My goblims are bat-like :)

This is all good and presents a nice break from the standard cookie-cutter fantasy but I usually balk at someone who tries to do all of it at the same time.

Next you'll tell me how your monstergirl waifu doesn't make you a furry.

>Furry
I don't think it means what you think it means.

>good necromancer
I'll believe it when you make your necromancers contract makers that bind people's souls and bodies to some time of their afterlife as workforce in exchange for goods and services during their lifetimes

I don't know man, what you guys say makes me worry me a bit sometimes.

I'm not here to argue it. I'm simply stating facts. You're a furry. Just like anyone who wants to fuck something not from this planet is a xenophile.

Deny it all you want it won't change the facts. Enjoy hiding your powerlevel.

>>my goblims are bat-like :)
>>my elfs have brow skin and are huge sloots :D
>>my trolls are humanoid and are south american themed :DD
>>my dwarfs have 3 eyes and also have wings :DDD
>>mine is a black and red alicorn stronger than celestia and luna combined :DDDD
>My OPs are all heterosexuals

>bat goblins
>Not zendikari rock goblins
Zendikar has the cutest goblin girls.

You know horse pussy is mostly a joke, right? Mostly. For most people.

Sure, why not?

Necromancers are all clerics.
They give pittances to unbelievers who sign their contracts.

OP here, my waifu is a human OC

Well, I mean there are certain racial tropes for fantasy races, Elves being tall, skinny, long lived things, blond and Dwarves being red headed, bearded and shit that no one really strays from all too much unless they wanna be unique which is kinda why OPs comments are so >haha imblying :^)

I dont know might be reading into it too much

>Dwarves being red headed

nigger what

wait shit are dwarves not usually red headed
am i shitting the bed right now

I think OP is referring to this kickstarted rpg where some races were turned into classes. Also, there was a butch dude in a pink frilly dress.

I'd fuck that Balrog.

You know how tall she is right,manlet?

Yes.
That makes her more desirable.

>my elfs have brow skin and are huge sloots
You've sold me on your setting.

He's right, you know.

I love this place, you guys understand me

...

>my dwarfs have 3 eyes and also have wings :DDD
>mine is a black and red alicorn stronger than celestia and luna combined :DDDD

Why do you faggots keep posting this garbage?

Even if someone is 'subverting' a cliche it never ever goes that fucking far and ridiculous. Dwarves may be literally made of stone, elves may be pure spirit beings, orcs may be some kind of weird demon creature in someone's weird 2original4u setting, but nobody takes dwarves and makes them 'le 3 eyes and wings lmao'

Take your strawman and put it in the trashcan. Along with yourself, while you're at it.

i don't get this pic

>2original4u

wew i'm stealing that lad

The South American Trolls are Blanka ripped from Street Fighter. So that'll be pretty shit.

First two aren't too offensive to my tastes.

>nobody takes dwarves and makes them 'le 3 eyes and wings lmao'

Pillars of Eternity. Dwarves are arboreal archers, elves are gypsies, and half-orcs come from some water place with shark racing and mass orgies.

I'd play that.

It's from Nichijou.
That dog is a reoccurring character.

It comes out at climaxes to show sympathy to pathetic characters.
I think it brings it's kid along to also show sympathy at some point?

So that means the person posting it doesn't care for tall women.
He's the one that needs the dog.

I thought it was WoW trolls.

You're cancer.

Maybe, personally wouldn't think of Jamaica as South American.

...

DISGUSTING.
Tell me more...

...

As i said, you're reddit.

I remember from the warcraft general,
Aztecs n shiet, m8.

Keep the salt coming.

>I think OP is referring to this kickstarted rpg where some races were turned into classes.
and the circle continues....

Au contraire, names people are familiar with sound less ridiculous, jarring and offputting and are more evocative. Draw them in with something familiar then blindside them with the twists. I don't generally do that but it's a valid strategy.

>Implying regular elves aren't sluts.

>elfs
>sluts
>ever

fuck off /d/egenerate, real life isn't like your shitty korean comics

>kickstarted rpg where some races were turned into classes.

i'm not, whatever you talking about, but that is a very stupid idea.
>implying my elf can't be a drunken brawler
>implying my dwarf can't be a necromancer

There's nothing wrong with brown elf qts, user.

>Draw them in with something familiar then blindside them with the twists. I don't generally do that but it's a valid strategy.
Nah, it's a fucking stupid strategy. First overburden them with expectations and assumptions coloring their image and completely bury any hint of actual imagination in your work, then pull the cheap "nuh-uh, but I made a twist" trick ironically further cementing the idea that you literally can't work with anything else than tropes and trope-subversion.

