Actually, the designers of Darklands, in order, consisted of Arnold Hendrick, me, and Doug Kaufman, all of whom had played RQ. I was brought onto the project several months after it had begun. My job was to make the game more fun, and so most of the quests and adventures are mine, with the rest being Doug's. Arnold did the basic game design.
Playing non-Humans
Andrew Joelson
>You just hit the nail on the head. You can play a troll, and he can be
a functioning member of society (his, not necessarily
>yours), but an elf or a dwarf that would join your group is pretty much
by definition warped/damaged/mad by elf/dwarf >societal norms. These
races are descended from the Man Rune (if that's how you want to phrase
it), and should be able to
>interact a bit more easily.
Now, Andrew, it's not hard to play an elf, dwarf, or troll PC in a RuneQuest game. Most of my campaigns have included PC elves, trolls, and dwarfs at some point. Currently one of the players is a minotaur, who would be even tougher to get into my humanocentric adventures except that he maintains an illusion on himself so he "just" looks like a SIZ 23 person.
I don't see why elves can't function in human society as easily as trolls. More easily, really, because elves are housebroken, rarely eat people or dogs, and aren't ritual foes of many human cults or societies. Whereas trolls ... I don't think that a PC elf would normally be planning to spend his or her entire life amongst humans, but given that they normally live much longer than people, a decade or two of adventuring isn't totally out of line.
The problem with dwarfs is that most essays on dwarfs have emphasized what amounts to the classic Nidan Mountains model. Sure many dwarfs labor forever at the crankshafts of dark satanic mills, but the lives, goals, and aspirations of these dwarfs are only important because they help us understand the lives, goals, and aspirations of those dwarfs which PCs are likely to meet. Let's not forget that there are plenty of dwarfs who _do_ interact with the surface world. There are Individualists who might do _anything_. There are Openhandists who are frequently tasked with the job of interacting amongst humans. And there are entire colonies of apostate dwarfs, such as the dwarfs in Pavis.
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