Low Fantasy Races?

[Frost]

I have been tinkering with various setting ideas and have caught a bit of inspiration from the 'Taming of the Eastlands'/ 'Krail's Folly' threads on RPG Snob and Gaming Ballistic.

What I am trying to do is put an age of exploration spin on the concept running it as TL 4 or 5 low fantasy with c100 point characters and path type magic plus a few wrinkles (mostly spirit casting).

I have a couple of questions:

Is there any point in including non-human races or should I go human only?

If I include non-humans should I go with some or all of the 'classics' or should I try something significantly different? If so what sort of critters do you think would add to the setting?

[Mike_H]

Personally, I'd go more of a Game of Thrones idea, with a lot of the races being mostly extinct or forced into really remote areas.

[simply Nathan]

I'm not familiar with whatever the earlier paragraphs are referring to, so I can't comment either way.

Originally Posted by Frost

Is there any point in including non-human races or should I go human only?

Personally I don't like when fantasy settings only offer humans as playable.

Originally Posted by Frost

If I include non-humans should I go with some or all of the 'classics' or should I try something significantly different?

Well, if you try to go with all of the classic races, you'll wind up with huge loads of redundancy. Probably better to focus on small number of races, and if you want anything significantly different I'd simply advise against going overboard with them.

I'd say to just choose one of gnomes, halflings, brownies, leprechauns, fauns, or pygmies. Most differences between these various takes on "small humanoid" can be chalked up to cultural templates and perhaps a bit of localized microevolution rather than making a new race each time.

Originally Posted by Frost

If so what sort of critters do you think would add to the setting?

I'm very fond of talking animals, but it ultimately comes down to your personal tastes. Things I consider to be my checklist for fantasy races:

- Something equivalent to a human in fighting capacity, possibly a little worse in terms of cognizance and social ability, that exists from a meta-game perspective only to be used as mooks (orc, hobgoblin, undead)
- Something big, strong, and optionally stupid, mostly for enemy grunts but not impossible for player characters (ogre, minotaur, gargoyle)
- Something that is not very different from humans, mostly leaning slightly towards heavy melee warrior types (wolfman, lizardman, dwarf)
- Something that is good with magic and doesn't look ugly; whether its baseline is actually more attractive than humans is subjective (elf, catgirl, kitsune)
- Something small and cute, possibly making a good thief or scout type as a secondary bonus (mouseman, brownie, pixie)
- Something that isn't humanoid, but is still sapient and could be valid as a PC for someone willing to put up with the challenge (Cu Sidhe, unicorn, dragon)

With one of each of these classes of beings in the setting I'm usually pretty happy, even if only half of them are playable.

[Raekai]

I wish I were home and could easily link to a huge document that I just made. It's for my novels as well as a new campaign setting that I'm working on. I narrowed down a list of classic monsters and some of my favorites, and then I further narrowed down a list of playable races. It still may be way too large for what you want, but I think it might help some. I'll work on trying to link it or wait til I get home in a couple of hours.

[Tema69]

I'm about to run something very similar. I've also been leading towards a GoT'esque humancentric world, but I've been thinking of adding a "bloodline" element, where some families are renowned for being decendants of some extint/extremely rare race (nymph, ogre, troll, whatever). The ogre-spawn might have a "racial" template with a positive ST mod, a negative IQ mod, and a tendency for Gigantism (very simplified for now).

[Frost]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

Well, if you try to go with all of the classic races, you'll wind up with huge loads of redundancy. Probably better to focus on small number of races, and if you want anything significantly different I'd simply advise against going overboard with them.

I am not a fan of massive proliferation amongst intelligent races so I wouldn't include more than say five or six including humans if that.

Anyway it seems that we mean slightly different things by the classics, to clarify I tend to think of the basic sword and sorcery protagonist (or antagonist) races going back to the Lord of the Rings and its conceptual descendants i.e. Elves, Dwarves, Halflings/ Hobbits, Orcs/ Goblins and Trolls.

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

Things I consider to be my checklist for fantasy races: [Heavily edited]

- Something equivalent to a human in fighting capacity, possibly a little worse in terms of cognizance and social ability, that exists from a meta-game perspective only to be used as mooks
- Something big, strong, and optionally stupid, mostly for enemy grunts but not impossible for player characters
- Something that is not very different from humans, mostly leaning slightly towards heavy melee warrior types
- Something that is good with magic and doesn't look ugly; whether its baseline is actually more attractive than humans is subjective
- Something small and cute, possibly making a good thief or scout type as a secondary bonus
- Something that isn't humanoid, but is still sapient and could be valid as a PC for someone willing to put up with the challenge

A nicely comprehensive list although I would be inclined to rule out several of these particularly the first. I am too fond of ambiguity to create what is purely a cannon fodder species (zombies etc. excepted).

[Figleaf23]

I acknowledge that this is a highly personal view, but IMO, the standard fantasy races are done to death, and generally very poorly from a plausibility perspective.

I would suggest that you look at the physical geography of your world and think about (a) where you want non-human races to live, and (b) what people living in those places might be like, then (c) make them up or swipe them to fit, and (d) stop when the spaces are full. Then also consider if there are any blended or cosmopolitan places.

If in this process you happen to end up with races that seem like 'elves' or whatever, call them something different, and have fun putting a few surprises on the templates or in the societies. E.g. the stocky earth dwellers could be mystical and nature oriented. The thin beautiful aesthetes could be fanatic authoritarians. The muscle-bound hulks might be deeply philosophical long-run strategists...

Anyhow, I think you might be more satisfied about the integrity and plausibility of your world if your races are grounded in their milieus rather than inserted to conform with genre expectations.

[muranternet]

I'm running a campaign that might be considered low fantasy TL3/4, with several playable races that don't differ too too much from the base human stock. I opted to deliberately not use the trope races, though you can use them as sort of base templates for familiarity. How much effort you expect your players to put into grokking the world = how far off you can get.

Personally, I think the Tolkien cast has been done to death and hasn't really gained much in the way of interesting characteristics. You might go back to the earlier folklore concerning the races that have been co-opted into derivative fantasy fiction, when elves were deformed jerks and "orc" just meant "outlander."

In any case, you can make the differences very small, and concentrate more on the cultural aspects of the other species. Do you have a scrappy, regenerating race of savages? Maybe they live nomadically and have a different view on violence due to the lack of long-term consequences. Do you have some small, degenerate, and not-really-that-cute goblinoid types? Maybe they live as thralls to the humans. I think this may be far more interesting in an age of exploration campaign, since part of it would presumably be finding new species, and it would be nice if they weren't lithe and beautiful pointy-eared forest dwellers and hard-drinking stout guys with beards and axes.

[the_seeker]

For inspiration, try Talislanta in multiple editions for free courtesy of Stephen Michael Sechi and the web site team.

[malloyd]

I've gotten interesting results from using humans with cultural templates mostly consisting of elective "common options", *calling* them something different, and not making it clear to the players that's what I've done. Pale skinned blue eyed people who live in the far north? They're obviously ice elementals. Or maybe interbred with the glacial lake nymphs - explains the houses on stilts out in the lake.