How much do we know about the culture of any particular race? In some cases, a fair amount, and in some, virtually nothing. Perhaps the taurians are the best example of the latter: we have a tiny bit in HELP TAURIAN and even less in the histories. If you're roleplaying a taurian, how do you decide how you act? How do your families work? Are your herds matrilineal? Are there customs associated with death, with childbirth, with marriage, and what are they? What about questions of biology that aren't related to your dexterity and other statistical things -- do you eat meat, do you have an estrus cycle, do you need to groom and if so how do you do it? Does your people have any particular motivations, goals, racial dreams? Are there things they tend to love or hate?

Obviously, if there were answers to these questions, there would have to be room for people to vary from them to express their individuality. That shouldn't be a problem. There's one race in the game we all know many of the answers for -- humans -- and no one has problems playing a human who varies from those answers we do know, after all. Want to play a human who has a pronounced estrus cycle, or who refuses to eat meat, or who prefers to mate with elfen, or who is a cannibal, or who comes from a tiny settlement with unusual marriage customs? No one is going to complain. But by the same token, doing that does not in any way diminish or challenge the fact that there are some norms from which you're a variation.

So assuming that everyone realizes and accepts this, the question becomes, how do you establish a racial culture, provided you're not the administration? That's the tricky part, really, the administration. How much have they already decided and, for some reason which eludes me, decided not to reveal? How much are they developing in a secondary way right now while they develop some new area no one knows is about to go in soon? Anything we do today might be contradicted by whatever they're about to do tomorrow, or may even be contradicted by things they've decided but chosen not to reveal about how our races behave. I don't know a good answer for that, and I would love to hear some comments from the administration. How much racial culture have they decided and not revealed, and why? How can we find ways to roleplay this stuff without fear of being excessively contradicted? Is it just a matter of not having time to write it all up and deal with the fallout?

But for the sake of argument let's set that concern aside entirely. We have what can be discovered in the world now, plus what's in the history and in HELP TAURIAN (for example). Now what? I see three main paths open.

1. Hooved Humans: Assume that Taurians are exactly like humans except for the ways that are explicitly described in the available sources. HELP TAURIAN talks about herding instincts, so we have that. But it doesn't say anything about having a preference for a vegetarian diet, so assume that taurians are exactly as omnivorous as humans. So taurians think, form families, dress, worship, and talk just like humans, except for a few things. This is certainly viable and unlikely to contradict canon, but it's dreadfully dull. The only people who might enjoy this are the ones who chose taurian for the combat stats, not the roleplay. But at least there's no threat that anything one person wants to roleplay could conflict with something someone else wants to roleplay.

2. Wishy-Washy: Assume that there's so large a diversity of taurians in the world that anything, absolutely anything without exception, that someone wants to play, is exactly as "normal" somewhere as anything else. Want to be from the taurian tribe that walks on all fours? Go for it. Want to be a strictly vegetarian taurian? Go for it, but don't mind the carnivore over there who claims that to be precisely as much a part of taurian heritage. Take this to the extreme, as I've depicted it, and what you end up with is not an answer, it's a repudiation of the question. Now "taurian" means precisely nothing, and there's nothing you'll roleplay as a taurian you couldn't have roleplayed exactly the same as a viscanti, a faeling, or a dracnari. A subtle trap, so subtle many people don't even see that it's a trap.

3: Decide Something: Develop some culture by having someone decide something. Obviously, take this to the extreme and it gets just as bad. Now you have someone dictating how you're going to roleplay. Well, no you don't. As I mentioned above, everyone can play the exception. All that person can dictate is that you're an exception, but not how you roleplay beyond that. But at least it ends up meaning something to be a taurian. Though this path is obviously desireable, it is fraught with pitfalls. The desire not to exclude anyone or anything will constantly drag you back towards Wishy-Washy. You have to balance things. Resist that pull just enough but not too much. Leave room for inclusiveness, for letting other people play what they want to play, but don't leave so much that you end up countering everything everyone's doing.

