And yet, somehow, by compiling all that material under one cover, it became more than the sum of its parts. I knew lots of gamers, myself included, who'd allowed this class or that spell from Gygax's columns into their AD&D campaigns without so much as a second thought. In aggregate, though, they all took on a different character. Things that never bothered me before suddenly did, when placed side by side with other options I hadn't allowed (or didn't like). The result was that Unearthed Arcana was the book that "broke" AD&D for me. It was a bridge too far and it contributed to my growing disillusionment with the game in the mid-80s.
One of the last of Gygax's columns previewing material that would eventually appear in UA was "Demi-Humans Get a Lift," which appeared in issue #95 (March 1985). In his characteristic way, he explains the purpose of his article thusly:
After long contemplation of the plight of dead-ended demi-human characters, and considerable badgering from players with same, it seemed a good plan to work up some new maximum levels for those demihumans with super-normal statistics -- and in a couple of cases just reward those with high stats across the board. Demi-humans were limited in the first place (in the original rules) because I conceived of a basically human-dominated world. Considering their other abilities, if most demi-humans were put on a par with humans in terms of levels they could attain, then there isn't much question who would be saying "Sir!" to whom. With that in mind, let's move along to the matter at hand.Once again, Gary makes it clear that, in his mind, demi-humans were always supposed to play second fiddle to humans, which is why he included level limits. One may argue that such limits do a poor job of discouraging the play of demi-humans, but there can be no question that that was the intention behind it.
Despite that, Gygax decides here to give in to "considerable badgering" from players of demi-human PCs and provide the means for demi-humans to reach higher levels of experience. He does this in two ways. First, he allows single-classed demi-humans to exceed the standard level cap by two. Multiclassed demi-humans must abide by the usual limits. Second, he allows demi-humans with exceptional ability scores, whether single or multiclassed, to achieve even higher levels. While I think the first change is reasonable, if unnecessary, the second more or less ensured that every demi-human PC from then on would have absurdly high ability scores. In my opinion, AD&D already had a problem with ability score inflation; these changes only further encouraged such bad behavior. The article also opened up for play several new demi-human races, such as deep gnomes and drow, both of which, in my opinion, are too powerful for use in an "ordinary" campaign.
Throughout the article, Gary makes a couple of asides that suggests that he himself doesn't much care for these rules changes but is allowing them because "the gamers have spoken." It's very odd and makes one wonder why, if he really was so opposed to these changes, he nevertheless went ahead and presented in them. The tone throughout is strange and he ends the piece by not only saying that these are the final, ultimate, never-to-be-changed-again, for-real-this-time alterations to demi-human level limits but also by suggesting demands for further power escalation are inevitable:
To put a cap on things, let us get something straight. Any statistics beyond those shown, for levels and ability scores alike, are virtually impossible. Spells and magic, even artifacts and relics, will not increase statistics beyond what is shown, and no further word is necessary. If some deity likes a character so much as to grant a higher statistic, then that deity should also like the character sufficiently to carry him or her off to another plane. (Rules for quasideities will, I suppose, now be in demand . . . sigh!)Even more than a quarter-century later, I find Gary's tone odd.
"Cocaine's a hell of a drug."
ReplyDeleteCalumny, pure and simple.
Delete???
DeleteI really appreciated how UA assembled all that disparate Dragon material under one cover. For someone who was not an avid reader of the magazine, UA served as Cliffs Notes. More broadly, I find early D&D's take on race more a sign of the times than an indictment of the game itself.
ReplyDeleteJim Hodges---
ReplyDeleteI've never understood why what were clearly different species are termed races in D&D. A dwarf, for instance, is not a race of human, it's a different species. The same with elves, and I could cite others too. That's always bugged me. Where did this misidentification start and why does it continue?
Any insights or opinions?
I suspect – though I don't know for certain – that the term "race" entered into D&D through Tolkien, who regularly uses it to describe Men, Dwarves, Elves, etc. Beyond that, the word "species" feels too scientific for use in most fantasy settings.
Deletealso, if they are such different species, why so many Half elves, etc? those should be vanishingly rare
Delete"I suspect – though I don't know for certain – that the term "race" entered into D&D through Tolkien, who regularly uses it to describe Men, Dwarves, Elves, etc. Beyond that, the word "species" feels too scientific for use in most fantasy settings."
DeleteYou're probably right, but even JRRT's use is much looser than the later needs of gamification. Tolkien's language of race is as much a part of his literary world and background as anything else, where it's used broadly and in a poetic, declamatory sense to describe all sorts of groupings, such as "the race of the Volsungs" in the Germanic sagas, etc. The saga writers aren't thinking that Sigmund and his kin are a distinct race, naturally.
And man, I hate to nerd out on the Ainulindalë, but JRRT's creation account(s) see Men and Elves as metaphysically separate, not just biologically; the Eldar are bound to Arda and at their death go to (and perhaps return from) the Halls of Mandos, Men have a fate beyond the circles of the world not even the Elves know, and so on. Half-Elves are vanishingly small - they are in all cases special cases, apparently allowed by the Valar and given the choice of Elven immortality (not quite the blessing the Númenóreans thought it was) or the Gift of Death (not quite the curse the Númenóreans thought it was). And don't even get me started on Dior, who was half-Man, one quarter-Elven, and one quarter divine Maia.
