fantasy races

[The Colonel]

Another fantasy race I like to rip off is TSR's Yuan-ti.

Although I tend to turn the TSR geneolgy for them around and have the purebloods be the high status ones.
My revised fluff for them shows that they were once normal humans, but their ancestors made a bad deal with a powerful, snake themed evil (on one occasion this was the origin of the 'Serpent of Eden' equivalent in the world's theology). The evil power paid up on his side of the deal, but took his repayment by corrupting their (genome) with snake-ness - every generation gets a little more snakelike, until eventually they degenerate into big, sapient snakes, most of whom are incurably insane. A few generations more and the sapience goes as well. They eventually discovered they could buy time by outbreeding with wild-type humans, but they've never been able to do this on a large enough scale to stabilise their population...

[Gef]

Maybe I'm the odd man out here, but I'm running a fantasy world based on the stereotypes as I understand them, and I have a large number of races. It seems to be working well.

My basic notion is that stereotypes will give something familiar to the players in a weird world, for extrapolating from the stereotypes will yield plenty of weirdness.

Actually, I've found that explaining the stereotypes generates its own weird implications. I have meddlesome fairies who tried to make their own version of human worshippers (the now extinct green man), an unstable species which variegated into goblinoids, which were themselves unstable enough that the fairies tried magically hybridizing them with natural critters. Later I have a god-king who ruthlessly united all of these races, so that long after he abdicated there is still a common culture among goblinoids and some humans whose values the "good" guys find deplorable. Fairies are among the good guys now, but goblins have legends that recall when those immortal beings were inexperienced bumblers playing god with goblin ancestors as guinea pigs.

GEF

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

Dwarf (Middle Earth) - Tolkien's dwarves were actually a good deal more interesting than stereotypical D&D dwarves.

Three other things to note about them: First, the nature of dwarves is fundamentally different from that of humans and elves (which are closely related to humans). It's hard to explain unless you know the Middle-Earth creation story, but it's like dwarves only superficially resemble humanoids. They are flesh and blood, but their mentality may be somewhat like an earth elemental. It might be comparable to the Gloranthan elves being plants.

Second, their culture is kept completely secret. When they are in the presence of humans or elves, they imitate human culture, language, and naming conventions, but their own culture, and their real names, are kept strictly secret from all non-dwarves.

Third, the females are bearded and look and sound identical to the males. Only dwarves can tell the sexes apart. Their sex ratio is also uneven, males outnumber females 2-1 or 3-1.

[Humabout]

I had, at one point, created a setting where humans, elves, dwarves, and gnomes where all related. It went something like this:

Long ago, there were elves. A great spirit appeared to them promising them an eternity of happines and bliss if they'd migrate to another continent the spirits had prepared for them - a land of powerful magic and such. Naturally, many elves decided to go, but many stayed behind. As the elvish migration moved northward, groups settled the new lands they found and dropped out of the migration. The first of these populated a northern region much like Finland - a beautiful forested land pocked with lakes and rivers. Still further north among the frozen montains, another group settled. Finally, the remainder reached he sea and set sail for their continent.

Eventually, the elvish migration made it to the promised continent where they gained great magical powers and were slowly altered by the land itself. They gained immortality and magical prowess unmatched elsewhere. Eventually, a group of them set sail back to their ancestoral homelands.

Upon returning, they found that the elves they had left behind had adapted to their homes. I the northern mountains, they had grown shorter and broader and largely took refuge from teh arctic winds underground. Furhter south in the land of lakes, the evlish community had taken to a nearly amphibious life. While they lived in subterranean homes surrounded by lush gardens, their round doors always faced water and were often carved right into the water's bank. Futher south, still, they found a cosmopolitan mix of tribal life and cities.

Some other spinoffs included some cannibalistic midget islander halflings (think Flayers from Diablo 2), and carniverous merfolk that were fond of swarming ships and eating the crew. Many myths and legends surrounded their origins, but they all bare the common thread that they were also descended from the original elves.

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

The elves evolving into new species is interesting, but the rest sounds very similar to Tolkien's elvish history.

