Let's say you're making a new setting and you're only allowed to include six sapient races. What do you pick and why?

This. Humans are so varied both in culture and ethnicity that there's really no need for anything else.

I always wanted to write a post-aocalyptic sword and sorcery setting that's also quite neo-primitive. Like if Conan's Hyborea and Gamma World had a love child, and Heavy Metal raised it with it's life partner Fire and Ice.

So likely some sort of "pure" human and variant mutants. Maybe even animal people?

Humans
Dwarfs
Giants
Elves or Tree People
Frog or Fish People
Orcs

Humans, then 5 all female races that need human to reproduce. This justifies Female Human Warriors, as they have to be strong to protect their mates from the other races.

The PCs could be sentenced with death randomly by their civilizations, all with their backgrounds, to compete in a game on another who knows where(i.e.planet) where it is sure
they will get killed like a lot others before. Who hosts the game and why?Gods?Other race?For what purpose?Entertainment?Tribute?Casting?Why do their own races offered them?Why(if) do their races look like they owe to someone?
You can/remove elements freely its a pretty broad idea

I'd still only use the one and leave it at that. If you need other races to fill in your blanks, chances are your humans are boring as shit and you need to restart your worldbuilding. Why do you need orcs or dwarves or elves when a human culture could be just as effective in their place?

>wah stop liking what i don't like

Your autism is showing.

Buff bull people.

Sleek bird people

Barbed cat people.

Ferocious wolf people.

Sneaky lizard people.

And humans, whom the other races view variously as ideal sacrifices, a delicacy, or rape-bait.

>make a fantasy realm full of things unseen on this world
>populate it with humans

This. I'd include bonuses and other extras based on the region the character comes from, and have five, six of them - coastal people are good at seafaring or being merchants and pick up an extra language, while mountain people are hardy and know how to hunt trolls, stuff like that.

>make a fantasy world full of the unknown for people to explore
>don't give your players a basis to feel comfortable with so that they focus more on actually exploring and seeing the world around them instead of spending session after session just trying to learn about their own goddamned culture

But I only need two.

1. fish people.
2. bug people.

>No industrious mole people.
It feels like nobody likes what I like.

To be honest I only need the one.
It depends on the genre of setting I'm making and the goal of the story or game I'm putting together.

>races
Clearly you meant Species?

1. Humans
2. Elves
3. Dorfs
4. Giants
5. Kobolds
6. Seraphim/Nephilim

I guess I could use my current setting as an example
1. Humans
2. Dwarves
3. Savages, sapient that evolved on a separate continent that are larger, less hairy, stupider and we'll savage
4. "Gods" or "Godians" however in my setting they're just near immortals that posses great power, can still be killed by mortals easily. They also reproduce super slowly.
5. Elves, tree fucking magic guys, and a second set that love fine metallurgy and live holed up in a city
6. Kender becuase fuck I love having them fuck absolutely everything (would never let a player play as one)

Keep in mind, guys, that "six sapient species" is a hard cap, not just the player character cap. The temptation to go "JUST HUMANS WORLDBUILD AND MAKE HUMAN CULTURES INTERESTING" is strong, but keep in mind that by saying "only humans" you're depriving yourself of nonhuman but sapient non player races - faries, Fair Folk, and dryads in the woods, spirits of various stripes, etc.

"Why not just make the dwarves human, they're just humans with beards" is an understandable sentiment when you're working with the standard elf/dwarf/halfling fantasy races, but there's plenty of "sapient" fantasy races you can't adequately replace with humans because they amount to more that just "forest-dwelling humans with pointy ears" or "short humans with hairy feet." Only humans as PCs is one thing, but the OP says "six sapient races" total. You're losing your giants, your fae, your sirens, and all that other cool shit along with the Elves and Dwarves when you just hard cap it at Human.

>seraphim/nephilim
In what interpretation? Or is this your way of--forgive the usage of D&D terms--saying Aasimar/Tieflings?

That setting sounds quite 90s.

>Humans
>Dwarves
>Dudes with a third arm coming out of their forhead
>Goblins
>Cuttlefish/Finch hybrids
>Djinn
If we go to seven, we add robots.

Human, Dwarf, Orc, Ogre, Halfling, Giant

Skeletons
Succubi
Vampires
Spiders
Belmonts
Kender

Die in a fire. Or ideally, several fires.

