New Talislanta

[pawsplay]

Batreans weren't removed for being problematic. According to Sechi, males were boring and not very intriguing as PCs or NPCs; females were somewhat thematically redundant with Dhuna and Sawila, and he preferred to use the page count to introduce new character types and expand on others.

I don't think I recall any mentions of Thralls (who are neomorphs) being interfertile with Archaens. The game has been somewhat inconsistent about whether Danuvians can mate with, say, Cymrilians. Some places suggest that mutation makes Danuvian pairings with Archaens infertile, but Danuvian heritage is brought up as a possible ancestry in some of the mixed-race archetypes in 2e.

 

[Kardinal Tabbe]

Whenever was thematic redundancy a problem in Talislanta?

But I suspect, and have read something to that effect, that we are both right. They were cut becuase they were both boring and a bit juvenile.

As for the danuvians, they are themselves decended from neomorphs that bred with Archaens. The GMs guide p. 66

"Like the Thralls, Danuvians were originally a hybrid race
created long ago by the Archaens. They survived the Great
Disaster, and sometime later intermarried with and became
allies of the ancient Phaedrans"

 

[Savage Schemer]

In the immortal words of Ian Malcom...

 

[AsenRG]

For those more familiar with the setting, what's your take on the Danuvians and their future? I find it a bit of a stretch to believe every single male Danuvian in existence was in that one city, but okay. The books talk about them as a doomed race now, but female Danuvians are still taking partners and the whole setting is full of new races descending from previous ones.

And in this case, with the disappearance of male Danuvians, I'd say new races are in the making, too...

I've always found the idea that all (or most) of any given race/culture congregates in one relatively small region in the setting to be problematic and unbelievable. To that end, I agree that all the males being in one city is implausible (or too convenient, depending on your perspective). That said, I think the Danuvians, like many of the races before them (see: The Savage Land; example: the Vandar eventually became Thralls as we know them) will eventually become extinct and be replaced by descendants born from their now multi-cultural mating, where such mates allow for offspring, of course.

All, probably not... but most of a given race and culture being in a relatively small region? Completely believable.

I find it hard to believe that each and every danuvian male died in the massacre. There would probably be some males living abroad with their wives, so a large majority is believable but not all IMO.

But this might not be about realism at all. For on a meta level this could be more about house cleaning to remove some of the more problematic elements in the setting (in the same way that the Batreans quietly disappeared). And from that point of view, the setting might be better off if they are simply all dead.

I've always suspected otherwise: that the goal was to explain at the setting level what was happening at the table anyways...

And consider what a merger of danuvians and thralls (the danuvians preferred mates, according to the book) could mean. I mean, the danuvians have no restrictions on magic use so...

I also seem to remember Thralls aren't fertile with other races, though. It's not a Danuvian problem, but a Thrall problem.

Batreans weren't removed for being problematic. According to Sechi, males were boring and not very intriguing as PCs or NPCs; females were somewhat thematically redundant with Dhuna and Sawila, and he preferred to use the page count to introduce new character types and expand on others.

Now, that's the sharpest example of a species "not being competitive enough"...on the meta level!

Whenever was thematic redundancy a problem in Talislanta?

When Sechi decided it was?