fantasy races

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Fish

The "born as twins" shtick is most likely a biological quirk of the race. The "studies the stars" thing is a cultural quirk that may or may not belong to the same race, or even overlap to multiple races. After all, it isn't just people of Arabian descent who are Muslims; it isn't just people descended from the Israelites who are Jewish. The "studies the stars" culture could encompass part of every race... or none of them, if you analyze the concept and find it lacking.

On the other hand, you can have a nation like the Chaldeans, who may well not all be astrologers/astronomers, but the nation as a whole are so famous for it that everyone assumes that the two are one and the same (e.g. in the Book of Daniel there are repeated references to 'Chaldeans' amongst the wise men, enchanters etc. etc. ... this gets translated as astrologers in most editions). Much, I would say, as a lot of people here in the Old World, assume all Americans own guns.

[Fish]

By the same token, you could (at one time) have safely assumed that most people on the British Isles were passably familiar with boating or sailing — geographically speaking, there aren't many places on the Isles that are terribly far from the sea; and many of them were descended from, or knew those descended from, the Vikings, the Jutes, or the Normans.

[Hannes665]

In my latest campaing I opted for no or rare non-human races, instead I went the Diffrent Culture route. Players being build as semi Celtic/Brittons. Roman Empire ripoff powerhouse Empire, Gauls, Barbarian (Germans), Egyptians and the the Wild Folks.

Wild folks = people living in High mana / Twisted mana areas, ripoffs off the Reavers in Firefly.

In the last Fantasy campaign my group played the GM had the Orcs large strong and very civil while the Elves we met were like extra evil Dark Elfs on steroids.

Yet he also exsplained the diffrence by using culture instead of "we are evil for we are orcs and are born that way" routine.

Just my 2 cents.

[Johnny Angel]

Originally Posted by Fish

That may be a signal that you're over-thinking that one race. If you can't fit all of your concepts into one seamless whole, then maybe you've got too much stuff crammed in there. The idea of a race of humanoids where each birth is always a set of twins, possibly linked telepathically or empathetically, might be interesting enough without the day/night and astronomy aspects. You could then take the astronomy-astrology thing and apply it to a different race and work out what its principles are. Here's how I would reason out the races on the planet:

I  TWINNED RACE
   A  The Twinned Race is always born in pairs.
      Q1   Why is this race always born as twins?
         1   It may be part of their natural biology.
This might make them different enough from humans
that they cannot interbreed.
         2   It may be part of their fundamental
religious beliefs; their fertility goddess has blessed
their race for some reason.
      Q2   What about triplets or quads?  Can this
race support multiple births?
      Q3   How does sex enter into it?
         1   Twins are always the same sex.
         2   Twins are always the opposite sex.
         3   Twins can be either opposite-sexed or same-sexed. 
      Q4   What are the biological consequences of
an always-twinned race?  That is, how would they
look different?
         1   Since the danger of multiple births in
humans is premature delivery — babies born when
they are not yet full size — perhaps women of this
race might be taller than human women, or have a
longer torso than humans, or more space in her body
devoted to her womb.
         2   Women are the same height; but children
might naturally be born sooner (a shorter gestation
period, and therefore smaller), and grow up more
quickly than humans.
            2a  This fits in well with I.B.2a, reincar-
nation.  Children need less instruction because they
already have some or all the memories from a previous
life.  It also fits in well with I.B.4, mind-sharing; child-
ren need less instruction because they can be taught
two things simultaneously (what one learns, the other
knows).
         3   Women might have to breast-feed two (or
more!) children at once.  Multiple-birth species, such
as cats and dogs, likewise have multiple mammary
glands.
   B   The two twins are linked in some way.
      Q1   In what manner can they be linked?
         1   They could be linked by full telepathy,
possibly with a range limitation.
         2   They could be linked by empathy (emotions
only).
         3   They could be linked by magic (in the
manner of voodoo dolls; what affects one twin also
affects the other).
      Q2   Why are the two twins linked?
         1   They may share some karma or destiny; the
link is granted by the cosmic fates.
         2   They may share a soul:  perhaps instead of
two people, this is one person born twice into two
different bodies.  The link is created by the gods.
            2a   If this is one person born twice, the
twins might be a reincarnation of someone:
reincarnated twice, into two different bodies.  That
might explain why they are linked.
         3   The link might not be biological or religious,
but part of the culture:  every pair of twins gets a
magic twin-telepathy earring at age 5, for instance.
This means the link can be taken away.
         4   They might share a mind.  They literally are
only one person.  What one twin learns, the other knows,
and vice-versa.  When one person is injured, it may
disrupt the other's spellcasting.
II STAR RACE
   A   One race has its culture and interests in astro-
nomy and/or astrology.
      Q1   Why?  What is astronomy used for?
         1   Navigation
         2   Time-keeping
         3   Scheduling the harvests
         4   etc.

