[Jedediah]

Originally Posted by (the_logos @ July 26 2004,18:20) How about when you say wood elves have a lower intelligence than high elves? Sounds to me like saying Caucasian humans have a lower intelligence than Asian humans.

Yes, in that case I would have to agree with you unless there were more distinct physical variations that led you to be able to justify they were two distinct species.

Then again, we could be taking this too seriously and the arbitrary attribute assignments represent a general emphasis placed on the individual by their society.  For example, if our society promoted physical prowess and ridiculed intellectual achievement, whereas another culture pushed intellectual pursuits to the exclusion of all else--you could definitely make the case that one was stronger than the other and one was smarter than the other, at least on average.  

It becomes an issue of racism when you say that a child from the intellectual culture brought up in the physical culture would be weaker and smarter than the rest.  With humans, the child would generally follow the culture he's brought up in.  But perhaps with wood elves and high elves it would be different.  

[shadowfyr]

Personally, I tend to prefer systems that may impose some preset limits on the 'individual', over ones with different attributes based on other factors, like species. However, there are often good reasons for it in high fantasy settings, where there are definite and obvious differences. But this brings up the comment I think I read in Dragon or some place, "The players are the heroes, not just the normal population. It should be expected that they don't quite fit the 'norm' for their race." It is a complicated issue and on the mud where I play it is so slipshod that quite a few races are almost totally useless, since their attributes make them incapable of doing well in every guild in the game. I suspect, due to the way the combat and other systems work, and the lack of alternative methods to really advance, that they would never do well in 'any' guild. But yeah, keep the RL stuff out of the game.

The stuff 'in game' needs to be based on in game issues, like people going around killing innocent foxes... (inside joke)

P.S. Thought I smelled a Troll on these forums Gemini.
-Kagehi Kossori grins at you.

[Cyre]

Originally Posted by (shadowfyr @ July 28 2004,16:18) "The players are the heroes, not just the normal population. It should be expected that they don't quite fit the 'norm' for their race."

As true as this is, one can only do so much while maintaining any form of consistency throughout all of the systems in a game. If you allow players to just define their strengths and weaknesses at will, the majority will just min/max their way to greatness. It isn't very exciting when all of the PC trolls of the world are suddenly leaps and bounds more intelligent than the NPC trolls because a high intelligence for a troll makes for a tanky mage. People will metagame any system they can, and this has to be taken into account when designing how racial characteristics are ascribed. Certainly some degree of variation from the behavior of NPC's of the same race is to be expected, and desired of course, but this should be handled through roleplay moreso than through code support, as it quite simply makes balancing issues almost impossible to deal with, as evinced by your comment about the various useless races on the realm you frequent.

[Cyre]

Originally Posted by (shadowfyr @ July 28 2004,16:18) "The players are the heroes, not just the normal population. It should be expected that they don't quite fit the 'norm' for their race."

As true as this is, one can only do so much while maintaining any form of consistency throughout all of the systems in a game. If you allow players to just define their strengths and weaknesses at will, the majority will just min/max their way to greatness. It isn't very exciting when all of the PC trolls of the world are suddenly leaps and bounds more intelligent than the NPC trolls because a high intelligence for a troll makes for a tanky mage. People will metagame any system they can, and this has to be taken into account when designing how racial characteristics are ascribed. Certainly some degree of variation from the behavior of NPC's of the same race is to be expected, and desired of course, but this should be handled through roleplay moreso than through code support, as it quite simply makes balancing issues almost impossible to deal with, as evinced by your comment about the various useless races on the realm you frequent.


~Cyre

[Kenjar]

I have brought this up before, and I don't know if you're still talking about reviews, but I say that in certain cases a horrible review should stay. If, for example, a MUD had a slew of terribly written reviews "OMG, liek, u will LUV THIS GAME OMG!" then dosen't that give you a good idea of the people that are in that game.

For example.

That, combined with one of the other Runescape reviews (There are three- two are quite bad) would give me a good idea of what i'd find in Runescape. And I would be right- anyone who has played that trash heap (Getting a bit off topic, ahem) knows. If a game has a ton of bad reviews but the owner really thinks they are unwarrented, they can be removed. (If the owner is mature enough to ask them to be removed in a calm manor, that's all the convincing i'd need to help 'em out)

-Kenjar, he of the unpopular opinion.