Glaugust Challenge 3: Futility of Classification AND Fractals and Intricacy

Yes im doing a twofer but these are both highly related in my mind trust me. You know how sometimes a game will be like here is goblins, then ice goblins, then cave goblins, then double goblins, but then we have a pink goblin creature called a Snurb that's slightly different and you bet there's 10 subtypes of these too! Well. I at once dislike this convention yet often find myself unconsciously aping it. My mind yearns for diversity within broader classifications as family is to species. And yet most things are not like this. Humans are humans (Despite much contention on the subject). We've got maybe 5ish types of slightly different elephants (there used to be more but you get the idea). When everything has 10 elemental subtypes, 3 planar variants, 5 specialist castes with a 1-in-6 chance of appearing in any given group, it all feels a little crowded doesn't it? I mean, I think you could make it work, but it would require approaching it with a particular mindset and set of goals in mind. I bet someone has managed it.

Anyway, for people who don't want that sort of thing, how do you add variety/diversity/speciation in a meaningful way that doesn't feel lopsided or disproportionate or implausible? We all know jokes like a race lineup where it's humans, dwarves, and 30 different kinds of elf. Clearly there's a way to do it "wrong", but if you applied that same degree of variation to everything then it becomes overwhelming. On the other hand, no one complains about wood elves, dark elves, and high elves. Because they're rooted in tradition? Well-balanced without overshadowing any other option? I don't think they were designed in a lab so much as emergent over DnD's growth in the hobby, so then it has a kind of organic-ness which feels right, like how the old myths assembled their rogues galleries of little freaks from a mishmash of local folktales? And then there's "well they fit a niche", but does everything need to be so thoroughly identifiable and bespoke when in real life slightly different species exist all the time? Where's the cutoff where our brains go "this feels right"? 

I'm going to break kayfabe here and go off topic. I have been a fan of tabletop rpgs and worldbuilding for years and years and years but I am like a little baby compared to many others in the scenes. However I am also known in other places as being the architect of immense total conversions for the videogame dwarf fortress, in which i replace everything with creations of my own design with custom lore and flavor text. This isn't relevant most of the time but I am bringing this up because in that situation it is equally tempting to follow this route of incredibly richly detailed and diverse variety of plants and ghouls and animals and ghoul animals and animal plants while I'm at it because I know for sure that at least one player is going to see anything I make, there's no risk of it falling through the cracks. In a tabletop campaign you could make 100 types of dragon but only 3 show up for the 7 people who have ever played it. I know that if I make 100 dragons they will all be seen at some point, so the temptation constantly gnaws at me because I have an idea and I'm like ohhh I want to show it off but if I keep doing this I will dilute the coherent aesthetic and themes and balance of the setting beyond recognition and remove it of its mystery. 

The conclusion of this is that I have grown to hate neat and orderly boxes of classification. Everything is a vague sphere of somewhat connecting traits blending into and layered atop each other, a 4d Venn diagram of themes and characteristics from which emerge an assorted blend of weirdos. Mix and match to create your guys. It helps to remember this is how real life is too. Species aren't even really real you know, aside from taxonomy. Everything alive is a unique little freak following its own rules, connected by degrees of separation with the rest of the world. So I just do whatever and forget about any but the broadest labels. Set rules and break most of them. There's always an exception, you don't need to twist yourself in knots trying to make everything fit or be adjusted because I have tried to do this more than most and it drives me crazy because you cannot, everything complexifies infinitely and at the endpoint of that is the acceptance that everything is weird and special by default so you may as well run with it. Ancient myths were good at this without even trying. 

I am still figuring out how I'd implement this mechanically in a tabletop setting. What I think I'd do is I'd assign sets of stats and lists of abilities weighted to theme, and use a generator which would append them to a given place, group, or character. Maybe I input something that's 70% decayed and grotesque, 30% stony and chthonic, and i get a statblock for something mostly cadaverous but a bit earthy. Every dungeon has its own freak ensemble, unpredictable and varied, leaving the descriptions and texture up to the gm (and collaborating players?) on a case-by-case basis, or an additional generator for that but you get the idea. Why rely on static statblocks? Maybe full modularization is something to consider. Again I bet smarter people than me have done something like this already and I didn't see it and I'll feel silly, but I'm just trying to work out my own artistic vision here.

In conclusion classification is futile because intricacy is fractal and you need to listen to your heart (and reasonable estimates of time and effort you are capable of) to determine where you want to sit at.