Thanks for the input. Actually though, I think the problem is that I haven't put enough thought into them. They were a thought from a dream; I spent about 10 minutes or so thinking about other aspects of the race; since then, I haven't given it much thought. I've been working on a modern campaign.

I do have a semi-answer for one of the things you proposed though. I was thinking that the fact they are always twins is the reason for their fascination with astronomy. From the perspective of someone on a planet, the moon and the sun can be said to be twins. They are both balls of light which appear to move around the planet. This also plays into the fact that one of them is active during the day, and one is active at night.

Actually, now that I think about it further, feeding children wouldn't be much of a problem because their family unit would be different than what we view as a family unit. The mother of two children would share her responsibilities with her (the mother's) twin. So, let's say that two female twins each had children. The day mother would feed the two day children (one which is her child, and one which is her twin's child.) The night mother would feed the two night children (one which is her child, and one which is her twin's child.)

Likewise, as I mentioned before, marriage -or whatever their similar concept would be- would also be different. You wouldn't be able to marry someone unless your twin approved of them due to the fact that your twin is so important to you. Imagine you have a twin. You meet a girl who you really like, but your twin does not like them (or their twin.) You wouldn't be able to couple with them. After giving this further thought, I suppose marriage would happen between two sets of twins instead of two individuals.

I imagine the connection between twins to be part telepathy and part empathy. Twins would partially share experience and memory. You would also be aware of the condition of your twin (i.e. if they are hurt, sick, dead, etc.) You would also be aware of their emotional state (i.e. scared, worried, happy.) This connection wouldn't be perfect though; emotions can be a vague thing. The experience connection would be more complete (yet not necessarily more important) than the emotional connection. This would be a way for the twins to communicate with each other since they would very rarely (only during an eclipse) be able to talk to each other.

That's the informaton I have sketched out in my head after taking a few minutes to think about it.

[Johnny Angel]

I've dusted off a few of my fantasy world notebooks lately, so I'm bumping this thread so as to make it easier for me to find.

Also, I found an answer to something I mentioned in my first post. Oathbound is the d20 setting which had a housecat race.

[nanoboy]

Originally Posted by Johnny Angel

I've dusted off a few of my fantasy world notebooks lately, so I'm bumping this thread so as to make it easier for me to find.

Um, you realize that bookmarking the thread would have been more straightforward, right?

[Jerander]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

To stat those up, you probably will need to create Strictly Diurnal as a new disadvantage. IIRC, there is no disadvantage that mirrors the Nocturnal disadvantage for the daytime.

Seems simple enough to me:

Diurnal: Rename "Nocturnal" to "Diurnal." Rewrite fluff text to say, "cannot function during the night" instead of "cannot function during the day." Point cost remains the same.

Or am I missing some complication?

Jerander.

[Jerander]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

Any race can be disinclined to cultural diversity if the author wants that. I'm saying that just because a race isn't human, doesn't mean it automatically has to be monolithic, if the author doesn't want it to be.

I agree. Races with monolithic cultures vs. diverse cultures can both be equally engaging, depending on what is done with them. Same with "many human cultures" vs. "many sapient species." Same with "traditional fantasy species" vs. "unique, 'non-cliche' fantasy species."

For me, the problem isn't so much which/how-many races/cultures are used. The problem is usually with what the author/GM does with those races/cultures.

Personally, I find "realism/plausibility" in diversity, tendencies (rather than absolutes: "orcs tend to be violent, but not all are" vs. "all orcs are violent"), contradiction (heck even an *individual* in real life can have contradictory motivations, how much more so within cultures/species), and consistancy (both "in race" and in context with setting).

Jerander.

[The_Nightwatch]

Where you can make them culturally monolithic, in a sense, is if they have some racial tendency that affects culture. For example, I read somewhere that early MRI scans showed that adolescent humans process everything mentally through/with the emotion center. Whether accurate enough, it's plausible for an alien/fantasy race. If you fly off the handle really easily, politics will tend to be very, ah, dynamic; insults won't be shrugged off easily; relationships will be less likely to be stable if falling in/out of love rapidly.

Thus a "barbarian" race, from one point of view, at least.

[Flyndaran]

A major background explanation for heroes is that they are descended from my Tall Folk.
They are a super magical unaging but hands off kind of species that hails from a time before the reality quake that rewrote history into the less magical banal iron themed world of the campaign time. Less than a thousand survived the cataclysm unchanged except completely sterile with each other, but not with people and creatures of the modern world. The majority were warped into all the fey folk and mentally unhinged monsters. It was a nice way to explain why there's only one giant living on that island "over there".