As for the Dwarves, well, they really technically shouldn't exist as they were never a part of the Music of the Ainur. Good ol' Aulë was so excited for the coming of the Eldar he jumped the gun and made them in secret. Eru learned of this, cut Aulë a break (he was a good guy, meant well), adopted the Dwarves, but decreed that they had to sleep until the Elves awoke. First things first...
Anyway, yeah, the whole race v. species thing has driven me nuts since almost the day I first encountered it, lo those many, many decades ago.
And Tolkien used "race" much more liberally/broadly than we do now as was the custom in his day. Churchill, for example, sometimes spoke of "the British Race."
DeleteRE: anon.: the descendants of Eärendil can choose the doom of Men or of Elves as a result of divine intervention, but there are also half-elves unrelated to that strain who are more similar to those of *Dungeons & Dragons* (v. Prince Imrahil). They are longer lived than normal Men, and a certain Elvish quality endures for several generations (note the visible biological differences between Men and Elves are minimal, and seemingly detectable only to Elves) ,.but are bound wholly to the doom of Men.
DeleteLegolas comments that Imrahil has Elvish blood, but only in the context of "wow, if Gondor has guys like this nowadays, just imagine how badass they must have been in days of yore." We aren't told anything about his mother, though his father was Lord of Dol Amroth before him. Imrahil was Edain and like all High Men had Elven blood, but they weren't Peredhil - Aragorn being the most famous example, probably.
DeleteBut you're not entirely wrong. In Histories of Middle Earth, Tolkien writes that the first Lord of Dol Amroth was a Half-Elf named Galador, born of a Númenórean father and a Silvan Elf mother named Mithrellis. This was unpublished material and JRRT played with it constantly so it's hard to know just how seriously to take it, but it's there, no question. Interestingly, though, that in this case Imrahil's Elvish descent is Silvan, the "lowest" of the Elvish kindreds as most of them refused the summons of the Valar and never saw the light of the Trees. On the other hand, twenty-plus generations later Legolas (himself of Sindarin descent - who also never saw the Trees) instantly recognizes Imrahil's distant-but-real Elven heritage; even distant Moriquendi lineage stands out!
Part of the story here is not only that there are Half-Elves and there are Peredhil, but that there are Elves and there are Elves. One sometimes has to wonder how the Noldorin Galadriel - born in Aman in the Years of the Trees (she's older than the Sun and Moon...), daughter of Finarfin, niece of Fëanor, she who can remember the Silmarils and heard the Doom of Mandos with her own ears - how she felt among all these dark Elves, wood Elves, grey Elves, half Elves, half Men... She had her uncle's arrogance if not his violence, and it took her thousands of years to unlearn it. Sometimes it's not hard to understand why.
I don't remember us getting too close to the original level limits being a problem to us. We played G1->D2 so maybe we did have some characters nudging the limits.
ReplyDeleteI have a dim memory of reading that GG had to be pressured into allowing non/demi-human(oids) as playable characters in D&D. In many ways I wish he'd stuck to his guns there.
Now we're stuck with (diminished) elves, dwarves and hobbits/ha(e)lflings as part of contemporary Generic Fantasy. They're obviously Tolkieny, but without any of their history and are so disconnected from their original environment that they've become seemingly slight 'sub-species' / specialist variations of humans. I don't remember encountering them in Nehwon or Hyporia. We got a core-rules tie in to Tolkien along with 'races' which are easily seen as humans with a couple of stat and skill specialities, pointy ears and infravision.
Boo! to C&S, T&T, Warhammer, Gauntlet, DungeonQuest and a hundred others for following & cementing.
Hoorah! to those games (esp. RQ) which allow their intelligent non-human bipeds worldviews (and hence cultures) uniquely their own.
“ Hoorah! to those games (esp. RQ) which allow their intelligent non-human bipeds worldviews (and hence cultures) uniquely their own.”
DeleteAnd, of course, Empire of the Petal Throne (1975),
This was of limited use to us, since we started and restarted campaigns with chaotic abandon. I only think it came up once, as no one expected to be playing past level 4, and when the rule DID come up, it seemed horribly unfair to suddenly impose it.
ReplyDeleteafter that, we simply ignored. We did have one min/maxer, but he preferred half orcs anyways.
If you use Race as Class, then this can be easily solved by having their level advancement slower, given all the bonus powers and abilities they get. Like how Paladins advance slower than Fighters.
ReplyDeleteI LOATHED Unearthed Arcana from day one. Every single thing about it. And yeah, I’d seen a lot of it in Dragon, but it’s easy to ignore an occasional article. But when it’s assembled and released as canon material? UGH!
ReplyDelete"In my opinion, AD&D already had a problem with ability score inflation."
ReplyDeleteYep. 3d6-in-order avoids a lot of problems.
And yes, the Dragon articles are much better than the blandified compilation known as Unearthed Arcana.
