How RPGs turned goblins into people - TTRPG culture and design

[dreadlordmrson]

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This is an absolutely fascinating video.
Most times when people talk about the humanity of fantasy creatures in TTRPGs it's a discussion of prejudice. Or our real world morals. Of racism.
But this video is approaching the topic with the framing of game design and psychology, and it has a lot of fresh angles to consider.

Highlighting this comment from Bluecho4:
On another note, a species being "people" does not negate their ability to be antagonists, even on a large scale. It just requires recontextualizing their antagonism. Give them "people-reasons" for opposing the protagonists. Whether that is diagetic, like Drow living in deeply unjust hierarchies that profit from internal division, to a dragon's greed being a mirror of our own.

Person-enemies, by their nature, demand complexity. Individual monsters or monstrous societies granted personhood don't need to be rational or sympathetic, as such. If they're going to be granted "human-ness", they must simply have human qualities we recognize. Anger, desire, love, desperation, pride, spite. A PC should look at, say, Drow or Goblins menacing them, and say "but for the grace of the Gods, that would be me". Much as how a Drow or Goblin PC stands with the rest of the party because of very "person-y" reasons.

You can have traditional "antagonist species" in your D&D campaign, and also have them be entirely person-able in a party. It just demands a bit more effort in the world-building. (And it makes the truly inhuman adversaries seem all the more inhuman, because they diverge even farther from what we consider "human".)

And the reply by henry6715:
Yes, exactly! I don't think "antagonist species" are so hard to build. There have been "antagonist ethnicities" historically - non-agrarian peoples who live on the fringes of agrarian civilizations who raid for vast swaths of wealth: vikings, steppe nomads, etc.. Goblins can both be authentically vicious raiders who burn and plunder settlements regularly and be people.

This also opens up a lot of historically inspired narrative possibilities: A great hobgoblin conqueror has taken vast swaths of land, now divided amongst their descendants; which lands will stay under the control of the invading "monsters" and eventually integrate cultures? Which lands will rebel against their ruling caste?

Comments

Re: Also ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>One thing I've found when people discuss the idea of biology effecting the thinking of sophonts is knee-jerk fear of Doing A Racism though leaning too hard on biological determinism.<<

*laugh* Sure, and they'll say that while doing racist things, with or without realizing it. Most people are far more caught up in talk and appearances than in actually solving problems.

Race is just a delusion. Biology is what it is. There are plenty of differences between clusters of people -- haplogroups, ear wax texture, tooth shoveling, etc. -- but you never hear racists talking about those. The patterns don't match what people think of as "race."

>> A lot of people... are not great at self-reflecting on what aspects of human behavior are shaped by our instincts. From protectiveness over children, to discomfort with death, to feeling lonely.<<

That is true. Also, those things differ between individuals or cultures.

>> I made an alien species once with an amphibian reproductive cycle, and they have absolutely zero childcare instinct. A tadpole of their own species might as well be a random fish, instinctually. They can choose to look out for them, if they want to, but it's not a reflexive built in urge.I wrote a whole short fic about it. I'll have to dig that up and post it later.<<

Check out The Color of Distance. Alien tadpoles for the win!

Anyhow, it's K-strategy vs. r-strategy in reproduction. A species that has to invest lots of energy in reproducing few offspring will be very protective of them, whereas a species that produces many offspring each with little investment will not.

>> And you do have to balance that against stereotyping and other racist assumptions, when worldbuilding. But people definitely overcorrect and end up making a lot of species feel just... human with different aesthetics. And it gets bland.<<

Easy to fix by hand, though, if you take traits to mix and match. Or you can develop an alien species inspired by a plant or animal, which lots of writers have done. Hell, I've got a dolphin divination deck with nonhuman concepts like "swimming between hope and fear."

>>They learn to kill their imagination every time it really starts to branch out. Clip the leaves in tight and close to a "normal" shape.<<

A common problem, although nowadays it's more popular drug children into compliance. Easier, I suppose.

Me, I'm just not containable that way. I give off ideas like other people give off body heat.

I've seen some other folks with really far-out ideas. Look up Bard Bloom's work some time. The Wrath of Trees has a sessile protagonist.

>>But the idea that technology isn't "A Thing" but is Applied Knowledge, really flipped my perspective on the matter.<<

I would describe technology as a system of tools and principles that work together.

>> That sort of thing has always been really hard for me. It's much easier for me to handle the idea of lacking a certain emotion, even if I have it (see my amphibians ("Amphiros" is the human name for their species)), or a rebalancing of existing human emotions to a different scale that feels inhuman in total but if you pick at each individual thread, you can see how it connects to us.<<

I agree that it's easier to subtract than add emotions.

However, if you break down emotions, most of them turn into valence. Lust is a moving-toward-sex feeling. Fear is a moving-away-from-threat feeling. And so on. So you can take something that humans don't care much about, like rocks, and consider that some other species would be passionate about it. They'd have a word for "feeling like it's time to search for rocks" and "the feeling of finding the perfect rock." Which is exactly what rock-nesting species of birds and fish do. Blue bowerbirds are obsessed with blue things. They have really strong feelings about not only the color but the aesthetics of creating a bower, painting its walls blue, and adding blue home decor. Yes, really.

>>One thing I struggle with but in a way that's enjoyable and I keep throwing myself at, is inhuman perceptions. It's mostly a struggle to write? And sometimes to remember "oh yes, [character] should be noticing smells more". But the perspective change just from different senses alone can really make a sophont see the world differently.<<

That's hard for most people. However, it gets easier if you study animal or plant senses a lot. Some people have made translations that are very helpful. You can even buy tech now that will let you detect things other animals can sense naturally, from sonar to heat vision.

I have senses outside the human standard, so it's different for me. But I totally get the feeling of trying to grope through writing unfamiliar terrain. I cannot count how many times I had to rip out a chunk of story for Torn World because some polar thing was different than the temperate version, even after spending hours meticulously researching it. So frustrating.

>>As the webcomic Freefall points out, being heavily scent-oriented changes your perspectives on time. Sight and sound are effectively instant, but smell lingers.<<

Yep. But even in the moment, it changes things. People who tell me I'm a freak for sniffing things will turn around and ask me if the milk is spoiled. Fuck off, I only do favors for people who are nice to me. Yes, I can detect the difference, but that doesn't mean I'll share it.

The best way to learn about how sense influences experiencing the world is to take a dog for a walk and let them lead. The dog will follow its nose, and you can see from where they stop to sniff where things have happened. So a dog rarely travels in a straight line. The dog is always sniffing to find where messages have been left and read them.

When I track by scent, it's usually closer to a straight line because I'll smell something as the air moves rather than on the ground. I can track a food truck by scent, or strong enough flowers. One time I encountered an unfamiliar stench, thought about the context, then started hunting around for stinkhorns -- and I found them!

>>Hell all my DnD books have a little section near the start where they basically go "but if you don't want to sue these rules, change them up as you like". A reminder that ultimately the game is about having fun with friends, not Following The Proper Guidelines.<<

I love games like that.

When I write about games, or recipes, I try to tell people which things they can substitute freely ("any hard sugar candy can be bashed into flavored sugar for this recipe") and which are vital ("this recipe depends on the blood orange cordial").

>>And thanks for your patience with how long it took me to reply to this. I have to beat my ADHD/anxiety around with a bat sometimes. And then all my internet troubles didn't help. But I was determined to reply eventually, and here I am!<<

I'm glad you did. :D Don't worry about timing, I've had people comment on posts that are years old. I'm used to it.