Re: Losing the Half-races



Stinky wrote:

I also do not care for the half-breed races.  It's too much for me to
believe that these different species can create offspring, especially
offspring that can procreate themselves.

I'm suprised to see so many people expressing this idea, I've never had any real problem with the idea in play, nor does it particularly raise my hackles, or even trigger a "bad taste" reaction.

I do in some settings like to make them very rare, and sometimes make them very discriminated against by both sides... but that has more to do with how I'm feeling about the subject of discrimination than about their existence in the first place.

After a recent thread, I'd be very likely to run a campaign where the half breeds are themselves sterile, like Mules (although someone did post saying that a very very small percentage of mules can in fact breed)

Then again, I think also think it would be interesting to posit a world where the human, elf, and orc races interbreed easily and create half races, and at least one society where this sort of thing is quite common and accepted. This would let you look at the interesting questions of what happens when someone who will live to be 1000 marries someone who might at best hope to live to 100... and what happens when they have kids. By the time you're a teenager one of your parents is long dead, and by the time you die your other parent has barely aged at all! Of course for the most part, the cross breeds in fantasy worlds seem to be orphans or at least have only one "real" parent, raising abandonment issues.

Oh, and if humans can interbreed easily with both orcs and elves, can orcs and elves interbreed? Whats the result? What if the answer is "a human"? Hmmmm.


Lance
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