Locally, etiquette demanded that any 3d6-in-order set of rolls producing a potential paladin, produced a paladin.
ReplyDeleteAs it should, since any 3d6-in-order that legitimately produced a paladin was obviously a divine miracle and as such was sign from the gods that a chosen one had been born.
DeleteBusiness Gygax exploited Gamer Gygax's propensity for the grand flourish as a perpetuating subscription model for TSR.
ReplyDeleteGary's pomp and blovations made him a beautiful Dungeon Master and adventure imagineer. He could always draw on his highly creative "brain at play" to keep a game going. Unfortunately, TSR's business model relied on selling the core rules. Everything else was literally supplemental - unable to sell enough on its own.
Thus, the dramatic High Gygaxian was instrumental to rebuilding, repurposing, repackaging and in some case destroying perfectly sound and sturdy (if static) existing game rules, so that existing purchasers would pay the annual subscription cost to both superfluously and substantially modify their once-functioning rules.
Real Gary (or at least Gamer Gary) deeply believed in he and Dave's rules, and throughout the 70s, viewed them as functional, serviceable Law only in need of clarification, better formatting, and commentary. Even though Ward introduced a few gamewrecking "clarifications" and new rules in Deities and Demigods, the rules contained there were a) not from Gary and b) more importantly, almost universally ignored or at best partially toyed with by actual players. We all mostly treated it as an early *splatbook.
But Unearthed Arcana and the Dragon articles it consisted of were clearly written in the red ink of Business Gygax, merely channeling the voice of Gamer Gygax, and I think that is why all of his stuff just prior to the usurpation of his throne sounds so damn strained, tired and defeated. It is High Gygaxian in its irreversible decline.
I don't remember the source, but I recall Gary saying somewhere that when one rolled up a character with poor ability scores, the best option could be to play a demi-human and at least have their advantages at low levels to offset the weakness. In the same way that the game included magic-users starting out very weak but with the potential to ultimately become the most powerful characters, demi-humans started out with a boost but were quickly capped. Although I don't recall him ever saying it anywhere, I can imagine the high ability scores required in this article were meant almost as an experience point penalty for demi-human progression beyond the original limits. The article mentions an example dwarf fighter with 21 strength, "(perchance through the successful employment of several dozen wish spells)". It could take quite a while to amass several dozen wish spells to raise that strength point by point, while the human fighter is racking up levels without pause.
ReplyDeleteWhat are these supposed superpowers demihumans possess that would allow them to dominate humanity if their levels weren't limited? Noticing secret doors? Detecting sloped passages? What was so overpowered about them that justifies gaining an insurmountable learning disability at some arbitrary level?
ReplyDeleteAn elven fighter is pretty badass compared to a human fighter. Other than the 1-in-100, 18 STR human fighters that gain an extra +1 bonus to hit, an elf armed with a longsword will hit more often than most human fighters, mathematically overpowering them (4.5 damage per hit far surpasses the extra +1 hit point to CON than a human might have over an elf)...not to mention their abilities to fight in the dark (unlike humans), high DEX plus bonus to hit with bows, their ability to speak multiple languages from the get-go, and their improved stealth abilities.
DeleteDwarves, with a potential for 19 CON can have more hit points than a human, and their saving throw bonuses versus magic and poison makes them IMMENSELY more durable than humans. They also have the aforementioned multiple languages and ability to fight in the dark, plus bonuses to fight certain types of giant humanoids.
Half-orcs with bonuses to STR and CON (including that potential 19, like dwarves) tend to start out stronger and tougher than human fighters (except for that 1% of exceptional STR humans). Plus they also have infravision like dwarves and elves.
Halflings get the DEX and stealth bonuses of elves, the multiple language thing, and the bonus saving throws of dwarves. Some DMs also give them the bonus to missile attacks (+3 with bows and slings) found in the Monster Manual, thus making them the best snipers in the game.
Gnomes have the same saving throw bonuses as dwarves, and many of the same combat bonuses versus humanoids...plus multiple languages, plus infravision. In the wilderness, their ability to speak with burrowing mammal can be useful, but they're basically a "poor-man's dwarf" unless you want to multi-class with illusionist.
And that's the thing: all these species have the ability to train in multiple classes simultaneously. Would you remove "arbitrary" level restrictions and allow them to advance to any level of fighter/assassin (half-orcs), fighter/illusionist (gnome), or fighter/magic-user (elves) or cleric/fighter/magic-user (half-elf)?
Demi- and semi-humans fill a niche in the AD&D eco-sphere, but they are limited for good reason. Humans' "special abilities" are limited to their ambition and versatility (regarding level and class). Don't take that away from them!
So Gygax wanted humans to be the default race...
Delete...but gave stronger combat abilities to demihumans.
Then when players naturally gravitated to the stronger races, he punished them for choosing the superior option by limiting their advancement, instead of simply improving his preferred option so people would actually pick it.
If you want humans to be the best, just make them the best mechanically. Don't make them the best by installing a time bomb in the other races.
But of course Gygax would use the stick instead of the carrot. I'm eternally grateful to the man for his part in creating this hobby, but good Lord, was he a horrible game designer.