[D10]

The Half Lycans

The barbarian tribes to the north lived among the lycanthropes for a long time (there’s only werewolves in that region).

These people revere the Frost Moon, one of the two moons of Mysm, and they believe they are blessed by it, for ages this blessing reflected as the werewolves, the sons of the moon, which fought side by side with all the clan members in their hybrid and wolf forms against the orcs by ages, but at a point, something changed, an evil god of madness cursed the other moon to make the lycanthropes lose control and not be able to distinguish friend from foe and enter mad rage while under the light of the Serantia the other moon.

They started killing everyone while under the light of Serantia, and the other clan members decided that it should have an end, they hunted down all the werewolves until the day came where they were weakened, and the ones that were not killed managed to run away to exile.

Many of them had wives witch were not werewolves but were carrying their children, the Clan lords didn’t knew what to do in relation to them and decided to take all the woman to the Frost Lady, Chosen of the Frost Moon, Leader of the Frost Moon Clan, in her infinite wisdom and endless power the Lady asked the Moon what to do in that situation and the Frost Moon answered (yes it’s like demi-god like entity who felt pity for those people who tried all their existence to please her and occasionally answered the girl known as Frost Lady, who was in fact the living manifestation of said entity, but the barbarians didn’t knew that, they just believed the girl was chosen) the Frost Lady did a miracle and blessed the children of all the woman who were pregnant and standing there in front of her that day, their children would not be man nor werewolves, they would carry the blessing of the Frost moon, but not the curse of Serantia, their bloodline would be weakened, and their blood would not be as strong as a normal werewolf, but they carry clear traits of their fathers.

Their hair is always long and white, they often have fur, but just as much as any really hairy human would have, their eyes are white like the moon that bless them, they can see in low light and twice as far as a normal human, their face resembles a wolf in some aspects, their teeth is sharp and pointy, and they have really sharp and long nails.

[Widowlander]

Well, here is my two cents. First and formost the "human-animal" hybrid race thing has been done to complete death. Stay away, I repeat, stay away from that avenue. Cat people, dog people, rat people, danish people, no matter how you spin it ARE NOT COOL. Too often do we equate fantasy settings with wierdo races. That's a very tolkienian outlooks and hence, since everything fantasy in this age patterns itself after that brilliant outlooks, its become stale and hum drum.

You want to find some cool races? Look around you. The world you live in is filled to the gils with races, colors, creeds of all kinds. Take the minimal differences in the races of the world you live in and curtail them, buff them up to fantasy-like preportions to fit your world.

In the setting I'm creating humans, yes humans (remember them?), are the dominating races. No elves, no gnomes, no cat people, no (lol) FERRETS! Just humans in all their diverse splender.

Some would say "well THAT'S boring" but give thought to the diverdities around you. Hell, use steriotypes as a bases. in my world my "elves" are actually high born humans who are still connected to God more so than others. The humans in our world are more akin to low born humans. More populated, skilled, daring, and free spirited, but not as connected to the world or the heavens as the high born. You have the Greymen, strong, tribal, fierce and cunning, mountain men, but suspicious of outsiders. The Iriasa, cunning frontiersmen, traders and merchiants, always looking to travel and see new sites. Etc, etc, etc.

I could go on but why? All I'm saying is oftentimes we overlook the beauty and diversity of the world around us for inspiration. I'm not saying don't come up with cool races outside of the human scope, but let's not dive too deep into teenage mutant ninja turtle action figure commercial land either....

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

I'm of the opposite opinion. Humanoid-centric, and especially human-centric fantasy, has been overused for too long. There's no reason that sapience should be impossible for non-humanoid species. It shouldn't be true in science fiction, and it also shouldn't be true in fantasy, unless you have a cosmological reason for it to be the case in that world. There's no reason at all why life-forms that don't happen to look almost identical to humans should be incapable of harboring intelligence. Just look at our own world, where dolphins and elephants are so highly intelligent already. They aren't sapient, but why can't they be in a fantasy world? There's no reason that sapience should be inherently impossible in beings that aren't humanoid, so there's no a priori reason to restrict fantasy to nothing but humanoids.

