theme for a fantasy campaign

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Bengt

One thought about Arctic/Polar regions is to put an amphibian race there since beyond a certain latitude all the solar converting organisms are water based.

Having an amphibian race would feel more like science fiction than fantasy to me, if you mean that they breathe both air and water. I expect that arctic trolls can go into the water, just as polar bears can. There will also be selkies as an island/beach race.

What stopping them from burning down forests with regular technology? I mean if there is a war and humans make inroads into the forest, they can cut down trees with regular axes before the inevitable counter attack. It will take much longer for trees to grow back mundanely than it took to cut them down mundanely. The elves would have to spend supernatural resources to keep up. This asymmetry could be significant over longer times.

It could be more balanced if there is a spiritual inertia that only lets land grow what is "right" on it until a long time has passed. To speed up the spiritual change could require 37 übermages in a complicated ceremony while singing elf-children is enough to make trees grow a bit faster on forestland.

Certainly that's possible, and in fact is one of the specifically human threats, along the lines of a Mongol invasion. But the trees will be more able to fight back, partly because they support comparatively dense elven populations that can fight to preserve their forests, and partly because each terrain has its spirit guardians and each race has its magical powers. But I'll need to work out the details.

At this point my notion of races is dwarves underground, elves in forest and jungle, ghouls in the desert, halflings on rivers and lakes and in swamps, men on grasslands, selkies on islands and beaches and in lagoons, and trolls in the arctic and in the mountains. Though I need a better name than "halflings." I kind of like the sound of "hulder" but it get the impression it means something not much like hobbits.

Bill Stoddard