Rule of Law: Halfbreeds, Quadroons, and Octoroons in D&D

D&D has had half-elves for much of its life, and the archetype has a history in fantasy literature. But I'm also interested in adding some more variability in terms of race into my games.  I'm curious about how best to implement some similar racial options. So following some earlier thoughts I have on race and racism, I'm still thinking of this. I'm not talking about half-dwarves, half-goblins, and half-halflings. I'm talking about what happens to the children of half-breeds: the quadroons and octoroons.

D&D 4e Half Elves

Why bring up these antiquated terms? Well, its not like the quarter-breeds or eighthbreeds are a mysterious concept these days. I'd like to think that the world cares less about one's parentage than they did 50 years ago, but there's probably places where it is still quite important, and not just for acceptance in certain religious or cultural communities. As far as the terms go, there's really no 100% politically correct or even 100% unoffensive term to describe people of mixed origins like this. I'm going to use these two because they seem relatively inoffensive (You don't imagine that's the last word anyone hears as they're being murdered) and are somewhat descriptive such that someone, given the context, could reasonably guess what a quadroon or octoroon is.

I think these "races" also bring up issues of family history, potentially more than just the regular half-elves and half-orcs. Sure, you can spin a great tale about someone never knew his orc father, or the illicit love-child of an elven princess. But what about their children? What prejudices will they face? Not every character needs to deal with issues of racism, but I like the fact that it could be there and the game might address it, if not including rules for it. It also expands these niche races a bit. If the elfborn include not just those with an elven parent but also an elven grandparent... well, now you have more options that are mechanically distinct. You have another option for playing a character with elven heritage than the standard half-elf. And it keeps the racial mixing, unlike the reimagining of half-orcs that we see in D&D 4e.

Rule of Law: Race

One of my goals with the Rule of Law setting is to be able to explore some complex social, moral, and philosophical issues. So tying these questions into the basics of the fantasy world is a high priority to me. Race is one pretty clear way to bring up some of these issues, particularly social class and racism. But some philosophical issues also come to the fore.

First, the game is art. And art is one way that we not only try to express ourselves, but to explore how we feel. RPGs are a different kind of art, and they let us explore things differently than more physical forms like painting or sculpture. An RPG is also entertainment. But good literature or poetry both is an attempt to express the human condition and a type of entertainment. An RPG need not be any different in that respect. So when I write that I think racism is an interesting topic to explore, I mean that we can use RPGs to explore these all-too human feelings.

But racism exists in this world, and to assume it doesn't exist in a fantasy world ignores the sorrow that exists here and now. Portraying non-humans in an RPG, or at lest in the Rule of Law, should give one a sense of how marginalized people might feel, or how easy it is to hate someone just because they're different.

Race and Cognition in D&D

In D&D, races have always represented a combination of species and culture. I'll ignore any ideas of racism per se, here, but it is 100% conceivable that a non-human sentient race would have different mental, physical, and cultural characteristics when compared to humans.

So should elves have a bonus to using longswords or bows? Should dwarves all speak dwarven? Should all half-orcs be poor leaders? I'd like to argue that this is an option that one should consider.

Races for different flavors of fantasy

D&D has always emulated Tolkien's fantasy, for the most part. Elves (of many different sub-species), dwarves, hobbits halflings and men fight against goblins and orcs and trolls. Tolkien emulation isn't bad in and of itself: there's probably a reason that this stuff is so iconic.

But it does get tiring after a while. One can only reimagine elves so many times. So I'd like to see some early options for the new D&D, as a generic game, to fill more aspects of fantasy. Humans should still probably be the most commonly played races, but most fantasy settings these days have some diversity in terms of sentient species. In terms of races, having a broad variety that can accomodate many distinct fantasy worlds is going to require quite a few additions.



The Men of D&D 3.5.

Assume that the basic game has your standard selection of races:

Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half Elf, Halfling, Half Orc, and Human.

Add in a couple more that seem to have become basic races:
Dragonborn, Drow/Dark Elves, Eladrin/High Elves, Tieflings

Now we've got 11 races already and we still need more in order to satisfy returning D&D players! We need a number of races need to be added from some of the basic campaign settings that people might expect to be able to portray. I'll try to keep the list focused and assume that some reflavoring can be done so that Planescape Tieflings can be largely identical to the generic ones, just like Dark Sun elves can resemble regular elves.

