Thread: fantasy races
View Single Post
Old 05-27-2009, 05:32 AM   #3
The Colonel
 
The Colonel's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Default Re: fantasy races

Be wary of having too many sentient species in your campaign - this is one of the many sins of D&D RAW ... the tendency to create a new race/species when a new culture for an exisiting species would do.

Plus it helps to figure out your campaign backstory before you start populating the place - or at any rate run the two concurrently.
Are you looking for a strict creationist world - in that case you will probably need a creator (or maybe a pantheon) for every species, for which you will need to develop a theology, portfolio and relationship to the other gods.
If, on the other hand, your race/species were all the work of some elder race, you need to establish what they created the various species for, and from what.
Some kind of evolutionary origin - Darwinian, post Darwinian or Lamarckian for example - poses other questions.

Plus, even 'standard' fantasy species can be given interesting twists - either by pulling them out of their normal niches (as in the old TSR 'Dark Sun' world) or by making them very different (perhaps your elves are Terry Pratchett style sociopaths (very authentic), or Tad Williams style dangerous enigmas, rather than Tolkein style ubermenschen or D&D humans with pointy ears).
I've spun up celto-amerindian orcs, dangerous canivorous centaurs and hobgoblins living as valued citizens in a human nation.
The Colonel is offline   Reply With Quote