Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - If race and class were tangible social constructs in a setting

AJediIAm · 10-18-2010, 01:14 PM

There are actually many good reasons to divide humans up into classes or races. First, let me start with classes:

Belbin for example has made a classification system for balancing teams. A society could benefit form having a structure based on something like this.
- Shapers: The ones who challenge the team to improve.
- Implementers: the ones who get things done.
- Completers: Finishers who see the things through and take care of the small details.

- Coordinators: The ones who take the leader role.
- Team Workers: The ones who support others.
- Resource Investigators: The ones who explore the available options.

- Plants: The ones who comes up with new ideas.
- Monitors: The ones who evaluate and analyze ideas
- Specialists: The ones who have specialized knowledge

A person could be classified and graded in each of these 9 classes or professions. One should distinguish a primary from each of the 3 categories. When doing a task, one should look for classes to balance the team and society could even promote breeding of rare or highly specialized classes.

When I look at races the difference can either be physical qualities or cultural differences but that would not be really interesting...
When we discussed this topic at the role playing society where I'm currently at, we concluded that I would not be classified as human. I think they would classify me as a goblin. This is largely behavioral. (Lots of mad scientist tinkering and crazy ideas.)
Taking myself as an example I should look back at my heritage: My father is a chemical engineer with a postdoc in chemistry. My mother is a house wife (by lack of change mostly) with many creative hobbies. So I guess it works! take chemistry and explosives and mix it with creativity and you get goblins!
Looking farther back I cannot see any real relevant racial traits except physical and cultural aspects which I obviously inherit from my parents.

So, we have social group work as a classification, physical and cultural background and educational background. All of these form a strong base for a person.
One could be a west-european beta-breed kindergarden teacher which is a bit of a weird carrier choise for a beta-breed as you get a +2 on Wis and -2 on Cha. And because teacher professions go on charisma, one could better take the prestige class to physics teacher which allows you to replace Cha with Wis on all teaching rolls.

10-18-2010, 01:14 PM	#14
AJediIAm Join Date: Oct 2010	Re: If race and class were tangible social constructs in a setting There are actually many good reasons to divide humans up into classes or races. First, let me start with classes: Belbin for example has made a classification system for balancing teams. A society could benefit form having a structure based on something like this. - Shapers: The ones who challenge the team to improve. - Implementers: the ones who get things done. - Completers: Finishers who see the things through and take care of the small details. - Coordinators: The ones who take the leader role. - Team Workers: The ones who support others. - Resource Investigators: The ones who explore the available options. - Plants: The ones who comes up with new ideas. - Monitors: The ones who evaluate and analyze ideas - Specialists: The ones who have specialized knowledge A person could be classified and graded in each of these 9 classes or professions. One should distinguish a primary from each of the 3 categories. When doing a task, one should look for classes to balance the team and society could even promote breeding of rare or highly specialized classes. When I look at races the difference can either be physical qualities or cultural differences but that would not be really interesting... When we discussed this topic at the role playing society where I'm currently at, we concluded that I would not be classified as human. I think they would classify me as a goblin. This is largely behavioral. (Lots of mad scientist tinkering and crazy ideas.) Taking myself as an example I should look back at my heritage: My father is a chemical engineer with a postdoc in chemistry. My mother is a house wife (by lack of change mostly) with many creative hobbies. So I guess it works! take chemistry and explosives and mix it with creativity and you get goblins! Looking farther back I cannot see any real relevant racial traits except physical and cultural aspects which I obviously inherit from my parents. So, we have social group work as a classification, physical and cultural background and educational background. All of these form a strong base for a person. One could be a west-european beta-breed kindergarden teacher which is a bit of a weird carrier choise for a beta-breed as you get a +2 on Wis and -2 on Cha. And because teacher professions go on charisma, one could better take the prestige class to physics teacher which allows you to replace Cha with Wis on all teaching rolls.