"Races" vs. "Monsters"

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by Sinanju

I'm planning to have orcs on horseback roaming the vast plains of part of my world, calling themselves the Horse Clans (not to be confused with the horse clans of a certain novel series). I suspect they and the centaurs would be mortal enemies, since they kinda compete for the same "niche".

I like this concept. It seems to fit the Cidri version of orcs really well, though TBH, I never cared for the default presentation for the race in TFT. Orcs work OK in many fantasy settings, but they felt unnecessary in TFT since they are mechanically no different from humans. In my campaign, I chose to buff up hobgoblins to fill the role occupied by orcs... plus they now make excellent muscle for their overlords in the Goblin empires.

[FireHorse]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

Our TFT version was heavily influenced by the original Cardboard Heroes design... more like a primitive deep-dwelling offshoot of dwarves.

For whatever it's worth, the word "Kobold" came from German folklore, in which it generically refers to any kind of dwarf/elf/goblin/pixie/sprite etc. (folklore doesn't usually get specific or distinguish between these things).

I have no idea where the reptilian D&D version came from.

[KevinJ]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

Sounds like your kobolds (aka. the People) are based the reptilian version from D&D. Do they share the dragon-decendant delusion as well?

Our TFT version was heavily influenced by the original Cardboard Heroes design... more like a primitive deep-dwelling offshoot of dwarves.

When I drew the map back in 1987 it was going to be part of a normal fantasy world (there are notes on the map with direction and distance to other continents). But the map got put away and I didn't discover it against till 2010 or so and I was toying with the concept of "What if the players don't know they aren't humans." I just didn't have a system tied to the concept or world yet. a while ago (summer 2017) I was looking at a game world to run a game and thought "Why don't I run TFT and this "players don't know they aren't humans" idea. I worked up the game and world background in ab out 3 months and started running.

In Goranth, The People are the literal children of the Gods. With a single Mother goddess and 3 fathers. The People don't have religious issues because they still see the Gods every couple of years. Everyone else on the planet was brought by The Outsider who keeps trying to invade Goranth, but heroes always rise to stop him/her/it/xi. So the thrall, white devils, stone folk, norks, gobblings, grey gobblings, flying rockmen, etc are all from other worlds.

[KevinJ]

Originally Posted by KevinJ

So the thrall, white devils, stone folk, norks, gobblings, grey gobblings, flying rockmen, etc are all from other worlds.

Technically speaking, they are the monsters of Goranth.

[warhorse11h]

This really doesn't belong in this thread, but I am glad that I have all my original books and digital copies as well. Plus all the microgames that were published. Thanks to that, for good or ill, I can go through them and pick out which versions of monsters and races that I like and disregard the others. As well as sundry other differences between the games then and now.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by warhorse11h

This really doesn't belong in this thread, but I am glad that I have all my original books and digital copies as well. Plus all the microgames that were published. Thanks to that, for good or ill, I can go through them and pick out which versions of monsters and races that I like and disregard the others. As well as sundry other differences between the games then and now.

This is exactly how I feel about it. Having the original source material simply gives me more options. For everything from which kind of monster to use, to what to do with my XP rules and so on...