Seriously, this is a fucking terrible idea and always makes for shit fiction. If you have ideas, present those ideas: as they are, raw, actually imaginative and evocative. Don't bury them under tropes and established expectations. Subverting those expectations will ultimately not make those ideas anything more than a trope with the word "but" following it.

I mean it's reasonably common but not really part of the stereotype. Generally I see dwarves with brown, black or red hair.

Nigga are you serious? Subverting tropes are like half of all fiction in one way or another

It doesn't matter if a settings elves are pointy eared nature lovers with a penchant for magic, or a fungus race that have to keep to the forest to eat, as long as that shit is well written it doesn't matter if it fits in your retarded "le epic twist maymay"

only casuals

>Subverting tropes are like half of all fiction in one way or another
Yeah, the bad half. It does not really matter if your elves are pointy eared nature loves with talent for magic or fungus race, if you are already falling back on elves trope you can't you probably can't write for shit and you have already doomed your entire work to be a petty, meaningless, disposable genre fiction at the absolute best. And if there was actually a good idea in your mind, you have succesfuly killed it before it could even reach your reader.

>gargoyles
>drow/wood elves
>warcraft trolls
>?
>maybe some sort of nightmare

I don't know about the last 2, but surely the first few must have been intentional

So you genuinely think that as long as I don't call elves elves they're good? Exactly what do you think is an "original" idea? Because I can guarantee you it's some patchwork monstrosity made from other shit. Instead of focusing on "muh groundbreaking ideas" focus on making a good story and a well written world

>Necromancers are all clerics.

And there goes the "passionate researcher" trope, one of the few good tropes about mages in general.

Personally I'm more bothered when people make new nouns for mundane things just to show how different or futuristic or whatever their races are.

> He picked up the greeley next to the foom plate, twirling the ohickal noodles around.

> She put on her Glamis (what you would call an overcoat) and wrapped her shai'sha around her neck before finally slipping Maroowens over her hands to protect them from the cold.

Like just use fucking English. Or whatever language you're writing in. Don't just give fancy names to mundane shit to showcase how strange and awesome your world is.

Make it strange and awesome. Have a foom plate break down normally inedible matter into slurry that you flavour with different syrups and then reconstitute into different textures with your Greely. Different levels of detail and layering provides social context about conversation topics so that there is never overt conflict or confrontation while eating because the race doing so are descended from asocial carnivores and are instinctively guarded while eating.

Or some shit like that. But if it's a spade call it a fucking spade.

> Clerics aren't passionate researchers

Fun fact. Rabbinical studies are acceptable as an undergrad for law school.

Most religious officials are actually perfect for this trope, researching and debating religious events, records, writing etc.

Ignorant Priests are a Baptist and Arab thing.

>Because I can guarantee you it's some patchwork monstrosity made from other shit. Instead of focusing on "muh groundbreaking ideas" focus on making a good story and a well written world
You create a well written world PRECISELY by focusing on meaningful ideas and not tropes. Every monster, every supernatural and mythological concept is a patchwork of ideas, that is basically their definition: they are collections of associations and images combined to communicate some sort of more general idea.
The problem of using tropes is that you draw attention away from the concrete idea or image you are trying to convey, and instead associate and conjure up some generic, meaning-devoid stereotype that is used because it's a custom.

You want to communicate the idea of a nature-bound, beautiful and mysterious spirits of the forest. Then talk about those nature-bound, mysterious spirits, and who they are, what they look like, what traits they have, how you envision them.
But if you say "it's a fucking elf", you are going invoke the trope that has been used and formalized and washed out so many times that there is nothing actually special about them. And when I mean special, I don't mean "original", I mean their special role, their meaning within your particular story.
And you are not going to make it better if you are going to say "it's an elf - but wait, turns out it's a cannibal too!".

Focus on the meanings, not the tropes and shorthands. Then you might actually paint up an interesting world. That is what Tolkien did, and why he is still incomparably better than absolute majority of other fantasy authors.

>>?
What? You never heard of three eye mutants living in the earth?

They're obviously some sort of underdark monstrosity.

Kek that picture captured Op perfectly

>:DDDDDD

Not that user, but I can see where he's coming from. His point is that, if you're already using tropes and ready-to-use chunks in your world, the farthest you can go with your work will still permeate the common use of that trope. If you start your world with "I have elves", you not only miss out on the opportunity of making races with an actual identity in your story, you put your reader/player in the ELF mentality. Anything you do inside the general elf conception will just be seen as "normal elf stuff" no matter how creative you make it happen, and any trope subversion is very likely to create a reaction of "meh, so they just work as the plot needs and whatever", making your story much more shallow and any events related to said *elves* way less impactful.

There's a reason for 99% of trope subversions related to magic races being shit. It's hard to make it coherent, and way too easy to fuck up without even noticing.