The other big pitfall is more pervasive. All over the game, people are signing up and making characters and picking the same race as you, and many of them you will never speak to, because they're in other guilds, other nations, other trades. Even after you discard the 9 out of 10 that will either vanish without a trace or simply never get around to roleplaying or at least racial roleplay, there's still a lot of people (excepting, perhaps, for the krokani, so scarce are they!) who are out there, developing their own stuff completely independently. Worse yet, by the time you've got your bearings and are ready to try to organize your efforts, everyone's been following their diverging paths for a while.

Again, the answer pulls you towards Wishy-Washy. Postulate some big divergence and divide the race into a set of herds, tribes, packs, what-have-you, that have been apart so long that traditions have completely changed, or even that biology has shifted. Imagine some altering influence (the taint, the effect of extraplanar influences, being assimilated into the culture of a city, etc.) that has shifted some groups (but be careful -- if you end up suggesting one group is "more true to the stock" than others, be prepared for the racism and elitism and the likely backlash against it that will result; I'm not saying that's always a bad thing, just don't get into it unintentionally and unaware). If you can't hold one culture together, maybe you can get enough wiggle-room by splitting it into a small number of cultures with minimal similarity. Just hope that history gives you the excuse or at least doesn't prohibit one.

But even after you've dodged these pitfalls, you still have to get to the point where someone (whether that be an individual, a committee, or a consensus) decides something. Someone says, "the taurians do this" (and then provides one of those blurbs of disclaimers, like at the end of a commercial for a prescription medicine, that reminds people of what shouldn't need to be said but apparently does: that they can deviate from this). And someone writes it down, and it becomes part of a culture, and creates roleplaying opportunities, and helps make sure that playing a taurian means something. And you try to get the other taurians to acknowledge this either by playing along with it, or by deviating it and incorporating into their play that they are unusual amongst taurians in that respect. And hope the administration isn't just putting the finishing touches on the long-lost village of Tauria, whose natives contradict everything you just came up with.

That will only work if enough people will go along with these decisions that they can at least form a subculture (one of the diverging tribes, for instance), if not an actual culture. That's why these sorts of decisions have to be collaborative. Collaboration gives more sources of ideas and more input. It also tends to slow things down, and it means good ideas will be set aside because a few people don't like them -- the set of things that appeals to a group is always smaller than the set that appeals to any one member, just as a chain is as strong as its weakest link. But though it may be slow and sometimes limiting, it's still the best way. The only viable way. Nothing else will last.

(Incidentally, I originally wrote this weeks ago while I was working on my bardic submission, long before the incident with Exarius that touched on the same questions. I held off posting it because I didn't want people to think it was directed at him, and it would have if I'd posted it right after that unpleasant affair, even if I said "I wrote this days ago and it's just coincidence I'm posting it right after that stuff happened" -- though that'd've been truth. I'm hoping I've waited long enough that now we can discuss this question seriously and objectively, without it getting mired in any of that stuff.)

I agree.

It reminds me of Stagar making up Dracnari customs, biology (like these eggs of his) and some other stuff (well probably Stagar and Aesyra).
He was kind of forcing his views on everyone as I remember it, and I recall I was pretty pissed off because I didn't picture Dracnaris as he did.

If there was a culture developed by current players, it would be fine until some of them stop playing, new ones come over, and the whole thing dissolves into nothing.

If we were to develop the whole culture for every race, it should be thoroughly discussed for each one of them, so every player who cares can post their ideas. After there's some consensus reached and the whole thing written down, it would be accepted (hopefully) by an administration and put in helpfiles/webpage. It would provide solid background but would also have to leave space for unique ideas of individual players.

So, yes, I agree.

I'm not entirely sure which bit you're agreeing with, but I'll go ahead with trying to clarify something.

Maybe Stagar came up with some stuff that most other dracnari players didn't like. Maybe his stuff is good. But either way, you're still faced with the same conundrum.