I'd rather they lived in a fire.

Eh, that's honestly such a big deal you make it sound. Consider Robert E. Howard's Conan books, those are mostly devoid of non-human sapient beings and they're still classics. You don't always need elves and dwarves for fantasy.

Ogres
Humans

That's all I'd need, you can make interesting dynamics with just 2 races

>humans are the males of the species
>ogres are the females of the species
Dynamics!

He's probably just not a very experienced GM outside of D&D, that's all.
Not saying D&D is inherently bad or anything, but if it's all he knows or has tried then it's probably fairly skewed his idea of what setting-building even is.

Would play in

I only need one: human. Everything else is gimmicky retardation.

>"LOOK A HIVE MIND SPEICES"
>"LOOK A SPECIES WHO IS BIG AND FAVOURS MARTIAL COMBAT"
>"LOOK A SPECIES WHO FAVOURS MERCANTILISM AND TRADE"
>"LOOK AN ELEGANT SPECIES WHO FAVOURS SCHOLARLY PURSUITS AND MAGIC"
>"LOOK A RACE IN TUNE WITH NATURE"

I can already imagine all the retards in this thread no doubt spamming their own SUPER SPESHUL SNOWFLAKE variation of the above. These are the type of threads that people most huge blocks of text and never reads anyone else's... and for good measure too. It's always universally shit, without exceptions.

I'm pretty sure they have sub r eddits for garbage like this. Take your "creative" settings there.

Humans
Elves
Dwarves
Orcs (of the porcine kind that are just strictly stronger goblins )
Kobolds
Goliaths

Done.

I run a lot of games that only have humans available as player classes and I fucking hate standard fantasy Elves but desu I feel at this point like you're passing up a lot of good story and worbuidling opportunity when there aren't at least some fair folk or woodland spirits lurking in the forests

Human
Elf
Dwarf
Orc
Halfling
Gnome

Drakken, Broken Lords, Necrophages, Endless, Humans, Silics

Feline kemonomimi (housecats, great cats)

Canid kemonomimi (dogs, wolves, foxes)

Rabbit kemonomimi and rabbit-fauns

Scaled sinuous lower body monsterboys/girls (nagas/lamias, merpeople)

Arachnes

Harpies

Would you play in my world?

Ironclaw is already this, but with aa bigger zoo

>Not having a bulky race that favors magic to compliment their existing strengths.
>Not having having a nature loving race that trades with their neighbors for things they can't get without harming their own lands.
>Not having a small race that is athletic from having to run to keep up with the longer legged races.
It's like you're not even trying.

>What do you pick
Elves, dryads(male), catboys, merboys, dickwolves, kender. Elves of both genders always have female reproductive organs in addition to whatever else, and the other, all-male races have to breed with them to produce offspring. Kender happen spontaneously and are considered a venereal disease.
>and why?
Many religions speak of a supposed race of antediluvian assholes who are said to have created the speaking peoples of the world, removed all solid evidence of their own existence then promptly went extinct as a sort of an ultimate sick joke.

I said earlier; it depends entirely on what kind of genre and setting I'm doing.
Fantasy? Scifi? Urban/Modern?
What kind?
What sub-genre?
How many players?
Am I telling a story to them?
Am I WRITING a story?
Will the story ever be a Veeky Forums thing?
How much can I reasonably expect the players to care?

There isn't a universal method for building settings and such, therefore I tailor my settings to the needs of the group, genre, objective of setting creation, and plot if there need be one.

Seriously, this. Worlds with humans have plenty potential for complexity without needing to insert retarded species that serve no purpose a really neat fantasy human culture couldn't also fulfill.

Pic related is a good example. Demons and spirits exist, but the "playable race," are humans, and they're plenty engaging, allowing the game to put emphasis on the cultural and world-building aspects of their world instead of what stupid fantasy races fill in what niches.

> Barbed cat people.

ERP?

Indeed!
Tailor not the setting or story based on the "requirements" of the genre because the genre is made-up shite and thus it's only requirement for being interesting is to BE INTERESTING.
If your setting has different hominid species and such, then make use of them and do something with them rather then slap them into a world like a tasteless sticker on your face; they don't NEED to be there if you're intending to build something from scratch.

I feel you user.

Posting just for you

>Industrious mole people
I like where this is going.

