Something that's bothered me for ages

Can we stop with "reimagining" things?

>my elves are elves but x
>my dwarves are dwarves except y
>my trolls have no similarity at all to what any other human has ever thought of as a troll, but it's a troll
>etc

This isn't creative, it's lazy. I'm reminded of how Bioware was all our dwarves aren't the old white man writer dwarves, and the reality turned out to be that instead of stereotyping Scottish/Irish people, they stereotyped Jews. In doing this, you create a dissonance in your audience that's different from a straight subversion like Drow versus DnD Elves where the audience has to keep reminding themselves of whatever assorted distinctions that you have made, which is fucking annoying.

To be painfully clear, I'm not against taking something like the idea of "elf" then changing it up, especially in regard to fundamental aspects of the trope. I'm against doing this, then insisting it is still an elf. Give it a different name. Hell, look at the drow, as mentioned above. They're elves but in caves and evil (fuck this newer "drow are just black elves" stuff).

This distinction is small, but very important. It still allows you the ability to explain your idea of whatever in terms of the familiar because it doesn't try to redefine the familiar term that's being used to describe it.

And if you're constructing something entirely new, to slap a familiar name on it is just a way to garner further confusion.

The absolute worst of this is when you start going out into the world at large and calling for a change of the entire idea because you're bored with it (protip: characteristics of characters are never boring, it's what you do with the characters that's boring).

>tl;dr if you make fundamental changes to a widely known idea, fucking rename it.

You might think your idea is novel, but that's just the flow of the tide. Once you're sick of playing this song because it's gotten stale, you'll find yourself re-imagining things inadvertently and hating yourself for being a hypocrite.

Just do everything with moderation and with good taste. Everything else is just the ebb and flow of the tides.

> wanting endless cavalcades of the same boring shit

Autism hates change

why are you against evolution?

Interesting perspective, OP, I'll keep that in mind.

However, I think it depends on the degree of change. If it is still recognisably a dwarf or an elf, but with a specific twist, then a different name would only confuse and annoy the audience.

For example, the dwarves in my setting are strong swimmers and can see into the ethereal. This is related to specific aspects of my setting, but despite these two traits being unusual for dwarves in fantasy the dwarves in my setting are still recognisably dwarfy. Since all the dwarves in my setting can do this, there is no need to define it as a variant of a dwarf; that is just how dwarves are in this campaign.

to be fair, i wish people would just come up with new ideas.

elves and dwarves and orcs are not needed for a fantasy world or story.

I'm fine with change. What I dislike is someone going "these insectoid creatures that look like giant ants are dwarves".
Evolution is a gradual thing -- this is even true of language. Tolkien's (and by extension, our) version of creatures from the Edas didn't pop into popular acceptance over night. Popularization of these ideas through other media only strengthens the popular understanding. Moving away from them strongly is best achieved through not calling back to them in the first place.
>it depends on degree
I actually agree entirely, but I'd also point out that degree in this case is also dependent upon how ingrained a given aspect is to the popular idea of the concept in question...like changing the love of gold in dwarves is a necessarily less impacting change than making them all tall.

No one cares what you think Capybara.

Not every change means progress.

but tolkien did exactly what you said you were against in the op, took the existing ideas of elves and evolved them into his own thing

>to be fair, i wish people would just come up with new ideas.
>elves and dwarves and orcs are not needed for a fantasy world or story.
These are two entirely different, unrelated things.

I get what you're saying, but I promise you that your problem isn't so much that elves, dwarves, and orcs are commonly used in fantasy, it's what's done with them that's the boring, same old shit.

If you want an inside view of how this happens from two authors who haven't found a cliche that they didn't want to beat their audience over the head with, read The Annotated Chronicles by Weiss and Hickman. They talk a lot about the writing process in the annotations, and a lot of it is kinda painful if you're one who likes novel ideas. Likewise, look up the story of how The Dresden Files came about.
Nope. At the time of his publishing, there wasn't an extant, popular understanding of what a dwarf was, and even his versions took time and reinforcement from other media to become the basis for the popular conceptions.

Oh my god, are you the "dwarves can't be antlike" fag from the dwarf thread?

is that why autism keeps naming things 'elves' and 'dwarves'?

