Design Notes: Races

 The default assumption in Dungeons Deep & Caverns Old is that there are no non-human player character races.  This isn't stated anywhere in the rules, there simply aren't any other playable races included in the game.  This is a broad departure from the vast majority of all fantasy role playing games in which non-human races are ubiquitous, and it deserves some explanation, which due to considerations of space and lay-out I was not able to indulge in the rule book.

Firstly, the standard fantasy rpg races: elves, dwarves, and halflings, are unquestionably derived from Tolkien, and aren't thematically appropriate in a pulp sword & sorcery game that is inspired primarily by the works of Howard, Smith, and Lovecraft.  Another reason, besides theme, is that non-human races are grossly over-powered in most games.  Gary Gygax recognized that D&D was an anthropocentric game, and that non-human races had the potential to undermine this precept.  He took great pains to curb the impact of other races and balanced their many advantages by limiting their ability to progress in the game compared to human characters.  

Unfortunately these sensible precautions have been completely abandoned in newer editions of the game, resulting in a proliferation of over-powered races that now dominate the campaign ecosystem.  I'm currently a player in a Pathfinder campaign, of which I have formed many strong opinions that will be the subject of a future post, but in this campaign, I play the sole human character.  The remainder of the players all have opted for one of the many non-human races that proliferate the game, and confer such great advantages that human is not a viable option for the min-maxers who seem to enjoy Pathfinder.

The predominance of non-human characters is not just an artefact of modern games.  Until recently I have been running a Tunnels & Trolls campaign in which not one of player characters is human; all of the characters are elves and dwarves because these characters offer such huge advantages in T&T.  But T&T is a game of unabashed excess, and despite my distaste for non-human characters I decided to embrace the game for what it is.  Now I'm in an awkward position, because I want to continue using the campaign world, which has developed over the course of this T&T campaign to run Dungeons Deep & Caverns Old.  I truly love the Free City of Avarice, and continent in which it exists, and it will do very nicely for the continent of Mu in the antediluvian Earth of DD & CO.  The problem is that elves, dwarves, and halflings are now established denizens of this setting.  Fortunately I have never referred to 'elves' in T&T as elves, and have described them as the dying embers of a once-mighty empire, similar in many respects to Melniboneans of Moorcock's Elric novels.  This fits very nicely with the antediluvian earth motif, and they can represent the last scions of ancient Atlantis or Acheron.  Halflings do have some precedent both in history and in the literary inspirations upon which DD & CO is based.  Historically, a species of hobbit-like stature, Homo floriensis, did once exist, and in game they could be synonymous with the Tcho-Tchos of the Cthulhu mythos.  Dwarves can simply be a population of short, stout people.  However I choose to interpret these peoples, they will be treated as species or subspecies closely related to human, and as such will be identical to humans with respect to game mechanics.

And this is how I recommend anyone employs non-human player characters in a Dungeons Deep & Caverns Old campaign.  Other races should be mechanically indistinguishable from humans; players should choose such characters simply because they enjoy the role-playing aspects of these races, not because they confer obvious advantages.  So feel free to make up any zany player character races that you like for your campaign, but I strongly advise against creating any special rules for them.  They should be included for campaign flavour, and nothing else.