I am not the one advocating the "species" versus "race" deal, I was pointing to Crawford's idea on "culture" versus "race" as a classification or differentiator. (Having just read a book long treatment of the Dark Ages in the past month or so, I think he's on to something)

@KorvinStarmast I know, I'm just unconvinced the conversation changes meaningfully between those two modes.

@Xirema Agreed; it requires fundamental shifts in the way the mechanics are handled because essentialising is baked into them.

@Xirema Red versus blue. There are sides. What I liked about Starcraft (to slightly shift the focus) was that there were three sides, not two.

@KorvinStarmast I adore Starcraft; but Starcraft also has just all the baggage.

Like all of it.

Imagine the Platonic Ideal of Baggage, Itself.

You could ally with anyone if your goals alligned ... but that was RTS not RPG.

eg, replacing race/backgrounds with a variety of granular "influenced by my society and context" features that can be mixed and matched to achieve specific character concepts without reducing any group to a collection of universal traits (ie stereotypes).

And Starcraft, itself not the Platonic Ideal of anything, still has the Platonic Ideal of Baggage, Itself.

Starcraft was the Platonic Ideal of Rock, Paper, Scissors. :)

Or did I get that backwards?

@KorvinStarmast Mechanically, yes.

@Xirema Then I'll try left handed threads the next time. ;)

Warcraft is an especially frustrating version of these tropes, because you can tell at every moment that they're trying really hard to make their stories thematically about the stereotypes and cultural assumptions that are baked into the "Humans↔Normal, Orcs↔Savage" tropes..... But then they lean hard into them anyways because they have like 100 different writers who barely coordinate on individual storylines.

@Xirema One of the nice things about running / GMing / refereeing Empire of the Petal Throne for about 3 years, while also playing D&D as a player, was that I never had orcs, or goblins or even dragons. Mine, and one of the parallel, D&D campaigs were heavily focused on other humans, and undead, as the major opponents of the campaign with monsters being the (very dangerous) exception.

@Ash I'm also seriously tired of Fallen Races. Please stop.

@Xirema yep

that's what origionally attracted me to Warcraft and then what made me drop it

I thought "oh look orcs who are discriminated against by humans for stupid reasons"

@trogdor "Oh but they're still a Warrior Race™ that puts spikes on everything."

@BESW :/

As Jemisin points out, just because you've invented a diegetic reason for them to be a Warrior Race™ doesn't make them any less a Warrior Race™.

I mean, maybe I would put spikes on everything if I had to legit deal with the Alliance?

but yeah

(Hooray you've justified doing a racism. Congratulations.)

the last thing that made me happy about WoW story was when they made a Troll Warchief

but I think they were just cycling the job around for some reason because later Sylvanas was?

...I really want to find a way to hack Great Ork Gods so it's not about Orks.

which is,... cool because I played Warcraft III and Sylvanas was a straight badass but

I feel like it cheapens the job if every year someone else is taking it?

@Ash oh no what did they do?

I think there's room at my table for slapstick violence and petty disdain played for absurd laughs, but I can't laugh very hard when Orks are the target.

legit, she was murdering demons and undead all over the place in warcraft III

she almost got Arthas too

ugh

why

the Forsaken weren't supposed to be that

yeah I mean to be fair

they have been cycling it between "Aliance vs Horde" and "oh crap theres a threat that means we have to work together" since before I ever played WoW

@Ash yeah especially because they can't afford a side to win, ever

because people play on both sides

and some if not many are SUPER INVESTED in the side they are on

and even people who play both would be impacted if roughly half their characters were force to do quests around being the losing side or wtv would happen

this (old) question seems very unclear, and survey-esque:

I mean, it's relatively obvious to anyone who's played WoW and thinks about this for all of a minute

XD

They have made it impossible to tell a few kinds of particular story because the Alliance and the Horde have people deeply invested in them

Lol

Yeah

They do

I didn't think that had changed

Which is frankly silly because the distinctions between the sides are almost entirely cosmetic at this point and the mechanics are just getting in the way of people playing together. It'd be trivial and interesting to have the Alliance and Horde reconcile, give faction-based PvP a different less world-war-y faction motivation, and open up the world.

@Ash Oh, you're right. Never mind, guys, we're done here. Pack it up!

And I mean, going back for a second, I realize it looks like I was maybe complainning that Sylvanas got to be Warciefe, but I actually think that's extremely awesome, just not so much if everyone is passing it around

@BESW I actually really like that idea

@BESW @Ash lol

@V2Blast agreed. and wow it is old.

@Ash wait they are totally Garosh ing her?

Evil warchief AGAIN!??!??

#_#_*&__$"ing blizzard

So many dumbs in one

Yeah

Why do the bigots get to be the good guys?

It's #_$&$&_ed

The alliance has all the cities and wealth. Is there no corruption?

I mean yeah the Horde shouldn't, I think get to be the only good guys either but they have had plenty of "whoops we are evil now" stories

As far as I know the Alliance doesn't have that happen to them

@MikeQ yes but, that's framed as an outside evil

Gangs if outlaws for example

The Defias brotherhood for example I think

I mean, I only really know about Warcraft 3, but by the end of Frozen Throne the Alliance were pretty clearly the bad guys and the Horde were pretty clearly the good guys.

No one in the actual Alliance power structure has been framed as evil since Marshal Garithos

@trogdor Boo, that's just a rehash of the "Outsiders are fundamentally bad, Statusquotopia is fundamentally good" narrative

Back in Warcraft III

Wasn't there a warcraft arc where the alliance and horde had to team up against some common enemy?