I didn't say dwarves though I said elves. before him the popular understanding of elves was of the keebler variety which do not resemble his in any way except in name

huh? no.

>beards on female dwarves
Fuck this meme

1) not in the same media space/acting in same function
2) are you seriously trying to suggest that the prevailing ideas of "elves" were at that time as popular and pervasive as they are now?

Ah. Sorry then, there was a guy who kept harping on the same point in the other thread. I'll say the same thing to you I did to him: I think there's a lot of wiggle room in the dwarf/elf/orc/etc archetype, and so long as you hit the major points and capture the feel of the race/their role, then I think you'd be fine. The race names do carry a lot of connotations, which can actually be helpful. It tells you a lot about a race in shorthand, and so long as you make clear what you've changed beforehand then you should be fine. I get where you're coming from, but I disagree that using the same nomenclature is a bad idea.

1) is just goalpost moving, elves in stories are elves in stories regardless of what media they are contained in

2) yes? elves were of the keebler variety in fairy tales for hundreds of years before tolkien evolved them into his totally different except for name version

This post deserves a response.

>other thread
I saw that post and it's part of the reason I posted this thread (it's something I've thought about quite a bit irrespective of that thread), but I didn't post in it.
>but I disagree that using the same nomenclature is a bad idea.
Why? Seriously.
In what way is it better to insist on "your elves" (or whatever) are "elves", and not just calling them "Bobs" (but actually a name with a little thought in it), then when you introduce them, explain them as "elves with [your changes]".

Again, I point to the drow as a way of doing this kind of thing right -- and notice how drow actually stands pretty well on its own as a concept just because they bothered to name them.
>goalpost moving
Not in the slightest.
>yes?
No, elves weren't of the "keebler variety" in fairy tales for hundreds of years. But aside from your profound ignorance of not only the depiction of elves through history, you're showing a willful ignorance of HOW these changes take place and when they do and in what manner they do. The very fact that you can throw off "keebler" or reference "santa's" or "tolkienesque" even goes to show that the medium and function matter.

Not really.

It relies on the mistaken belief that some trope like tolkienesque races are what make a given story interesting. It also implies that I'll ever make profound changes to some well-defined popular concept without renaming it.

This makes me wonder about how to feel on my dwarves. They weren't too different from fantasy dwarves until they threw magic into the world + the setting itself being in the 1800~1900s.

I just tried to develop them as their society might in that time.

That I actually have no problem with calling dwarves.

now you're just displaying your utter hypocrisy on the topic, you have no problem with tolkien changing elves from keebler variety little folks like in the elves and the shoemaker from literally hundreds of years ago to a tall warrior race, but are whining about others doing the same thing

Fuck me you're literally (literally literally) ignorant as hell about this topic.

No, I'm not being a hypocrite in this matter, I'm drawing a distinction that you're too ignorant to comprehend, before you even claim that you understand it and disagree with it this line
>are whining about others doing the same thing
reveals that you have absolutely no understanding and are trying to equivocate when my basic point is that they are not the "same thing".

there is absolutely no distinction to be made between the two and the fact you are attempting anyways does actually display your blatant hypocrisy, your medically-diagnosable autism (not meme autism) just doesn't allow you to see it. you keep raging against the reimagining machine though, son

Boy you'd hate my current setting, OP. Its got all kinds of "with a twist " races and such

There's no distinction between a diffuse, poorly defined idea (which was actually massively different than your idiotic "keebler" deal, but that's beside the point) that is only marginally spread through greater culture and an idea being so widespread that when a word is mentioned most everyone in the western world will conjure what amounts to the same image?
Congratulations. Thank you for such a valued contribution to the thread.

A counterpoint: who likes to look at a setting, and the playable races are Humans, the Smeesrak (sentient corn stalks), Bohibos ( humanoid ant hills), Garbanzos (bean fueled mutant badger-centaurs, and Gingriches (spherical amphibious politicians) . Its much easier to either draw from myth and legend like the old timers did, or more likely to draw from our wealth of pop culture and fiction, and modify as you see fit

I feel like I've seen this before.
But As far as I can tell, people need some grounding to a known idea to help them understand what you are trying to do.