I always feel kinda embarrassed when somebody articulates my point better than I could. But yeah, you nailed exactly what I had in mind.

I've always found the idea of fantasy fascinating, but I also found it extremely hard to actually find good ones, and usually end up reading mythology, folklore, mystically oriented romantism, magical realism or surreal fiction instead: and I've figured the real problem is actually in the way fantasy treats and works tropes.
I'm feeling like fantasy has become a library of vague and really empty shorthands and stereotypes that are just being arranged into slightly different order each time and then the author calls it a day. And I really find it damn shame, because it ironically leads to situation where a genre literally called "imagination" is the least imaginative in the world, and themes supposed to talk about wonder, awe, mystery, end up being the most mundane and dull.

Because beyond the author/GM/etc being a hack, you have the situation where if something is original or unique, there will inevitably be a contingent of autists who REEE and complain that they like 'good old traditional fantasy', or that it's just trying to be 2unique4u special snowflake shit. Case in point , Veeky Forums's own " only play sword and board NG human fighters with Anglo Saxon names" crowd

>you have the situation where if something is original or unique, there will inevitably be a contingent of autists who REEE and complain that they like 'good old traditional fantasy',
Except it really, really isn't about uniqueness or originality. It's about meaningfulness. You can have an elf, the generic archer-mage trope that is there because it's what you expect when somebody says the story is fantasy, and you can have a woodland spirit the represents the kind of romantic awe you feel when you are alone in an old, sun-soaked forest watching a clear spring bubble listen to the howl of the wind. They both can be superficially extremely similar.
A good storyteller speaks about relatable and meaningful concepts. A bad storyteller is more tempted to use prefabricated templates of concepts - mostly ones derived by tearing meaningful concepts of better authors out of context. Both might end up telling almost the same bloody story, event from event, concept from concept. Both can tell a story of a knight who encounters woodland spirits on his way to save princess. Except one will be good and memorable, the other won't.

It's true that my perspective is largely skewed by the fact that I'm far more preoccupied by a narrativists approach: I mostly write and read, and when I GM, I do run "unorthodox" campaigns with a rather unorthodox group of players. One could make a fair argument that I "don't know what it is to GM an average player group".

...

I will never forget that one post in one of the worldbuilding threads that said "IN MY SETTING HUMAN ACTUALLY MEANS LIZARDMAN".

I think that perfectly describes 99% of Veeky Forums's worldbuilding.

>I think that perfectly describes 99% of Veeky Forums's worldbuilding.
That is unfair. Most of Veeky Forums actually condemns such attitudes, there are only occasional "bad apples" and oddities. Outside of Veeky Forums, which is a rather exceptional bunch of people perhaps too engrossed and entangled with various meta-aspects of the medium, however things start to get more like this.

Eh, my dwarf representations got kinda rolled into other aspects of afanc myths and the resulting creature may seem pretty odd, but so what? All fantasy need not be a wholesale Tolkien ripoff. That would suck. Tolkien himself was cherrypicking myths and tweaking them in odd ways to make them his own. The myths in turn were convoluted messes of appropriation, adaptation, and heavy artistic liberties. This has been the standard for several millennia, your words are not sacred.

>bat-like goblins
i'd say that shit is forgivable, really. as long as it's only visually, it's not even that far of a cry from a normal goblin.

exception to the rule: clockwork orange inspired stuff.

>goblins are gross little green people who were created by a witch rubbing mud in her puss
>elves and trolls are the result of a few generations of Eladrin and spriggans mutating due to Earth's foreign magic
>dwarves are a natural earth people, cousins of orcs
I don't know what that last one means, but how'd I do?

Still the problem of using a trope, then explaining it with some small specifics.
What we learn is that you know the genre clichés and you gave them some degree of token changes so that you can claim some form of authorship. Why should anyone care about that?

Why should anyone care about some form of completely original or different race? Why should anyone care about anything? I mean if you are who I think you are, your advice thusfar seems to boil down to " be a really good storyteller", which not everyone can do, and certainly not everyone can do in the context of a tabletop rpg setting. What exactly do you expect people to do?

