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Old 07-23-2018, 01:21 AM   #1
scc
 
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Default Why Doesn't Creatures Of The Night Have Any Playable Races?

So I was reading through How to Be a GURPS GM today and I noticed in the section listing all the types of books that there's a type of catalogue book missing: One full of player/NPC races! Now I'm pretty sure that THS has a couple of these, but those are setting specific.
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Old 07-23-2018, 02:28 AM   #2
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Default Re: Why Doesn't Creatures Of The Night Have Any Playable Races?

You will find a dozen or so in GURPS Fantasy.
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Old 07-23-2018, 02:39 AM   #3
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Default Re: Why Doesn't Creatures Of The Night Have Any Playable Races?

Creatures of the Night was pretty much a set of themed bestiaries.
Rather exotic and unique ones too.
The Dungeon Fantasy series as well as GURPS Fantasy have quite a few fantasy races. Also various Pyramids.
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Old 07-23-2018, 05:03 AM   #4
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Default Re: Why Doesn't Creatures Of The Night Have Any Playable Races?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Refplace View Post
Creatures of the Night was pretty much a set of themed bestiaries.
Rather exotic and unique ones too.
The Dungeon Fantasy series as well as GURPS Fantasy have quite a few fantasy races. Also various Pyramids.
It is something that a GM and player or players can use as a starting point to create some playable races, though.
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Old 07-23-2018, 07:02 AM   #5
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Default Re: Why Doesn't Creatures Of The Night Have Any Playable Races?

One book I've been waiting for is GURPS Template Toolkit 2: Racial Templates & Meta-Traits.

Not every fantasy game uses the same Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs, unlike That Other Game - a Banestorm Elf is not necessarily the same as a Dungeon Fantasy Elf, nor is either the same as a Celtic Myth Sidhe, and all three are different from my own setting's Elves - and let's not get into the two dozen different takes on dragons. And then there are space opera games with no alien species, others with different handfuls of alien species, and the occasional setting with over 2000 alien species, and the aliens from GURPS Aliens may not fit other settings, certainly not my Ventureverse with its half-dozen non-humanoid aliens and 4 droid PC packages.

A book on how to craft racial templates with tips for various genres would be much more useful than a book of fantasy races or alien species I'll never use because said races don't fit my setting.
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Old 07-23-2018, 07:09 AM   #6
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Default Re: Why Doesn't Creatures Of The Night Have Any Playable Races?

I agree with Phantasm that such a book would be very useful. Even better, in my opinion, would be a bestiary for 4th edition that also covers these topics. There is some advice on how to create races if we consider Biotech, Fantasy, and a couple of other sources. However, a full treatment on creating racial templates, collecting this information and building upon it would be very valuable!

And let us not forget Mini-Gulliver 1.1!
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Old 07-23-2018, 12:56 PM   #7
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Default Re: Why Doesn't Creatures Of The Night Have Any Playable Races?

Honestly, probably the best and most thorough book giving advice for creating Racial Templates in 4e is GURPS Space. It dedicates an almost 40 page chapter to creating alien races, delving both into psychology and physiology. It even has a random race generation tables...

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Old 07-23-2018, 01:15 PM   #8
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Default Re: Why Doesn't Creatures Of The Night Have Any Playable Races?

I agree the alien race section is very good in Space 4th edition. Also, the original in GURPS Uplift for 3e is very good.
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Old 07-24-2018, 12:38 PM   #9
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Default Re: Why Doesn't Creatures Of The Night Have Any Playable Races?

I thought the the Lytherions in the first volume were a PC race?
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Old 07-25-2018, 07:09 AM   #10
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Default Re: Why Doesn't Creatures Of The Night Have Any Playable Races?

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Originally Posted by ericbsmith View Post
Honestly, probably the best and most thorough book giving advice for creating Racial Templates in 4e is GURPS Space. It dedicates an almost 40 page chapter to creating alien races, delving both into psychology and physiology. It even has a random race generation tables...
I am a big fan of this sort of race design, but I definitely want a a race-design book to include another chapter that tackles it from the the other direction - what role do you need them to play in your narrative, both as in-game actors, and at a meta level? GURPS Fantasy has a substantial section on race design and selection from this perspective; not down to trait selection, but on working out the race concept, which I think is pretty important. GURPS Horror also speaks to this, although from the distinctly horror perspective (for obvious reasons). GURPS Zombies drills heavily into this and includes trait selection, but for the narrow perspective of zombies (also for obvious reasons).

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Hurray! You can loot the random dungeon project for the weighted table code if you like.
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