So, we all know that half-somethings and part-whatevers have been a thing in Dungeons & Dragons pretty much since it stopped being Chainmail Fantasy Wargame. The half-elf and half-orc are considered racial staples, to the point that one of the biggest riots of 4e was that half-orcs weren't in the first PHB.
But, I'm curious... does anyone actually ever make note of the fact that, to get your mixed-breed races, you've got to have interspecies couples in the first place?
Have you ever used it in plot-points - say, safeguard the human prince and the she-orc chieftain's daughter from "old guard" who want to stop the wedding so the peace treaty will be nullified?
Or even just flavor for NPCs and the world around them?
Do you always stick to the traditional human/x paradigm if you use the idea? Or do other races get involved?
Finally, how far can you take interspecies romance as a background element before it becomes magical realm? If I have, say, the male sphinx variants going extinct because gynosphinxes realised human men made better, daughter-producing mates than the reclusive asexual androsphinxes, or harpies becoming generally not evil because the harpies who chose to leave their baby-daddies alive tended to have more kids, who thus picked up that pair-bonding was better than one night stand + cannibalism, is that magical realmism?
Generally I just say races aren't fertile with eachother unless a half-race is specifically mentioned as part of the setting (see Half-Elves and such).
Interspecies romances still exist of course, but an elf and a dwarf aren't having any children unless adoption is involved.
DM tends to stick to what's in the books. Only time I can recall it being an important part of the plot, was when a kobold character I had was married to a human.
All the time, OP.
In my current campaign, I'm waiting for the player characters to explore the nearby forest enough that they run into a couple that lives in the woods, an orcess herbalist who one day rescued and healed a human surgeon after he'd become lost in the woods; they fell in love while he was convalescing and married and now they're the local wound-healing power-couple. (The surgeon is also an obsessive reader of elvish history and knows about some elvish ruins in the woods that he would love to explore and loot, if only some tough adventurer types would offer to assist with that…)
In my previous campaign, a major plot-point revolved around a terribly ill-fated romance between a dwarf prince (a younger son; his brother was king) and an elf adventuress. They ran off together, but got hunted down the bigoted high priestess of the dwarf-kingdom and "ladyhawk'd"—placed under a curse that made them different people and different times, and never themselves together. The dwarf-king (childless and with no heir), meanwhile, had to keep his brother's daughter's elvish blood a secret, lest she become a target of the wicked high-priestess and ineligible to inherit the dwarvish throne.
In that same campaign, a PC thief married a gorgon priestess after helping to rescue her sister from an evil cult; and a PC fighter in the same party might've wound up together with a centauress knight if the knight hand't unceremoniously bought it on dungeon level four near the end of the campaign…
>>48307583
Its my fetish and my friends know it, theyll smell foul play real quick.
>>48308131
How did the priestess know he was with an elf and have no clue that his daughter might be half-elf?
>>48309651
Only humans and elves produce half-elves.
Everything else breeds true. The daughter was phenotypically dwarvish.
Plus some, you know, lying about her parentage shenanigans.
>>48308131
>le evil bigot
>I WILL CURSE THEM TO BE DIFFERENT PEOPLE IN DIFFERENT TIMES EVEN AT THE DETRIMENT OF MY KINGDOM!
Shit campaign desu senpai baka
>>48307583
I've made several interspecies npc couples. A halfling crimeboss and her trusted half orc second and lover, an elf and dwarf pair of big game hunters, an orc warlord and human queen bringing peace through marriage, an elf and orc couple escaping the war between their peoples, etc. I'm beginning to think I have a fetish
>>48311146
Great Quality of posts anon.
>>48307583
never in a game
only in the porn I write
Elf-Human and Orc-Human are the only unions between common races that can produce offspring, and both are extremely looked down upon for different reasons. Elves and Humans can never have a true relationship because of the difference in their lifespans, so either A) The elf outlives the human and becomes bitter and cynical, or B) one or both was a slut/whore and they just didn't have the forethought that sex might just make babies happen
As for Orc/Human, it is almost always rape. Orcs are inherently chaotic evil after all, and any and all orc tribes are a threat to human settlements. People rightfully hate orcs. As such, the unfortunate offspring of these unions are also often ostracized by the majority of society and have no recourse but to live with the stigmas their parents left them with, fitting in with no one and having broken families.
Half-races are infertile, and only the ones specified in the books can be bred in the first place. This increases both their rarity and the isolation that different species keep from each other.
The party's current quest is rescuing the Elven wife of a foreign dignitary that was kidnapped by radical elements in the empire opposed to race-mixing.