So I came up with this:
>Industrious mole people, most of the lore and cover art focuses around them, 'default' race
>Mushroom people, scavengers, live even deeper in the earth than the other races, journey up to mole people cities and raid their cemeteries for nutrients
>"Drow", but Drow in name only, humainoid faces but sunken with long, sharp teeth, small prehensile but useless wings, tend to be tall and lanky by human standards, close to blind but with advanced sense of hearing
>Worms the size of small dogs, prey upon the other races, absorb the memories of sentients they eat. Sometimes they think they are their last meal.
>Spiders whose total size is slightly larger than human, the most technologically advanced race, but antisocial by nature.
And now for an NPC race:
Human scientists studying the planet who occasionally break through the surface to see what's down there, causing the highly toxic atmosphere to break through and contaminate massive parts of the underground

I personally feel your autism is inflamed by the fallout of decades of shitty fluff in d&d, rather than some actual issue inherent in fantasy as a genre. When elf, dwarf and orc are described in essence as 'slightly agile human, slightly tough human and slightly special needs human', yes, you might as well just drop the pretense of having different races in your setting.

> Magic

It's handwave bullshit, might as well have there be only one species that uses magic or technology to alter their forms. So that catperson? Human. That Troll? Human. Those six dwarves operating in unison? Human controlling six individual bodies using magic telepathy or radio and multiple path processing logic or whatever bullshit you want to use.

>Not having having a nature loving race that trades with their neighbors for things they can't get without harming their own lands.

Exporting the negatives of industry to foreign nations is like Industrialization 301. Yeah, it doesn't happen right away but you usually get around to it.

> Retarded bullshit about running.

18 STR + Bull's Strength > 14 STR + Bull's Strength.

Shit, you really just want to bitch for the sake of bitching, don't you?

1. Humans, doesn't really need explanation
2. Dwarves, see above
3. Elves, see above
4. Orcs, see above
5. Ratfolk, having a society of traveling merchants is pretty cool. They also provide some different elements than Goblins or other small usually nuisance races.
6. Dryads, I think they're under used given how cool of a concept they are.
7. Gnolls, they're my favorite

> D&D

Stop giving me things to bitch about then, user.

I'm just saying that there's nothing you posted that couldn't be represented by a society of humans.

Except Magic, but that's because like I said it's handwave bullshit if you restrict it to a specific race. Even then, technology can balance that out.

And your bullshit about a race with short legs having to be athletic to "keep up with other races" is like if I said "Japanese people are more athletic because they have to keep up with White Folks" it's just so fucking stupid.

Keep trying, by all means, there's nothing wrong with having 99 failures to get 1 success.

But don't expect me to just jerk you off for trying.

Is this how you always respond to a writing prompt?

>Okay kids, now write a poem about this painting
But none of my favorite poems are about paintings!
>Now use this list of words in a paragraph
But I don't like those words, they remind me of a story I dislike!
>Describe a world with six sentient races
But I think lord of the rings is overrated! WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!111111

Literally none of those qualities are exclusionary to human behaviour.

It's why this shit is so lame. It's just repackaged, preexisting human cultures with DUDE LOOK A LITTLE RAT INSTEAD OF A MAN LMAO

I really dislike non-human races unless they do something that humans cannot do or don't like highly evolved primates do. I mean, there is a world of difference between the brains of mammals let alone mammals and reptiles and god forbid anything else and insects.

Are you ok user? It's ok to not like things other people like.

>Literally none of those qualities are exclusionary to human behaviour.
Never said that they were. There will be overlap. How that's handled is the better measure of how "good" the world is.

Is there some particular reason why those six sentient races can't be different varieties of human, hmm?

It's a stupid writing prompt. I would much rather have a discussion about how to make races unique or non-human than just "Humans with +/- attributes".

Hell, even trans-humanism is better than this garbage.

Or at least I would like to have honest answers where people just talk about their monster girl fetishes.

You'll note nobodies giving the guys talking about arch-types or not trying to represent their races as unique or necessary shit, nobodies giving shit to the guys asking WHY you are putting these races in.

You're just a whiny child trying to use the excuse of it being a writing prompt to deflect any criticism. Grow the fuck up faggot.

I hope you realize that's the point for humans, they can do anything. That's why there is the other species that do specific things better than others. Humans can be wizards, hunters , thieves etc etc etc better than and ork could be but the human wouldn't be as a good as say a barbarian.

