 18, 2015 23:10:28 GMT -6
No vote as I don't use demi-humans Me neither, demi-humans are an AD&Dism I'd rather not see retrofitted into OD&D. You're talking about only the term "demi-human"? (Since, of course, dwarves, elves, gnomes, and hobbits are all in the 1974 rules.)
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Post by tkdco2 on Jan 19, 2015 0:44:06 GMT -6
I once thought of a setting where the other races evolved from humanity. I discussed it on another board. Some of these ideas are mine; others from different posters.
Elves: Originally from the Indian subcontinent, they migrated westward, through Asia and Europe. They eventually sailed to the Caribbean and lived there until a large earthquake destroyed their homeland (think Atlantis). Survivors made their way back to Europe.
Orcs: Originating in Central Asia, their civilization is similar to the Huns. Warriors ritually scar themselves as a rite of ascension, but a few are selected to blend into human societies. These "half-orcs" make valuable spies.
Trolls: Originally from Siberia, many of the more primitive tribes were cannibals.
Dwarves: Coming from Scandinavia, they were one of the first Iron Age civilizations.
Halflings: They evolved and stayed in Central Europe. They blend into human societies more easily than other races.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 19, 2015 10:28:52 GMT -6
Fascinating thread! I have never consciously thought of elves, dwarves, gnomes or hobbits as any ethnicity; it occurred to me reading this thread that the thought had never really crossed my mind, at least on a conscious level. I must confess that the movie trope of having dwarves speak with a Scottish burr has always appealed to me and I can only think it is because dwarves are clannish folk; that accent brings clannish to mind and so there is a synergy working that is appealing. Yeah, I know some people don't like that trope, but so far as I know, no one has ever come up with a better accent that resonates.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 19, 2015 10:46:17 GMT -6
You're talking about only the term "demi-human"? No, the idea that there are a certain list of "good" races (demi-humans) that only advance through character class, and another, distinct, list of "evil" races (humanoids) that can only advance through increasing hit dice. I once thought of a setting where the other races evolved from humanity. I do the opposite. The Elves are the original race. All the other races were bred by the elves to perform labor, dwarves to mine, hobbits to farm, orcs to fight, etc, while the elves wasted their time in idle pursuits like poetry and art. Of course, some of these elf-slaves managed to escape to live in the wilds. The indescriminate interbreeding of these creatures eventually resulted in men. That's why humans share the dwarf's lust for gold as well as the orc's lust for battle. So, my non-humans don't have ethnicities, just inbred urges they can neither understand nor control.
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Post by Porphyre on Jan 20, 2015 12:44:58 GMT -6
You can also go all the other way around , and , instead of splitting the non human races apart , lump them all together in the "fey" category, like the "halflings" in Jack vance's cycle of Lyonesse. The differences between elves and dwarves and fairies and gnomes and trolls may be physical, psychological, but they all belong in the same "fey" society, in the same way that the humble hoi polloi and the lofty aristocrats are disctinct yet part of the same society.
Of course , "birds of a feather..." wise, you have whole families of elves, dwarves, gnomes, and even communities, but inter-class matches are still possible . If these alliances breed, roll 1d6: 1: the child is of the type of the father; 2: child is of the type of the mother; 3-4: child is the "type" of the same sex parent, 5: child is the "type" of the parent of different sex. 6: the child looks neither like the father nor the mother, like a human. Those usually are substituted to human babies. Exceptions: all male children of dwarfs are dwarfs, all female children are of the type of the mother. Dryad and Nymphs daughters always are dyad/nymphs, male children are the type of the father.
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Post by cooper on Jan 20, 2015 14:05:37 GMT -6
What's interesting to me is how fantasy races have taken on the tropes of actual racist (using the term neutrally) ideas, with dwarves being "german" or "Jewish" or elves being "french" or from "india etc.
To Tolkien, the elves/dwarves/orcs were a codification and classification of the different ways in which the anglo-Saxons viewed the single "race" of folk-tale creature. The mythology never came down to a single "elf". In some stories they were fair and tall, in others short and craftsman like, in others, dark and dangerous. They are personifications of a myriad of different ideas of the single mythic elf to the anglo-saxon story teller. This is what Tolkien means when he says he was attempting to preserve and recreate English mythology.
So, I like Geoffrey's thought. But it still isn't quite what I think is complete. Afterall, the pre-christian Scandinavians also had an idea about what an elf was. If elves are pre-christian Scandinavians, what then are the actual pre-christian scandinavians?
Tolkien considered the question of elves greatly: native to pre-christian Scandinavia, but not human. They are not "fremd" or the "other" or "foreigners", vikings and angles and the Saxons had other words for those (normally a sorcerous Muslim). Demi-humans are part of a culture, but apart from it.
To have dwarves simply be short bearded scots, begs the question, why not just role-play a scot? Is that perhaps what people do? They aren't playing elves and dwarves, but English patricians and Scottish Highlanders?
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Post by Porphyre on Jan 21, 2015 12:50:42 GMT -6
English patricians, with magic powers! That would probably add a little spice to Downton Abbey ...
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Post by snorri on Jan 21, 2015 13:43:44 GMT -6
If I summarise, on my Dodecaedric world, I can find at least : - Chinese style elves (with hellenistic / roman deities). Not all aspects are chinese, so players don't grasp it at first view. - North-American first nations elves, mixed with a more tolkienian mood, on another continent. - Hickman's Indonesia style elves, from Rahasia; in another one - and on the same, desert / steppic elves (with its of Dark Suns)
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Post by tkdco2 on Jan 21, 2015 15:40:12 GMT -6
Elfquest had a wide variety of elven cultures. Not so much for the trolls.
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