>if you make fundamental changes to a widely known idea, fucking rename it.

OP may be a faggot, but I agree with him completely.

>Its much easier to either draw from myth and legend like the old timers did, or more likely to draw from our wealth of pop culture and fiction, and modify as you see fit
I get that and agree. I'm just saying, don't insist that your sentient cornstalks are "elves".
Sure, but that's still different from "no, I know this cat looks like a dog and acts like a dog, but it's a cat". Especially in terms of RPGs where you're sitting there talking to people, come up with a name for your whatever then describe it as "like, x but y". Don't say it's x.
>OP may be a faggot
Only Sunday through Tuesday.

Exactly. The traditional races work pretty well as shorthand, and as bases to work off of. If you go completely off the reservation and your elves/dwarves/etc have nothing to do with any part of the common tropes , then yeah call it something else because you're probably just trying to be unique and contrarian with your hideous, subterranean ape elves, but if your whatever is still recognizable and resonant with the feel of the race, then giving them the name both informs and reinforces that

I'm a big fan of mixing up classic fantasy races in such a way that they're still recognizably what they are. Sometimes it's cool when a setting's elves are drawn from a different mythology, or take some aspect of the "classic" fantasy elf and play it up, like emphasizing their fae and alien nature.

Those things are really tasty

No no!
Better not do it, or else OP will be mad! He'll be upset. So please don't.

It relies on you throwing a hussy fit about a non-issue you consider to be a cosmic crime.

Wow, you two are butthurt.

I like doing this, reskinning the races to fit other cultures. I have made Dwarfs roman and chinese at separate times in aesthetic, but overall their theme is pretty much the same. No one would look at my roman armor dwarfs in their organized legions and say "not scotsmen or jews? REEEEEEE" when at their core they are still stocky, stubborn industrialists who look like dwarfs.

It may be worth noting that sometimes the world itself is detailed and different enough to warrant many changes to races.

Consider humans and how diverse they can get across settings.

In such a case would the diverse groups still identify as the overall group or would they more likely have names for each group...like oh, drow, high elf, moon elf, and wood elf.

It's ok, hush now, mommy's here, she won't let that big bad DM change his elves in his setting that you will never know about or play in.

IRL people in the past identified quite strongly as German, French, Russian, Chinese ETC ETC. Heck don't even need to godwin this thread. Go to WW1 and before that. Imperialism certainly put an "individual race" of humans ahead of humanity as a whole.

Elves are a bit different in that we often name them like pokemon. (fire type elves, moon type elves) Further in fantasy worlds Elves are often not full civilizations or have some reason they are not fully in cities. So they tend to also be way less about how their civilization has grown as a civilization and more about their pokemon traits.

But that starts a different argument then what OP made.

We have this thread every couple of days.

Your autism is showing. Calm down.

The pokemon names people give elves come from misunderstanding Tolkien's terminology. There were Deep Elves, Sea Elves, Fair Elves, Grey Elves, Green Elves etc. but those were informal terms for separate peoples of the same species rather than different sub-species. Those are the Noldor, Vanyar, Falmari (originally the Teleri but the only ones who actually completed the Great Journey rather than splitting in Middle-Earth were called Falmari) Sindar and Nandor (those last two later merge to become Wood Elves with the odd Noldor left from the First Age) respectively

Dammit, now I want to eat a capybara...

>misunderstanding
Eh, not too sure that's fully the case. In DnD (only citing because it's the big daddy in pnprpgs and has done a shitton to establish tropes), a wood elf is different from a high elf is different from a drow, etc.

I doubt it tastes all that good. There's almost no rodent type animal that tastes good. If they have a musk gland, that's super fucking true.

Don't the chinese breed rats for eating?

Confirmed for never having eaten capybara meat
It is actually quite good and goes well in vinagrette preserves

Koreans treat fisheyes as a treat. Doesn't make it good.
I'd try it, but I've honestly never had a rodent meat that was good. Beaver, nutria, squirrel, groundhog, etc. all at best meh to me.

I can understand not wanting to call 'reimagined' races by their previous names, I get where you're coming from. But if you explain them as 'elves with [whatever]', then what's the point of renaming them?