> Humans are the every man, and this is terrible.

This is how HFY starts, user. Are you prepared to take responsibility for that?

That's a good point. People don't often question _why_ they feel the need to put in orcs and elves and whatnot in the setting, beyond just the force of habit. You should always ask yourself 'what this race is', what it means to the game, before including it in the setting.

It's a facade of creativity. There's nothing imaginative about just going "DUDE RAT TRAVELLING MERCHANTS LMAO" or "DUDE ROMAN ORCS". It's worse than not being creative because it hides behind this veil false imaginative design.

It's still hallmarks of the setting except this time you have an autistic fatass neckbeard demanding you adulate him over this revolutionary choice of having elves be surrogates for native american cultures

tl;dr bite me autists

>tl;dr bite me autists
Please don't bite yourself, user.

All I'm trying to say is that if you're really better than the exercise, like you seem to think you are, then you're good enough to something new and inspiring with it.
Blow me away. I'm waiting.

I always felt the best middle ground to this in fantasy worldbuilding is to make all the civilized cultures that the players use human, jettison the "traditional fantasy races" like Elves and Dwarves, and have trolls and giants in the hillside and faries in the forests around for players to interact/fight with. That way you don't have the autistic "this race is human but x" and you're forced to develop culture for the nations in your setting beyond their hat, but you still have fantastic creatures from old fairy tales to play them against.

I think you're just angry because someone shit on your setting and now you're getting even by telling everyone else that they're having bad wrong fun.

Seriously, people like different things and that's ok.

>
tl;dr bite me autists
I think you're the only autist here actually.

Pic related is what I would consider a good use of nearly-human races in a fantasy novel.

LOL, looks like we got a spurned retard here who has japanese elves or korean halflings or some such shit like that. Complete with a circa 2009 image macro with "u mad"

You should go back to re ddit, I hear they have rules over there that help to prevent poor babies like you from getting their feelings hurt. I'm sure you'd fit right in with the other 90 IQs who go there

That's not a bad approach at all! It does hearken back to the 19th century fantasy, with mysterious fey folk hiding in the dark forests and hillsides (in contrast to the post-LoTR tropes).

I never said that humans being the everyman is terrible, I always play humans in any fantasy game precisely BECAUSE they are the everyman.

You are literally putting anything that isn't 100% original down becuase you personally think that dwarves, orks, elves are just "x plus this but minus this". Maybe in a vacuum you aren't wrong but that's not what we are talking about. They have different cultures and what not and no, some of the cultures can not apply to humans. For instance, you have elves that live an exceptionally long life and have difficulty with reproducing, leading to an extremely value of life. Humans cannot do this becuase they don't live as long as the elves and reproduction is relatively easy compared to them.

I don't know why I'm explaining this to you thought, you're just going to say "NOPE IT'S STILL HUMANS PLUS X XD XDXD I'M RIGHT YOUR WRONG FANTASY RACES CAN'T BE DIFFERENT THEY ARE WALL HUMAN PLUS X"

I don't have any skin in this game. Don't really write settings myself. I generally just give a few tweaks to an existing one depending on what I'm going for.

In fact, the only real donut steel thing I've written that is Veeky Forums related is a couple posts about how Death Knights operate as good guys. But that's neither here nor there.

Why is it so bad to have multiple races? I personally like them, but you clearly don't for some reason. Not sure what your argument is beyond "YOU'RE ALL HAVING FUN WRONG!" and "YOUR TASTE A SHIT!"

Come on user. It's ok. Get up from away from the computer, go for a walk. The internet will be here once you're back and a little calmer.

Merelves, a playful and bohemiam folk with skin as blue as the sea and hair as colourful and varied as tropical fish. They ply the crystal waters in impossibly delicate ships.

Dulkelves, a hardy and boisterous lot with ashen skin and eyes that crackle with orange firelight. They pride themselves on their music and their fur-work.

Nériniai, gentle mothlike creatures possessed of an insatiable, yet slightly alien benevolence. They dance under the light of the moon with divine grace.

Seyat Kedi, quadrepedal felines that travel the dusty plains in nomadic, animalistic tribes. They are fierce in both heart and faith, erecting strikingly simple totems wherever they wander.

