Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

[dmjalund]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

I can't imagine a reason why I'd put a furred race in a desert climate.

Camels are furred

[Lucius]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

I ran a game once where I told the players that only superstitious rural folk believed in Elves.

 

Whenever someone asked about them, I had the character make a Streetwise roll, and if they made it, say "you're too smart to believe in fairy tales."

 

Then fifteen minutes later I'd hear "so, when do we meet the Elves?"

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Palindromedaries have fur too. Usually.

[Blue Jogger]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

In my fantasy world, all the elves and dwarves died (or otherwise disappeared) when magic went away 60 years ago. It came back about 30 years ago, and with it all these furry animal humanoids.

 

Still, one player is playing a half-elf (had enough human blood to survive the lack of magic) and another is playing a dwarf whose clan managed to survive 30 years of no magic through incredible hardship and sacrifice.

 

Some tropes are just hard to kill.

[Lezentauw]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

I actually differentiate quite strongly between culture and race in my games; it doesn't make sense to me that you might have tens or hundreds of thousands of dwarves in a universe, and they all have this insanely monolithic culture. Where are all the lazy dwarves who smoke weed? Why don't we read about the mariner dwarves?

 

In the aforementioned High Fantasy game with so many races, I have a document of cultures which borrowed heavily in concept and execution from a Rolemaster FRP supplement. I believe it was called Cultures and Races, and covered by generic Rolemaster and the Shadow World setting, and split races from cultures well.-

 

I agree with you on that. I really like it when you give multiple cultures to a given race, each culture representing a different nationality of said race. The only issue then, is coming up with all of those different cultures. Of course if you have over two dozen races, trying to come up with 3-5 cultures each may be quite a daunting task...

[Markdoc]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

The Fair Folk are not a single race' date=' but a myriad of beings who share some magical characteristics. They range from tiny sprites to huge giants and everything inbetween, but the majority of them don't look anything like a human. There are Fair Folk who look like a swirl of autumn leaves in the wind, ones who look like trees or animals, and so on. The ones that Men most commonly see and interact with tend to look and sound human-ish, but even those guys aren't really like humans at all.[/quote']

 

That's pretty much my take on the fair folk, in my game, as well.

 

cheers, Mark

[mayapuppies]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

I agree with you on that. I really like it when you give multiple cultures to a given race' date=' each culture representing a different nationality of said race. The only issue then, is coming up with all of those different cultures. Of course if you have over two dozen races, trying to come up with 3-5 cultures each may be quite a daunting task...[/quote']

This is the task I face with Kamarathin.

[AlHazred]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

I agree with you on that. I really like it when you give multiple cultures to a given race' date=' each culture representing a different nationality of said race. The only issue then, is coming up with all of those different cultures. Of course if you have over two dozen races, trying to come up with 3-5 cultures each may be quite a daunting task...[/quote']I don't mind so much when all the elves, dwarves, trolls, minotaurs, Grays, and cat-folk in a particular city have the same culture; that's more or less how it works in our US cultural melting pots. I also like to have different elves (for example) from different cities have wildly different cultures, or other combinations that buck trends.

 

One player in my High Fantasy game made a swashbuckling Minotaur airship mariner from the floating Sky City. I can't wait to see where this goes.

[Curufea]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

Camels are furred

 

And for that matter, big cats in general tend to live in desert climates. I'll have to ammend that too - I wouldn't have felines that are furred like non-big cats, or furred like non-desert dwellers in an Egyptian style climate.

[Odraude]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

I'm doing a campaign where I'm actively trying to make new and different races while still keeping some classic tropes that people enjoy. So far I have

 

Humans

 

Greil, a race of tall, athletic humanoids with red eyes, jet black hair, stolid features, and a closeness to divine magic.

 

Graenir, a race of amphibious humanoids with echolocation and the only race that can breathe underwater

 

Cylian, a race of lizardmen that can breath acid and live in volcanoes, resisting the fires and heat

 

Qxq (say it with me now... K-zzsh-k), an exotic race made completely from chaotic energies of creation. Have a giant maw on their stomach, may have multiple limbs and eyes and capable of different types of vision as chosen by the player (nightvision, IR, x-ray, Meat vision )

 

Oneiroi, a race of shapeshifting dreamlings from the plane of dreams that are brought into the material world from people's dreams. They have black or white skin with pale blue coloured hair and eyes. Upon their hands are three orifices that aloow them to eat dreams.

