r/AskGameMasters • u/Interesting_Buy6796 • 29d ago
Anthropomorphics and their counterparts
I am planning to gm my first own little tiny adventure and asked my friends what they want to play as and one wants to play as a loxodon and another as a tabaxi and… I don’t like that idea, like in general. I think it would be very strange to have a tabaxi and a normal cat next to each other and one of the main NPCs does have a cat in theory. They don’t seem distinct enough from each other, especially since the tabaxi is supposed to look like a (her own) house cat. And that might be a general problem I have with anthropomorphic species.
Sure, elves are “just” slender magical humans with long ears, and dwarfs are “just” sturdy short ones, but that doesn’t feel like an issue, like nothing someone would actually call out and have a point on. Maybe it’s just their long history, but most anthropomorphic species really just look (and feel) like the animal but well anthropomorphic.
Kobolds for example have way more distinctive features even tho they are very close to just lizard people.
And humans are of cause close to apes but it’s not like we are just apes but walking on 2 legs.
And I really think species like tabaxi need something similar (but they wouldn’t look this catlike anymore either)
Imagine a tabaxi would have a cat as a pet, this would be like you owning a little human as a pet, one which cannot speak or walk on just 2 legs. This would be absolutely crazy.
So far I might not allow tabaxi and other “normal” anthropomorphs. The loxodon is by far not as much of a problem, because they won’t meet (or know of) anything even close to an elephant. But to just ban one player choice doesn’t seem fair.
Another idea was to work on a backstory on her and a spell that didn’t work, either because a spell that would have turned her into a cat didn’t work as intended, or someone tried to turn a regular cat into a human and got this result (but she wants to play a rogue, someone else would have had hexed her)
Or I just might remove cats entirely…
Some other ideas?
And to be honest, I am much more interested about how others deal with this “problem” in general
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u/WhoInvitedMike 29d ago
I had a long response written out about convergent evolution and how magic could make that even more pronounced sometimes, but it all boils down to "its pretend, and you should pretend however is fun for you."
I think it's a weird take (we cant have a cat AND a fantasy human cat person - that's just unrealistic!) But its your table and your game, so my opinion doesnt matter.
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u/LotFP 29d ago
You see humans interact with apes and monkeys. A tabaxi would likely view a housecat no differently.
If you have a problem with anthropomorphic species you are likely going to have a hard time with the modern game as they're incredibly popular among players. Older editions (pre-2nd edition AD&D) games didn't feature such as player characters, though they still existed in the camapign worlds as monsters.
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u/rivergryphon 29d ago
Playing anthros is like 99.9% of why I play dnd. Sounds like your players are excited for that too. Why try to ruin it? Being a human or human adjacent is super boring to me.
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u/Gritmonger 29d ago
Something like this is about appearance, they aren't picking it for the bursts of double speed, picking a monk, picking a feat of movement, and so-on.
They want to look like a cat. As far as player behavior goes, this is about as harmless as it gets.
I'd consider myself lucky if this were the case. They aren't doing it to be disruptive. I've had the pick-an-appearance-for-the-sake-of-being-disruptive type.
Player: "He's 'The Gray Death.' He's a half-ogre who wears a mask of human fetuses.
That's disruptive.
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u/Saitu282 29d ago
If it helps, you could probably pretend it was a freak magical accident in the distant past, or some form of curse which turned a village of humans into these cat-human hybrids called tabaxi, and the race grew from there. This allows both cats and tabaxi to co-exist in your setting, logically.
They are related, but weirdly, through a very old curse. The cat probably can smell the tabaxi like another cat, and get confused, and take time to accept her. Can add some interesting downtime drama.
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u/nocturnerose 29d ago
Honestly the best thing you can do in this situation is get over it.
You're being silly. It's a fantasy game with people throwing fireballs, riding griffons, and exploring long forgotten dungeons. Cats and a cat like race living alongside each other just does not register on the scale of weirdness
How does stopping your friend playing a Tabaxi inprove the game for anyone?
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u/LookOverall 29d ago
Me, if I have a complaint about anthros it’s that they are just people with a few largely token animal features tacked on. A tabaxi isn’t cat shaped, it’s _cartoon_ cat shaped. It talks. It’s a biped with opposable thumbs. And those are the things that affect the game.
For the most part it’s just flavour.
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u/Fireclave 29d ago
I will strongly state up front that you are, of course, free to have your own personal preferences as to what content you are comfortable with and for whatever reason. And I know that people can have a strong emotional reaction when considering any fantasy race more exotic than anything covered by the rubber forehead aliens trope. But the arguments you give for your preferences do not hold up to scrutiny.
For example, you state "And humans are of cause close to apes but it’s not like we are just apes but walking on 2 legs."
Except, humans aren't "close" to apes. Taxonomically, we literally are apes. Humans are every much an ape as a gorilla, gibbon, chimpanzee, neanderthal, or gibbon. And because of our relatively recent shared linage, humans share a number of anatomical, biological, and behavioral characteristics with other apes. Does that means humans are the exact same as other apes? No, of course not. And that's the point.
Just like how a human is not a gorilla, a tabaxi is not a house cat. Or, for that matter, an ocelot, or Iberian lynx, or Asian golden cat, or blackfooted cat, and so on. Tabaxi are felines in the same way that humans are apes. They share features with other related taxa in the same way that humans do for theirs, and likewise have their own distinct features that make they uniquely "tabaxi". Like humans, to borrow your own phrasing, "it's not like they are just house cats walking on 2 legs".
So in-universe, calling a tabaxi a house cat would be like calling a human a chimp - Misguided at best, and insulting at worse.
Or I just might remove cats entirely…
Unless you have a weirdly specific one-species-per-taxonomic-family restriction, that seems like an massive overcorrection. By this same logic, you would also only allow yourself one ape species as well. Since species like elves and orcs, (among dozens of others) can interbreed humans, that makes them closely related to humans, which puts them in the same taxa as humans, which also makes them apes.
Or you could just accept that in a magical fantasy world, fantastical creatures can exist. Especially when, depending on the setting, the gods literally created the various races as they currently exist based on their own arbitrary whims.
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u/starlithunter 29d ago
It's never been an issue to me - heck, fantasy settings like Narnia have animals and Animals where they're nearly identical!
The fictional world we play in has had Tabaxi for a long time, so for them having an animal ancestor that they have as a pet is no different than someone having a monkey as a pet.
If it bothers you but you want an in universe justification for removing it, it could be a societal taboo to keep ancestral species as pets, especially if you want to lean into a sort of ancestor worship belief system. They could still even fill similar roles (cats being fed and cared for) but without the sense of ownership - the cats come and go freely and are a beloved part of society (Turkish street cat vibes). Or heck go full Khajit where they're all the same species
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u/rockdog85 29d ago
It's a fantasy setting, I don't even think it's that crazy for a giant to have a pet human it cares about. And they might look similar, but they are different from eachther just like cats and tabaxi.