Nagaki, stoic and solid reptilians that spend their lives in pursuit of inner peace and philosophical perfection. Where merelves dance across the surface, Nagaki build great temples on the ocean floor.

Humans, a foreign folk of almond eye and fair skin who travelled from the distant west. Proud nearly to the point of hubris, their great cities are a welcome port to all.

>dwarves
>not short elves
Would play anyways, elf varieties are fun.

Would play, I have an idea for immortal, intelligent jellyfish that drift above the clouds, growing more and more massive with age. It doesn't really seem to fit in with any setting though.

10/10

Because physiological differences can be fun user.

Hehe, noice

Three different fish? Three different bug?

Lmao

Great taste

Without a doubt

Magic exists everywhere in the universe

Except when it comes to sentient creatures

That would be retarded

Dryad, Jinn, Shadow people, Sirens, Gorons, and Dragon girls(like gria). Because I like these things and they seem like a good spread. Though I am tempted to change out Dryads for a different kind of plant people, and possibly Jinn for a race of sapient goo. Gorons and Dragon girls would stay though.

>Humans. Newly arrived foreigners from a cataclysmically destroyed contient across the sea, the humans here are the last survivors who escaped the destruction of their homeland.

>Tall, Elflike Race that lament the idea of war and violence outside of heavily ritualized duels, but despite that are consistently considered the best weaponsmiths by far.

>Race of Bee girls. Cute, sentient bees who happily trade honey and such to outsiders, all lead by a huge Queen with a cold personality and immense magical power

>A race of biomechanical (mostly mechanical) beings in the shape of well-formed humans, left behind from an older age. Pretty much just Warframes because i'm lazy with a latex/robot fetish.

>Crows Harpies. They'd be a cool race. I love ravens and crows. Maybe they'd be like, common mail couriers?

>A race of 'undead' changelings. Any body buried in a specific graveyard on a hill has a chance to come back a few days later, but only fragments of their soul return, mixed with ancient spirits and beings, essentially creating a new conciousness. Humans come back with sharp teeth and stuff, but are generally just like lost, confused people stuck in the bodies of someone who died. Only desperate, heartbroken people try burying anyone there now. Other races buried there might come out different. Like, a Beegirl Queen buried there might come back as a horrifying Wasp Lich.

I dunno. Just random spitballing. I usually just stick with the basics.

>And humans, whom the other races view variously as ideal sacrifices, a delicacy, or rape-bait.
This sounds like something else I've heard discussed on this board.

>crows bad
>cats good

I've been considering a setting that technically has no humans as we know them, but two of the races are literally just human with extra bits.

The basic gist is that mammals (or a lot of animals at least) in the setting evolved along a hexapod body plan rather than a quadrapod one. I mostly started considering this while thinking about stuff like Centaurs/Pegasi, Griffons, or Dragons that often appear in fantasy and are naturally hexapods. So I thought I'd try to make a setting where six limbs is the norm. I never got very far, but my concepts were pretty basic for playable races.

>4 armed humans
>winged humans
>4 legged dwarflike equivalent, related to centaur but much more humanoid
>straight up centaurs

I'm a little more interested in the animal side and how life might have developed in that world than the sapient species, but I don't have solid concepts for either yet. I'll probably make their cultures reflect their physical abilities when I do get around to thinking about this seriously again.

You use orcs, dwarves, or elves when there's niche you want filled where a human culture wouldn't be just as effective in their place. If your fantasy races could just be replaced with Humans, then you're misusing them.

That depends; what's the rest of the setting like? I'd rather have my races/species tailored to the world than the other way around.

Droids. Naturally.

That way you can have a plot device race available for your evil GMing needs.

Six total?

Medusa, with limited transmutation abilities. Only truly ancient matriarchs could turn sentient creatures into stone with a glance.

Minotaurs, with rhinoceros flavor.

Light-averse creatures without standardized shapes that can create the finest craftsmanship ever seen, but are highly xenophobic and distrustful of any creature that walks in the daylight.

Diminutive gremlins that can squeeze into tiny holes and are proficient with metallurgy.

Mimics.

Nature spirits that spontaneously erupt in the most remote of regions in order to jettison some power from the land when one of the primal elements grows too strong.

Humans.

Sapient skeletons of dead humans.

Ghosts of dead humans.

Shapeshifters that look like humans.

Spirits that possess humans.