 

 

For more, you can check out this link

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/76897-World-of-Avina-(High-Fantasy-Campaign)

[Curufea]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

I agree with you on that. I really like it when you give multiple cultures to a given race' date=' each culture representing a different nationality of said race. The only issue then, is coming up with all of those different cultures. Of course if you have over two dozen races, trying to come up with 3-5 cultures each may be quite a daunting task...[/quote']

 

Surely you have this backwards?

You don't have multiple cultures for a race - you have multiple races for a culture. Or are all the races on your world xenophobic isolationists?

 

"Race A belongs to cultures A through C"

"Race B appears in cultures A, B and F"

"Race C is in cultures C through F"

etc..

[dmjalund]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

on a tangental note, has anyone played a campaign without humans in it?

[AlHazred]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

This is exactly how I do it in my game.

[tkdguy]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

on a tangental note' date=' has anyone played a campaign without humans in it?[/quote']

 

No, but I played in a one-shot game where the PCs were 3 elves and a half-orc. There were human NPCs, though. I have thought about trying a game without humans.

[Curufea]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

on a tangental note' date=' has anyone played a campaign without humans in it?[/quote']

 

Yes - all elves.

[lemming]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

Fur in desert == sun screen

[Old Man]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

Which is why many of you have fur on top of your head.

 

Don't ask me what the nose and ear fur is for, though. Actually, if you know, tell me, because I'd like to think there's a use for all this.

[The Suave]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

To keep out stray particles, same as eyelashes.

[Old Man]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

Right, but there comes a point where they become the stray particles, which defeats the purpose.

[Kristopher]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

I agree with you on that. I really like it when you give multiple cultures to a given race' date=' each culture representing a different nationality of said race. The only issue then, is coming up with all of those different cultures. Of course if you have over two dozen races, trying to come up with 3-5 cultures each may be quite a daunting task...[/quote']

 

See also, my work on my science fiction setting, and just the work to come up with the human cultures...

[Kristopher]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

on a tangental note' date=' has anyone played a campaign without humans in it?[/quote']

 

Yes. All "elves" (to avoid a multi-paragraph explanation).

[Kristopher]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

OK, getting back to this, in the fantasy setting I'm writing up off and on, I have various "People", each with a name denoting their origin or the god that most favored them.

 

The Sun People were lost in the great war that ended the first age, for example. (Using generic terms for brevity.) The Twilight People don't share a common origin, or gods, with the other Peoples, having instead been created by the myriad "children" of The Dark (an... entity best decribed as the incarnation of the primordial dark void, something like the Greek Khaos). The Moon People would be the closest thing to "elves". The Fire People live in the deep places of the world, nearer to their goddess of the underworld and fire. Etc.

[Shadowsoul]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

on a tangental note' date=' has anyone played a campaign without humans in it?[/quote']

 

No but I did design and run a one shot game set in a world without humans. It featured some of the races mentioned in my earlier post.

[AlHazred]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

Relatively rare for me to be resurrecting dead threads, but it's relevant -- I may not have invented all (er... possibly any) of the nonstandard races in my game, but I put in references where you can track them down!

 

The aforementioned races booklet has been posted here. Comments welcome, either there or here.

[Tasha]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

On a side note. I read that Dark Sun originally did not have some of the 'standard' races. I would of loved to see that setting' date=' in the original concept, instead of including the obligatory races.[/quote']

 

The original PUBLISHED form of Dark Sun had all of the standards, but they were very different from tolken. The Elves were Desert Nomads. The Halflings were primitive barbarian Deinonychus riders. Only one dragon and it ran the whole thingie. Also magic used lifeforce to work, and as such would kill plants etc when spells were cast.

[Old Man]

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

 

Yeah, that was one of the reasons I loved Dark Sun so much--putting a real twist on the "standard" races. Beardless dwarves. Treeless elves. Awesome.

 

There were several "non-standard" races too, of course. Thri-kreen, half-giants, half-dwarves, and (in 2nd ed.) Aarakocra.