Thread: fantasy races
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Old 05-27-2009, 09:54 PM   #27
Johnny Angel
 
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Pennsylvania
Default Re: fantasy races

Quote:
Originally Posted by Landwalker View Post
Obviously some racial decisions will impact the mood of a setting, though -- a race of sentient potato-men or anthropomorphic butterflies will probably not give the player the suspicion that the setting is a world filled with conspiracies and shadowy evil...
I think that's what I was trying to get at. I don't think certain races are needed to set a mood, but I do think that certain races fit into certain moods than they fit into others.

There are some exceptions to this though. The talking animals of The Chronicles of Narnia tend to have a slightly Light Fantasy/fairie tale feel to them if you just look at the surface, but (in my opinion) the books all tend to have a lot of Dark Fantasy undertones. The chronicles end in a fairly horrid tragedy...even though the tragedy is given a somewhat positive twist...

Still, I do think certain races carry a certain feel with them. That's not to say you can't write against it, you can, but I think certain things do have a default feel which they invoke. A serpent race such as the Yuan-ti embodies what I mean. I'm not sure if others feel the same way about the issue or not.
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