Oh for FUCK SAKE you people are morons. The fuck kind of argument is this supposed to be?
>Why should anyone care about some form of completely original or different race?
NOT. ABOUT. ORIGINALITY AT FUCKING ALL. How many times does this need to be repeated.
Context. Idea. Meaning. Those things fucking matter.
>Why should anyone care about anything?
THE FUCK is this question supposed to be? You are telling fucking stories, and you are asking "how'd I do" for fuck sake: you know all fucking well this is a completely moronic question.
>What exactly do you expect people to do?
At least fucking try and think about what they are telling and why. Just stop and ask "why am I doing this?" "What is the actual reasoning, what do I need to achieve, and how does this help me achieve that."
And considering that every single fucking storyteller: be a GM, or a writer, or a world builder or anything aims universally for one thing: PEOPLE CARING ABOUT WHAT HE HAS TO SAY, START ASKING THAT QUESTION:
"WHY SHOULD ANYONE CARE ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR IDEA, THIS PARTICULAR STORY I'M TRYING TO TELL."
Why "goblins"? What does it stand for: why is the thing you call "goblin" in your story, and what does associating the thing with the word "goblin" achieve? What fucking story do you want to tell and how intergral they are to it, and in what way?
Just think about the god damn things you are talking about for a second. Don't just mindlessly chain the same twenty stupid words with equally stupid mindless clarifications, existing for the sake of going through the same bloody motions.

>Why should anyone care about anything?
Well then go die or something, you fucking nihilist.

Why does there have to be some deeper meaning to it? Not everything has to be deep, senpai.

My tip for integrating new ideas: write as if your players never have seen a fantasy setting before.

You need to introduce your setting as a whole, your original ideas are not any more or less important than genre conventions. You need to introduce everything properly to your audience.

Difference for the sake of difference is nothing you, unfortunately.

> is nothing you
Nothing new.

> my Balrog best friend is Tsundere and won't stop trying to cross my bridge?

I'm not a nihilist, you retarded faggot. I'm just asking why anyone should care about anything anyone has written, because apparently that other guy won't unless every aspect is filled with *symbolism* and *meaning*, because God forbid someone want to just have some element because it appeals to them, or just because it's fucking easier to use the well established, ingrained tropes.

Stay snug, oinker.

Does that not get kind of tiresome? Having to explain basically every little thing?

No, you are the faggy retard. "Why should anyone care about anything?" is the last evasion for someone being backed up in a corner by arguments, just proclaiming that nothing really matters anymore as a braindead attempt at trying to save face on an anonymous image board.

Christ, you sound like a pretentious little shit.

Define "deep". Because I seriously think you might be mistaking "deep" for "any at fucking all."

Do you seriously not understand that communication is a transfer of meaningful and relevant ideas from one to another?
>because God forbid someone want to just have some element because it appeals to them,
That is the problem: nobody gives a fuck about what appeals to you when you yourself can't even fucking explain what makes it appealing and why is it important. You are not telling those stories for your fucking self: your players or audience don't see into your mind (hell, I doubt you actually understand yourself enough to actually figure out why do you give greater importance and preferences to one thing over another).
And that is by the way why 2/3rds of all world-building discussion ends up with people talking to them fucking selves and nobody giving two fucks about everybody else's world. And why two thirds of all table top campaigns fall into stupid murder-hobo fest or an unintended parody of them selves: that is exactly what happens when you can't make your players give two fucks about the narrative you are inviting them into.

The amount of explaining should equal to the amount of importance you place on individual aspect of the world within the context of your story. If it's important, you should take the time off and explain it from ground up, because if you just use a trope label, you are at a serious risk of actually creating entirely false image and assumptions in the audience.

It was basically in exasperation at that other faggot saying that no one will/should care about a setting/story that features any variation on the tropes and cliches of fantasy, as opposed to whatever alternative he's trying to suggest (which literally seems to just be "be good at stories", which is profoundly unhelpful). I really have no idea what the fuck he's arguing for, or how any of his ideas are meant to be applied to the context at hand. Ttrpgs aren't a traditional story, so most of his advice seems pretentious at best in that regard

Alright, we may have gotten off on the wrong foot here. I was overly hostile, and I apologize. I believe we may have differing opinions and approaches as to what makes a good story and a good tabletop campaign, but I can at least see where you're coming from. You make some cogent points, even if you come across somewhat condescendingly.

>Anything about that
>Sounding fun

I hate how Fantasy-Hipsters are a thing now.

>deconstruction
Lefty Newspeak at its best.

Postmodernism is the cancer of arts.

I already have green implike goblins, pale arrogant elves, big greenskin trolls, short bearded human dwarves, and... You just threw in a MLP reference for some reason.

Bluntly, any setting that's going to try and win me over needs a take on the various fantasy races I haven't seen billions of times before. Hell, I've seen dark-skinned sexy elves before, too, so that's not original. But the others are an attempt, and I might be interested in that setting based on other details. But if you just want dwarfy dwarves and gobliny goblins? I've got dozens of books with those in, I don't need another one.

New guy here, you are 100% right those people are being morons.

>1960s
>new

>implying you''re not just him patting himself on the back

They're AW style playbooks, actually. The idea is every PC is a people's representative, a la the fellowship, and thus gets to describe and worldbuild for their people and lands. Concept is good, art ranges from good to cringeworthy, Veeky Forums shat the bed because muh tumblr.