I commented on the VOD completely agreeing with this take, so now for the sake of variety I'm gonna explain why Mega is OBJECTIVELY WRONG (just kidding) First of all, fantasy races allow you to create societies that could not exist within human limitations. Elves live for centuries, what does it mean for their statecraft, art, interpersonal relationships? It's possible that human monarchs would change more frequently than elven presidents. Maybe for elves "War and Piece" qualifies as a short story? Maybe two elves could call each other BFFs, with their last conversation happening 10 years ago? I heard somewhere the defining characteristic of dwarves is their perfectionism and their single minded obsession with whatever task they are trying to complete. Of course, there are human people in the real world that can be described this way, but imagine a culture created almost exclusively of and by such people. You could of course point out the "planet of the hats" problem. "So what, all dwarves are perfectionists? That really limits their possible characterisation". But from the perspective of a dwarf, all humans are simply at the will of their whims, always leaving their work unfinished. I think here you were too focused on the "mechanical" benefits of different fantasy races. But personally, I could take elven trans or leave it, what defines elves in my opinion is them being basically immortal. Another thing is, if you're making a high-magic world, fantasy races become basically unavoidable. What, are you just NOT going to include sentient magical beings? A lot of the newer D&D races were at some point just entries in the monster manual. If there's a troll (specifically A troll, not The Troll) guarding the bridge that the completely human adventuring party needs to cross, big surprise, you just introduced a race of trolls to your world. That's just it, if not every talking creature in your world is either a human or a one-of-a-kind-phenomenon, then it's a fantasy race. Also, in a visual medium fantasy races create a more vibrant world. When you're filling your world with characters you want them all to be visually distinct. Sure, you can mix and match the skin tones, haircuts, hair colors, body shapes, etc. that occur in humans, but add green orcs, short halflings, and tieflings with their horns, and you will never have to make two characters who look the same. Just saying, if Scanlan was human-sized, he'd look very similarly to Vax. But I bet you never even thought about it because of how wildy different their designs are, since one is a half-elf and another is a gnome.
Lol, that's me in the video 😂 ! Glad we could discuss this topic on stream, your perspective is very insightful.
I commented on the VOD completely agreeing with this take, so now for the sake of variety I'm gonna explain why Mega is OBJECTIVELY WRONG (just kidding)
First of all, fantasy races allow you to create societies that could not exist within human limitations. Elves live for centuries, what does it mean for their statecraft, art, interpersonal relationships? It's possible that human monarchs would change more frequently than elven presidents. Maybe for elves "War and Piece" qualifies as a short story? Maybe two elves could call each other BFFs, with their last conversation happening 10 years ago?
I heard somewhere the defining characteristic of dwarves is their perfectionism and their single minded obsession with whatever task they are trying to complete. Of course, there are human people in the real world that can be described this way, but imagine a culture created almost exclusively of and by such people.
You could of course point out the "planet of the hats" problem. "So what, all dwarves are perfectionists? That really limits their possible characterisation". But from the perspective of a dwarf, all humans are simply at the will of their whims, always leaving their work unfinished.
I think here you were too focused on the "mechanical" benefits of different fantasy races. But personally, I could take elven trans or leave it, what defines elves in my opinion is them being basically immortal.
Another thing is, if you're making a high-magic world, fantasy races become basically unavoidable. What, are you just NOT going to include sentient magical beings? A lot of the newer D&D races were at some point just entries in the monster manual.
If there's a troll (specifically A troll, not The Troll) guarding the bridge that the completely human adventuring party needs to cross, big surprise, you just introduced a race of trolls to your world. That's just it, if not every talking creature in your world is either a human or a one-of-a-kind-phenomenon, then it's a fantasy race.
Also, in a visual medium fantasy races create a more vibrant world. When you're filling your world with characters you want them all to be visually distinct. Sure, you can mix and match the skin tones, haircuts, hair colors, body shapes, etc. that occur in humans, but add green orcs, short halflings, and tieflings with their horns, and you will never have to make two characters who look the same.
Just saying, if Scanlan was human-sized, he'd look very similarly to Vax. But I bet you never even thought about it because of how wildy different their designs are, since one is a half-elf and another is a gnome.