Familiar but often overlooked fantasy races

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Assorted types of winged people are treated as just encounters. Either Winged Folk from Fantasy Folk or some sort of half-angel should be worth looking into.

Faeries are often overlooked, especially since old stories made them serious badasses. (I once was in a Yrth campaign with an Ellylon swordsman who made himself a reputation on the Megalos dueling circuit.)

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

Assorted types of winged people are treated as just encounters. Either Winged Folk from Fantasy Folk or some sort of half-angel should be worth looking into.

Don't forget dragon-folk!



I'm going to echo the beast-folk comments. There is a lot of ground you can cover there, based on various animals.

[Johnny1A.2]

I always liked the implied deep backstory in the old GURPS 3e Fantasy Folk. If I were going to run a stand-alone fantasy campaign, independent of my other worlds, I'd probably draw on that.

Based on that: a fantasy world that is a planet orbiting a star, not a flat world or something. Intelligence is ancient, and the Elves are not the oldest sapient race. They're older than Humans or Dwarves, hugely older on a human time scale, but only marginally older in Deep Time.

The first intelligence would be the Fishmen, right out of Fantasy Folk, complete with the cosmic entity that uses them as minions somewhere out in deep space. The Reptile Men were the first land-based intelligence, and they fought great wars with the Fishmen for control of the planet, maybe as far back as a million years ago. Now they're remnants, but potentially dangerous ones.

The Insect Men would be late contemporaries of the Reptile Men and Fishmen, but still around and powerful.

I'd use the Elf/Dwarf/Human/ trio for the main modern races, with the Elves having ruled the planet for thousands of years but now reduced to some nations among many. But there would be lots of remnants of the elder races. There would be a robotic race, left behind by Reptile Men artificers.

I'd borrow a trick from the Dragonlance stories and have evil (or at least aggressive and nasty) chromatic dragons, and nicer metallic ones, but my metallic ones would be a race of robotic dragons, literally metallic dragons.

[Black Leviathan]

The fantasy world I'm running now has something along the lines you're looking at. Probably a lot like you I wanted to break the D&D fantasy folks mold but wanted creature characters that were very easy to get a handle on.

I have three races that were created by an ancient people that resemble fair folk. I have traditional lofty elves that are traditionally burned by iron. I have fey creatures with horns and cloven hooves that are lunatics and black-skinned underdark elves that are burned by sunlight who are master miners and smiths.

I have alien beings that have wandered into this world through tears in her walls. I have anti-social giants who are resistant to cold temperatures, like sort of weeny ice giants. I have short Tieflings that have winged flight. And I have Goblins, goblins are goblins, they're horrible and unlikeable but PCs, and they're struggling to find their place.

Lastly we have robots, tools that were made by the ancient race to do dumb repetitive tasks but over the ageless ages many of them got smart enough to start asking why they were still working for masters that weren't showing up anymore. They're very powerful in very basic ways like not needing to eat or sleep, but they start to break down if they have to leave areas with abundant magic and they don't heal themselves.

[Phantasm]

Try going by the "Five Races" "theory", where the world has five dominant races. Instead of the usual mix of Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, and Orc, consider the following Greek-inspired world:

- Humans
- Centaurs
- Satyrs
- Dryads
- Cyclopes