Filling the grid: races, classes, and roles

The fourth edition of D&D really cemented the old D&D roles by explicitly labeling them and putting them front and center in the game. No longer did a party require a cleric, since a warlord could fulfill the same party role, albeit in a slightly different way. Though, in third edition, a regular supply of wands of cure light wounds also provided plenty of healing if someone had the Use Magic Device skill.

Now, these combat roles have been around since the dawn of the game, and they were even explicitly discussed in the third edition of the game to some extent, though they were also mixed with non-combat roles. They can be broader or narrower, but here's one stab at the list:

Combat: Defense, Offence, Healing, Buffing, Battlefield Control
Exploration: Perception, traps, doors, scouting/stealth, tracking, orienteering, nighttime watches, nature lore
Interaction: Lies and knavery, Diplomacy, Intimidation, Information Gathering, setting lore

Being Human in D&D

In D&D, the assumption is that it's a human world out there. The more powerful demihumans had level limits imposed on them in older versions of D&D, and the benefit of being human was unlimited advancement in your chosen class. A friend of mine recently pointed out that once the level limits were gone, non-human races have no story-basis for not ruling the world (e.g. third and fourth edition). With their lengthy lifespan, how does every Elven wizard not become a world-shaping 20th level archmage? Now, reclusiveness and rarity might be one explaination, but I'd like to focus on the mechanics of it for now. I don't want to claim that level limits are a good way to marry the rarity of non-human races with the rules either.

In the basic D&D game, humans were the default for most class choices. If you played a fighter, thief, cleric, or magic user (or mystic or druid etc) you were human. Elves, dwarves, and halfings were classes and that represented their fixed role in the world. AD&D made race its own thing, but imposed the level limits alongside racial restrictions on classes, so that dwarves, gnomes, and halflings couldn't be magic users (though gnomes could be illusionists). Humans were still the assumed default, but had no mechanical bonus other than the ability for unlimited advancement (hardly an issue when you're below 4th level) and the ability to be classes like the monk or paladin.

In third and fourth edition, humans had more flexibility in their chosen class in other ways (favored classes, bonus feats, or flexible ability scores). The bonus feat is nice, but it means humans aren't the best at any class, just darned good at any of them. Since I've got a mixed opinion of races granting ability score bonuses while class mechanics are heavily ability-score based, I wonder if there's another way to encourage more humans to be played though. One way I'm considering is by the rolling mechanic.

Often players roll up characters in isolation, which can be fine. But when someone has a specific character in mind, they can be a bit irritated if they don't roll well enough to play it (Paladins and specialist wizards were particularly hard to play in AD&D because of stat requirements). Some people are strict about rolling stats in order, but maybe that's where being human could come into play.

In a campaign where you roll for stats, maybe the back-up point buy option is human. Or maybe you roll your 3d6 (or 4d6 drop the lowest) in order, and that's what you play. But if you opt to play a human, you can swap any of those stats around in order to play the class you want. This way a lucky roll is still lucky. So if you were hoping to play an elven mage and rolled a 17 strength and 12 intelligence, you can either switch to play whatever type of warrior you wanted or else play a human and rearrange those stats so you can put that 17 into intelligence. Particularly if you keep the idea of racial minimum stats, playing a non-human has a strong element of luck.

Story-wise, this mechanic would support the view that humans are more flexible as well. Though hard work and dedication, humans would be able to excel at any class, rather than being stratified in a genetic cast system. Many humans could become wizards or warriors with the right training. Elves or dwarves, on the other hand have a fixed lot in life. You could even go so far as to change the racial bonus to rolling better stat-wise. So elves might roll 5d6 (drop the lowest two) for dexterity, intelligence, and charisma. Or perhaps if you agree that you're rolling up an Elf, you roll one extra die that you can swap in for one of the dexterity, intelligence, or charisma dice. Or get an automatic 6 in one of those stats.

If you wanted to expand this type of flexibility, instead of racial bonuses, each race would have one swap stat. Thus, elves could swap any one stat to dexterity (for example) as long as that increases their dexterity score. Dwarves could do it for constitution, etc. Maybe you just want to keep humans as a back-up default point-buy in case someone is unlucky with their rolled stats, but at least you could play the class you were interested in playing. This doesn't say much about class rarity though.

Clearly I haven't thought these character creation methods through completely, and there's a lot of ways the same idea could be implemented. It also crucially hinges on the rolling method, so it's not an all purpose solution for every game. At any rate, its worth considering a number of ways to make humans the setting default that are still unexplored.