theme for a fantasy campaign

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Troll isn't bad per se, but it doesn't say "creature of the far north" to me; the most notable traits of trolls are big, turn to stone when touched by sunlight, and (if D&D) regeneration.

Troll says "creature of the far north" to me, because I associate them with Scandinavian legend and folklore. Though I suppose I could always use "hulder" instead. Or "grendel."

Bill Stoddard

[Bengt]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Hm. Some of those seem problematic:
Halflings: I might use Hobs or Brownies instead, but I'm not sure why you're associating them with rivers and swamps, I'd be tempted by something like Kappa or Nixie.

One gang of Tolkien's hobbits lived by rivers, didn't they?

Anyway, what's their most preferred habitat? Is it swamps and they happen boat along the feeding rivers going through other types of territory, perhaps being traders. Or was it at one time rivers and they have been driven into the swamps by encroachment by other races? The peoples along the river might after all get the idea that they should have the riverbanks as well, and a river is only easily defensible against someone trying to cross it. This might make them quite bitter about ancestral lands and so on.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by whswhs

... Any other ideas?
Bill Stoddard

Ha'men, morphing to Hammen.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by fartrader

So, perhaps a wide variety of mushrooms (and molds, and other things which also don't rely on sunlight) provide for the Dwarven diet.

When I looked into this, the problem was that fungi are dependent on the chemical energy in whatever material they grow on. Which means a mushroom farm constantly needs new organic materials taken from the sun-powered ecosystem on the surface. One way to fix this is to invent fungi that can extract energy from temperature differences underground, which allows you to live off the internal heat of a world.

I ended up concluding that dwarves do farming, in high mountain valleys, or in greenhouses within mountains with roofs of semi-transparent rock. This was influenced by Tolkein's Middle-Earth, in which large dwarven cities existed for generations in places where there was nobody nearby to trade with.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If you mean reshaping one terrain to be like another, it will not be too easily doable with technology. But the threat of its being done with magic will be one of the themes. Men might burn down the great forests, or trolls might cover all the land with snow and ice.

Bill Stoddard

But if humanity burns down the forests, they lose their supplies of lumber and firewood. Also, in the eighteenth century, the century when Europe had the least forested area, weather patterns in Europe were destabalised in strange ways. More obviously, covering the land in ice and snow means little or no food for the huge trolls to eat.

Would it be a commonplace amoung your fantasy races that one plays nice or one destroys theirself?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by whswhs

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

I know you've several the Tolkein encyclopedias, why not look at both his alternate names for the hobbits and the names of the kind of creatures that inspired Hobbits, like the Snergs or the Faylin.

[Astromancer]

As to Mushroom farms, the Dwarves might simply know how to mix certain ores together to produce an energy rich soil for their mushrooms, there are fungi that live on minerals. Alternately, the dwarves could collect organic wastes.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Troll says "creature of the far north" to me, because I associate them with Scandinavian legend and folklore. Though I suppose I could always use "hulder" instead. Or "grendel."

Bill Stoddard

"Hulder" is something I more associate with nymphs - attractive women who sleep with young men and steal their sanity. "Thurs" is an ice troll, but "troll" and "jotun" are synonyms.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

But if humanity burns down the forests, they lose their supplies of lumber and firewood. Also, in the eighteenth century, the century when Europe had the least forested area, weather patterns in Europe were destabalised in strange ways. More obviously, covering the land in ice and snow means little or no food for the huge trolls to eat.

Would it be a commonplace amoung your fantasy races that one plays nice or one destroys theirself?

This is a TL1-2 world I'm envisioning. The kind of thinking you're proposing is mostly foreign to its people. That said, a corollary of the theme I'm looking it is that every race is capable both of a "play nice" approach and an ecologically imperialist approach.

Nomadic herders may not be all that concerned about lumber. Or for that matter about firewood, since you can cook on animal manure.

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

As to Mushroom farms, the Dwarves might simply know how to mix certain ores together to produce an energy rich soil for their mushrooms, there are fungi that live on minerals.

I require a reference for this, as it does not seem compatible with what I know about bioenergetics.

Bill Stoddard