Canonfire! Forums-viewtopic-Demi-Human: an insulting epithet?

Sat Nov 27, 2004 1:38 pm Demi-Human: an insulting epithet?

How do members of other Races in your Greyhawk Campaign react to this appelation? Do they view it as an insult equating them with being less than a person? Or do they regard it as just another example of Human ignorance and fear?
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Sat Nov 27, 2004 5:13 pm

Good question

I have been in several games and each DM had their own opinion on how the "other races" would react.

I have always enjoyed the games more when the players got away from the tolkien stereo-types, not every dwarf has to be gruff or halfling cute and childlike.

Some of the most enjoyable adventures I've had was do to demi-human scenarios "outside of the box".

For instance two memorable example,

A gnome settlement that used their prank skills to stage "accidents" with outsiders (adventurers) so they could take them to the local court for compensation.

A small halfling village that was running a forced farm labor camp complete with a fat greedy halfling "Boss" because the halflings were lazy and realized that larger people could work longer.

Just picture, an angry escapee trying to explain to the authorities that he was held, abused and used as slave labor by a bunch of halflings while the entire village played the "cute and helpless" card, I myself found it exceedingly funny as did the nearby city guards that my friend told it too.

Sun Nov 28, 2004 1:40 am

I think appelations like demi-human or humanoid should be meta-game terms, and shouldnot be used 'in character'. GH is fortunate to have suitable terminology for their races.

Sun Nov 28, 2004 2:04 am

I pretty much agree that the demi-human term should be a rarity "in character", probably only used by human sages.
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What would Raxivort do?<br />

Sun Nov 28, 2004 8:14 am

I agree 'demi-human' is more appropriately an OOC term.

On the other hand, GH is not a collection of particularly enlightened societies (look at widespread half-orc prejudice). When I'm DM humans certainly have derogatory terms for non-humans, as do elves for non-elves, dwarves for non-dwarves, etc. (even half-orcs for the pure-bloods)

Of course, this is portrayed as prejudice and bigotry -- never as a morally proper attitude.

My two cents,

Jack

Mon Nov 29, 2004 5:46 am

yeah I would agree with the last few replies. In my campaign the term demi-human does not exist in the Flanaess but solely as an out of character term.

Actually thinking about it - I plan to start using the Flan names for the races more, olves, noniz etc...

In my opinion, anything that steers away from a generic D&D setting to a more flavourful greyhawk one is a good thing. Luckily many of the generic D&D ideas comes from the Greyhawk setting so that makes it a bit easier :o)