@Miniman you mean with Garithos and Jainas dad right? See that was the last time that ever happened

The only actually interesting thing Warcraft ever did, in my opinion, was to group all the fair-humanoid fantasy races and all the monster-humanoid fantasy races, then flip the script. It's also the most obvious subversion in the history of subversions.

@BESW true, but I'm complainning because they still screed that up big time

Also, this.

@trogdor Not exclusively - that's a big part of it, but they were acting pretty evil through all the campaigns, not just the Orc campaign.

@Ash But they just bunny hop back to the "greenskin vs nongreenskin" stuff afterward?

@Miniman yes, that's fairly true, but my point is that was the last time,... that happened

@Miniman yes also that

as far as I know WoW never portrays the Alliance in a bad light

only the Horde or an outside force

which is,... not only messed up but kinda stupid in my oppinion

@trogdor That wasn't meant to be any sort of point, I just think it's really funny.

@Miniman fair enough

it's still kinda a point though

So maybe if everyone in the Horde wore top hats...

@Ash Don't even say Anduin around here XP

All he does is repeatedly say "the light!" As far as I'm concerned

So it is written in the trodornomicon

I'd read it, or maybe listen to the audiobook version

@Miniman My Forsaken wore a Stylin' Purple Hat but the Alliance guards still wouldn't let her into Stormwind.

And if they're immune to purple with zebra trim, I don't think a top hat is gonna help.

lol

@BESW I guess I didn't just solve racism after all. :(

@BESW lol

@Miniman Yeah, sorry. If stylin' clothes were the solution, Cleopatra Jones would've solved it.

Also in the Trogdornomicon, the Night Elves are a third faction who only join the others when they finally make actuall permanent peace

And join into one faction

@trogdor urrgh they keep adding more night elves.

(it makes. Zero sense to me that they join the Alliance, they hated the Alliance and the Horde)

@BESW wait what?

none of this

they already pulled that card with the Naga

this isn't allowed

one sub race per race or we are here all millenium

so it is writen so it is in the trogdornomicon

it is done

these wtv elves are not a thing

What about Keebler elves and Santa's elves

@trogdor Okay, so first there were night elves. Then it was revealed that night elves are actually magical trolls. Then we got blood elves, which are night elves that got addicted to the Sunwell. Now there are void elves, which are night elves that got corrupted by void magic. And nightborne elves, who locked themselves up for 10,000 years and got addicted to arcane magic. ...And a new kind of troll from a new island in the middle of the ocean.

ELVES ALL THE ELVES EVERYWHERE DO YOU LIKE ELVES WE HEARD YOU LIKE ELVES SO WE PUT ELVES IN YOUR ELVES SO YOU CAN ELF WHILE YOU ELF.

Elf on the shelf, a.k.a The Shelfborne, are they alliance or horde?

(Note: all of the above are playable races.)

@BESW kill it

@BESW It offends me that they would say elves with all their "taller than you, gracefuller than you, eleganter than you" crap are trolls. Even ignoring all the ways in which trolls are cooler than elves could ever be, trolls are actually interesting.

Just , get rid of it

@Miniman trolls are da best

Except for Tauren

@MikeQ The Shelfborne haven't been seen in Azeroth for five thousand years, when both they and the Mench on a Bench fought a bitter war over long-forgotten grudges before disappearing entirely.

@trogdor Urrrgh why are both my favorite character options even more racist.

@Ash excellent

@BESW I'd argue that elves ("better humans") are inherently the most racist option, certainly moreso than tauren ("cow humans").

My first character was a tuaren and I made like. 4 trolls

@Miniman Sorry, but tauren and trolls are offensive representations of very specific real-life contemporary people who face exactly the same kind of stereotypical essentialism every day.

As messed-up as the elves are, they don't perpetuate specific bigoted ideas about specific real-life groups.

And they don't generally use actual sacred objects and rituals.

Fair enough.

Even goblins aren't that bad.

Pandaren are though. Just, all of Mists of Pandaria can sit on a chopstick sideways.

@Ash hehe

@Ash true, it would be way better if they weren't

But that's also what the orcs and trolls are

And yeah pandaren :(

Is the pandaria expansion basically the WoW equivalent of "Oriental Adventures"?

@MikeQ That's offensive to Oriental Adventures.

@Ash D&D's best-known foray into Orientalism.

@Ash There's a point-based honor system.

What

If you lose too much honor you lose your character permanently.

And yet Mists of Pandaria is somehow still worse.

Watch at your own risk:

(If the second one makes you think "Was this released during the popularity of Kung Fu Panda?" the answer is. Yes, it was. Same year as the second movie.)

I feel like there's a good space for a nonlethal tag to exist, covering questions about nonlethal attacks/damage, and perhaps related concepts in other RPGs, but I'm not sure what a good name would be. Is [nonlethal] fine? Would something else sound better?

Are there experts in nonlethal?

Is that a thing one can be expert in?

There are quite a few questions about nonlethal attacks/damage and knocking creatures out specifically (mostly around the mechanics surrounding that), so I think so. Though I can't think of a good name for it.

it's actually kind of hard to search for because it's phrased in a number of different ways so a tag would be a good way to organize them together

@V2Blast There. That is what we're looking for when talking about a new tag.

It's a thing you've tried to search for and found difficult.

@V2Blast honestly "nonlethal" seems just fine. intuitive, pithy, searchable, widely applicable.

Earlier today I actually thought there already was a tag for it and searched for it to no avail.

sounds like it fits, then :)

@V2Blast I'm gonna check what Bubblegumshoe calls it.

...never mind, I thought it might have that concept in a novel expression but it doesn't.

It just side-steps the idea completely.