People often assume that if it isn't humanoid, a fantasy race has to resemble a real world animal, plant, or fungus. But this just isn't true. It can resemble anything you want. Even if something does resemble a real world animal with opposable thumbs, there's no reason it has to be half-human.

[Widowlander]

I agree Vaevictus. I wasn't speaking out against specifically non-human settings as a matter of fact I encourage thinking outside of the box and normalcy of the day to day. My commentary was mainly about the sort of "(insert animal)-man" silliness that many were suggesting throughout this thread. All I was hoping to spark was an interest in things OTHER than the hybrid MANimal races that seem to pop up everywhere. I find THAT boring and overused. In a campaigne I'm building I've toyed around with a race that doesn't incorperate a physical body, but mainly exsist through telepathic suggestion and possession. All I'm saying is just think outside the norm every now and again beyond the stock elfish, animal hybrids. You never know what you might come up with.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by Johnny Angel

I was reading what many of you said about races, and I was trying to come up with what the split-race is meant to embody. As I've previously mentioned, I imagine the race's belief structure would be heavily based on astrology and astronomy. I'm not 100% sure what the race would embody though.

That may be a signal that you're over-thinking that one race. If you can't fit all of your concepts into one seamless whole, then maybe you've got too much stuff crammed in there. The idea of a race of humanoids where each birth is always a set of twins, possibly linked telepathically or empathetically, might be interesting enough without the day/night and astronomy aspects. You could then take the astronomy-astrology thing and apply it to a different race and work out what its principles are. Here's how I would reason out the races on the planet:

I  TWINNED RACE
   A  The Twinned Race is always born in pairs.
      Q1   Why is this race always born as twins?
         1   It may be part of their natural biology.
This might make them different enough from humans
that they cannot interbreed.
         2   It may be part of their fundamental
religious beliefs; their fertility goddess has blessed
their race for some reason.
      Q2   What about triplets or quads?  Can this
race support multiple births?
      Q3   How does sex enter into it?
         1   Twins are always the same sex.
         2   Twins are always the opposite sex.
         3   Twins can be either opposite-sexed or same-sexed. 
      Q4   What are the biological consequences of
an always-twinned race?  That is, how would they
look different?
         1   Since the danger of multiple births in
humans is premature delivery — babies born when
they are not yet full size — perhaps women of this
race might be taller than human women, or have a
longer torso than humans, or more space in her body
devoted to her womb.
         2   Women are the same height; but children
might naturally be born sooner (a shorter gestation
period, and therefore smaller), and grow up more
quickly than humans.
            2a  This fits in well with I.B.2a, reincar-
nation.  Children need less instruction because they
already have some or all the memories from a previous
life.  It also fits in well with I.B.4, mind-sharing; child-
ren need less instruction because they can be taught
two things simultaneously (what one learns, the other
knows).
         3   Women might have to breast-feed two (or
more!) children at once.  Multiple-birth species, such
as cats and dogs, likewise have multiple mammary
glands.
   B   The two twins are linked in some way.
      Q1   In what manner can they be linked?
         1   They could be linked by full telepathy,
possibly with a range limitation.
         2   They could be linked by empathy (emotions
only).
         3   They could be linked by magic (in the
manner of voodoo dolls; what affects one twin also
affects the other).
      Q2   Why are the two twins linked?
         1   They may share some karma or destiny; the
link is granted by the cosmic fates.
         2   They may share a soul:  perhaps instead of
two people, this is one person born twice into two
different bodies.  The link is created by the gods.
            2a   If this is one person born twice, the
twins might be a reincarnation of someone:
reincarnated twice, into two different bodies.  That
might explain why they are linked.
         3   The link might not be biological or religious,
but part of the culture:  every pair of twins gets a
magic twin-telepathy earring at age 5, for instance.
This means the link can be taken away.
         4   They might share a mind.  They literally are
only one person.  What one twin learns, the other knows,
and vice-versa.  When one person is injured, it may
disrupt the other's spellcasting.
II STAR RACE
   A   One race has its culture and interests in astro-
nomy and/or astrology.
      Q1   Why?  What is astronomy used for?
         1   Navigation
         2   Time-keeping
         3   Scheduling the harvests
         4   etc.