On one hand, he's not getting enough input from everyone else -- but how can you, when there's no way for everyone in a race to work together, and most of the people in that race won't ever even talk to the others? Consensus is a direction to aim for, not a goal you'll ever achieve on a race-wide basis. You'd be lucky to get one in ten active players behind a consensus.

On the other hand, he's doing it and that beats not doing it, every time. It's not going to get done any other way. Unless someone comes up with some miracle answer, there's no way to do it but for someone to make a decision, then try to promulgate it and hope enough people go with it for it to become something. Now maybe Stagar didn't do the promulgation with enough finesse, and that's not a hard mistake to make, but you can't fault him for doing something when that's the only way something's going to get done. Without that, it's Wishy-Washy Hooved Humans.

With this:



At first I just thought about thread for every race, but now I don't really know how it could be done because only some part of the players use these forums, so that's problematic.

Now you say that it can be done in smaller groups. But what if Serenwilde Taurians develop something that contradicts stuff that Magnagoran Taurians established? Problems.

OOC racial clans, specifically for that purpose? Doesn't sound good.

As for Stagar, I only know what I already stated, and I wouldn't like to be rude but I doubt he discussed it with anyone else, except Aesyra most likely. Adding depth to your roleplay is perfectly fine and should be encouraged, of course, unless you want to force something you made up by yourself on everyone else as universal thruths. It ends with someone stating things that every other member of said race goes 'Huh? No way!" when hearing it.

We agree on the problem. I just don't see a good solution, only ones that are less awful than the others.

Racial roleplay suffers in that it by necessity requires large-scale coordination and consenting cooperation from a number of parties that might not necessarily want to work together in the first place. Take the example of the Consanguine culture in Aetolia. It was some of the best race roleplay I've ever seen, but it only worked as long as it did because of how centralized the power structure was. The moment any sort of alternate populations sprung up, which was only three months or so after the realm opened, everything started breaking apart, to the point where now it barely continues to exist.

From my experiences, I would suggest that the only way for things of this nature to subsist for any extensive periods of time is to take ideas from as wide a pool as possible and make compromises across the board, until your sample is satisfied enough to take on everything as part of their character. Furthermore, it would be sound to only consider those things that would be neutral to the character's other associations. So trying to say, for instance, that Dracnari are by nature a kind and loving people is going to fail, because ultimately you'll get Dracnari players that have no interest in being kind and loving.

Oh, and getting this information out to people in as many ways as possible is a must, and indoctrinating young players of your race as soon as possible.

Detailed history of every race could be written down by players, then submitted to administration and maybe they'd acknowledge it and make it official.
Biology is universal and should be determined sooner or later.
Traditions/customs are also historical thing, but player can decide if he holds to it or considers himself 'assimilated' and doesn't.

First question actually would be if administration would allow or want us, players, to work it out. Because maybe they'd prefer to leave it open for now and fill it up themselves at some point.

Well, I have a pipe dream of some kind of racial library where people can submit "facts" the way cartels submit designs, which the admin approve or reject, and those approved are available to everyone in the race (like a clanhelp index). Of course, once I get past the pipe dream, the many problems with the idea start occurring to me, and I wander back to the idea of just using a clan (as I am trying to do) and all the problems with that approach.

Of course that doesn't help with the threat of contradiction. Ironically after I wrote this essay, and my bardic (for which I did a lot of research in the Moors to get things right from the geography to the culture), but before either of them saw the light of day, Shanthmark suddenly appeared, with no one having had any hint that I know of that any such thing was in development or even a possibility. (Maybe aslaran were dreaming about it... I do miss dreams.) Shanthmark takes aslaran possibilities in a very different direction -- domesticated cattle? three-story ornate wooden structures? -- but doesn't flat-out contradict anything I've done so far, just nudges us another step towards the Wishy-Washy event horizon (where inclusiveness collapses in on itself). Some part of me is terrified that the grasslands between Serenwilde and the Peak will someday open as an area where aslaran could not ever have dwelled, or something. Nothing like trying to hit a moving target while you're blindfolded.