I'm not disagreeing with you, but you are aware that this practice predates tabletop gaming and Tolkien, right? Elves and dwarves existed before Tolkien, but not everyone agreed on what defined one.

It might sound stupid to you, because you've probably been dowsing yourself in fantasy shit for years, but people generally hate change; in this particular case, a lot of people will cringe at you if you tell them they can play as a Girzlewack or a Thute, even if they looked like an elf and a dwarf, but if you told them they could play as an Elf or a Dwarf, and showed them pictures of a bunnygirl and a decrepit body sitting in a floating throne with a cow skull for a head, they'd say, "That elf is hot," and shrug off the fact that it doesn't look like Legolas.

People are comfortable with things being a certain way and it's easier for them to accept something as "an elf, but different" than just "I made some shit up."

This

Here's what I think is more interesting. Don't just change elements, call then "dwarves" and be done with it. Instead: play the races straight, but elaborate as to WHY they are the way they are.

Dwarves live underground. Why? What drove their race there? What's the mythology behind that? Dwarves like beards. Why? What legends or myths or superstitions about beards exist that would help this culture? Dwarves have treasure. Why? Do they view material wealth differently than humans do? Do they view gold as a religious material? Do they view gemstones as something sacred? They're a warrior culture. Why? Why did magic never really develop for them? Was it because written books never took off for them? Is magic something opposed by their nature?

It's not important that your dwarves are dwarves and your elves are elves. What's important is to at least elaborate as to WHY that is. Tolkien gave whys and that's WHY his races were interesting.

When you just do the lazy approach of "Elves are in trees and shoot arrows cause i'unno" it reads as you not particularly caring. And when you do "my elves live in high mountains and drink bear urine for magic" that just reads like you're doing a paint job.

This also IMHO fixes OP's issue because if you do turn your elves into stone warriors who ride bears and start to have them elaborate as to why then the naming convention becomes more and more arbitrary.

Let's consider dwarves and claim that the three popularly defining characteristics (this is purposefully a very simplified example, try not to get bogged down on the details of it) are:
>short
>strong
>drink a lot

Let's say you reimagine them to be:
>average height
>normal strength but weak constitution (sickly)
>drink a lot

By calling the reimagined group "dwarves", every time someone says that word in reference to yours, they immediately get the picture of the short, stocky, heavy drinking, then have to edit it in their heads to fit your reimagining. However, call them Thurbles or somesuch, then when you're first describing them you use the phrase "oh, they drink like dwarves", your players (and you) don't have to battle against that other image brought on by popular understanding.

OP here, I think I do pretty much agree with you.

That said, going stupidly far from the conventions without changing the name, even with the rest of the effort put in feels like being contrarian...but eh.

I can see your point. I've tried to 'reimagine' fantasy races in the past, but I never outright changed fundamental parts of their description like that. I'd more try to exaggerate them. Like, making elves that are really tall and have bat ears and are imperial and stuck up. Or, more stuck up than usual. I'd just pick an aspect and push it as far as I could while keeping the spirit of the thing.

That could obviously rub people the wrong way, but if you could see why people would call them elves, I didn't really see the need to change the name. I guess reimagining a race has several different connotations, and the main focus of this thread is on the ones that completely change that race instead of trying to keep to the base material. Or, you know, I'm completely wrong.

people make their fictional settings whatever they want them to be, at the end of the day its just dudes sitting around a table playing pretend

christ did you really write this all out

>Implying those races aren't based on shaky as fuck mythology to begin with

you are retarded OP

>Christ it's just videogames what's wrong with you?
>Christ it's just comics/cartoons what's wrong with you?
>Christ it's just anime/manga what's wrong with you?
>Christ it's just a fucking cartoon show about horses what's wrong with you?

I mean: you're right but you're also the asshole who's trying to claim the high-horse here.

i dont understand what the op is complaining about though

a version of special snowflakeness

what does that mean

agreement

if you want to make "orcs but instead of x they have y" then don't call them orcs at all

are you new to Veeky Forums?

i know what the phrase means but i want to know why anyone has such a pressing issue with "elves but X" that they had to type out this little angry thread like it's some kind of problem

Why do you have a problem with them having a problem?