Race in RPGs

[Tahlvin]

Saw an interesting challenge online today, credit to GabeJamesGames on Twitter: Whenever referring to fantasy "races", say "origin" instead.

"What origin are they?"
"Oh, they're elven origin!"

"It looks like they might be of half orcish origin."

"I feel like there's a mix of human and angelic origins in them."

Imma give it a try!

[Mike]

PF2 eliminated the word race and substituted heritage instead. It is a hard habit to break, but I like it.

[DMDarcs]

I was engaged in a foot heritage with a quickling. I threw a net at him, which slowed him down. I eventually caught up to him, my heart was still heritaging when I got to him.

[Mike]

See how much better that is?

[Phoebe]

I do love this - they're not races. And the extra benefits! My grandpa used to take me to see the horse origins. On an especially muddy day we would be standing there close enough to be hit with the spray from those origins. It was magical.

[Eliahad]

There's an ancestry strip just up the road, not too far from Red Rocks. They have drag ancestries most weekends, or at least they did, until COVID put a stop to the drag ancestry-ing. There were huge dragsters, and loud! But the ancestries were so short, over in just a few seconds. But for the whole of that ancestry, the people were on their feet.

[Stan]

[akiva]

Some of these comments remind of the old Dragon Magazine cartoon about visiting TSR. The legal department said the company was in trouble with a certain British gentleman's estate, so don't use "ring." Say "the phone is circular-metal-banding!"

[DMDarcs]

I don't remember the terminology, but I do remember seeing something for a 5E product, though I'm not sure if it was official. It divided racial traits into two different groups - genetic(?) and cultural. So you could have a dwarf who would have darkvision and poison resistance from his genetic heritage, but maybe was raised by elves and so had the bonuses to spellcasting. It was certainly a workable concept from the brief blurb I read.