Wendigos that want to wear human flesh to look more human.

Instead of Dwarves, Fae Elves.

misread harpies as herpes at first

gave me a new disease idea: harpy's herpes

>Humans
>Shortfolk
>Elves
>Greenskins
>Beastfolk
>Giantkin

And then just a whole lot of curses and mishmash inbetween, fuck you OP

I think I have the issue of Dragon that has the main races, monsters, some magic items and some setting lore so you could play a campaign in the same world as the book.

>Commonwealth ratfolk
>United States of orc tribes
>Soviet union of dwarves

Vs.

>Elf Nationalists
>spaghetti eating pigdogs
>The empire of gnomes.

IT WILL BE CALLED WORLDETH WAR THE SECOND.

Hey, I already posted about going full trans-human about it. Not to mention that your post is like claiming pointing out this is shit posting means I should be able to shitpost exceptionally.

What have you yourself added? Oh yeah, Jack shit.

If you want to have non-human in your game you have to have them be NPCs or severely limit player agency by having hard wired reactions and perceptions the players have to follow. Otherwise you just get humans in another shape.

Most people don't enjoy that kind of limitation, but I'd you are interested in it then I recommend taking inspiration from the works of CJ Cherryh. She's quite good at writing aliens and contrasting their perceptions with the humans in her work.

Humans, because they're a baseline and it is easily relatable to players, as well as being immediately recognizable as culturally diverse internally; they're adaptable and can go anywhere on the map, and because they're not inherently magical they have the last for power and political ambition to make a plot progress easily.

Dwarves, because they're easily used in cold environments and mountain/cave environments; they're easily assumed to be a very old race and therefore their deep kingdoms and lost redoubts can be full of forgotten secrets and reasonably stocked with monsters.

Orcs, because they're suitable to a number of environments, they give me an easy warrior culture low-effort antagonist when I need it and a noble savage cop-out when I need it.

Lizardmen, because they're sufficiently alien to players to pose an immediate threat of the archetypal other when the Orcs run dry and the association we have as humans with lizards being an old, ancient species of critters inherently carries over so it lends weight and credibility to rumors or facts of the lizardmen being the corrupted descendents of an ancient advanced race who fucked with the wrong gods/hubris/magic/whatever plot device.

Elves, because they give us easy tree cities and temperate dominion as well as long-lived magicians with perhaps more knowledge than they're willing to share, lending gravitas to any situation they suddenly take a cooperative interest in.

I struggled with a sixth, because small races are cancer and I'm not a fan of superdragons that rival gods all the damn time. I don't have a concrete choice but I think I'd probably default to picking one that would fill the role of general antagonist along the lines of a mind flayer, though I detest psionics so it'd be suitably different enough to avoid causing my spergin' to flare up. Some kind of old, malevolent, species, I guess. I really do not know.

1. Humans.
2. A single sentient gigantic fungus.
3. Anthropomorphic vermin that don't consider species to be different.
4. Actual embodiments of emotions.
5. Fire elementals.
6. Zombies.

i like this you explained it well and it's not touching magic realm shit

Caucasians, Red Injuns, Negroes, Asias and Neanderthals and Homo Heidelbergensis

Democratic Race (Humans or another race with few outright supernatural properties): Specialize in technology and buffing others.
Communist Race (Elves): Specialize in healing and growth magic.
Anarcho-Capitalist Race (Dwarves): Specialize in Enchanting and Scrying.
Kratocracratic Race (Dragons): Specialize in Direct Damage and Debuffs.
Geniocratic Race (Undead): Specialize in Necromancy and Alchemy.
Outer Gods (Outer Gods): Specialize in making everyone no matter who wins, it is all ultimately insignificant and that nothing they do will do anything but delay the inevitable end, and mind magic.

First actual response with thought out reasons.

For your sixth race, may I recommend either a progenitor race that decayed for some reason and now lurks among their descended creations.

Or a viral/parasitic race that inhabits the bodies of the other races and seeds them into the societies. Kind of like Vampires I guess. Mostly because then you have a good general antagonist that can move easily among/provide a threat to all the races and give the players a cause to be different races banding together.

Or they can play it from the viewpoint of the viral/parasitic race.

You can even have there be members who reject their "race" and choose to fully integrate. Without any groupmind shenanigans or magic/psionic bullshit you could have members who don't even know what they are.