What is your take on the races in fantasy settings, Veeky Forums? Do you put all the clichés in your game or do you try to fight them? Do you go full humanism or do you go completely monster races all over the place?
And in your opinion what are the races that every setting should have and why.
tl;dr post pictures of fantasy races and argue about your fetishes.
I like them best when they're physically and metaphysically human, they just have funny bits or funny skin color.
The following are the ONLY races you should be allowing in your fantasy setting.
> elves
> humans
> dwarves
> halfelves
> halflings
> gnomes
No, no more of this tiefling, dragonborn, kender, special snowflake BULLSHIT that I am so fucking sick of. The lazy-ass D&D developers introduce six new races with every "book" they release, and you DO NOT NEED THEM. Huge numbers of races ARE NOT CONDUCIVE TO GOOD WORLDBUILDING.
Large numbers of homebrew races show that you are a lazy ass faggot piece of shit worldbuilder who needs to rely on new races to differentiate cultures rather than actually interesting cultural differences.
Lord of the Rings made many interesting and diverse kingdoms with just elves humans dwarves and orcs (orcs are okay by the way), I mean it was as simple as the differences between Rohan and Gondor. It doesn't need to be some deep design thing. Just none of this "lol every kingdom is a different race" until you don't even have two kingdoms of the same thing because you keep adding new lands to hold all of the five thousand fucking races in D&D.
This is why I've gone full EDO and my players can deal with it or get the fuck out of my group. I no longer care either way. I am so sick of pandering to these catfolk half-minotaur tieflings with angsty backstories playing edgelord classes like warlock and also being drow. Such races are good as spice, but they are NOT for the main course. But of course all the fucking mongoloidal faggots who want to play want to be that one special guy so next thing you know you've got a whole party of them.
I fucking hate my players, I'd love to hose them down with a goddamn flame thrower and watch them writhe in the sticky embrace of napalm.
Cancer.
>EDO
?
Are you, uh, feelin' all right, user?
Ooooh yeah, been there done that. From half-dragon minotaurs to feytouched tieflings. It really goes south easily.
D&D is a hell of a drug.
Ok. That was verbose.
I meant more in the sense what purpose do you want for the races in your game. Are all elves magical gay tree-huggers, are all dwarves short angry drunk fighters, are all humans generic bullshit fantasy setting default?
These kind of questions. I like non-comparative settings like Banner Sage where one race was humans (sigh), one was an all male horned giant race, another was made of stone and the last was centaurs that killed all the horses because they were scared!
>Lord of the Rings made many interesting and diverse kingdoms with just elves humans dwarves and orcs
Kek, maybe elves but literally every dwarf kingdom was the same, hobbits were just smaller countryside humans, orcs were basically mindless rape monsters
>Such races are good as spice, but they are NOT for the main course
...yes? I mean, that's what the book says. Standart races are common, exotic races are exotic and are treated by NPCs as weird gimmicks
Humans as the only (playable) sapient race is Elder God-tier. Everything else is garbage.
No.
Not to mention dwarves were a mistake, orcs were tortured members of other races and humans are fucking weird in Tolkien's lore. Also, no one cared to explain where the FUCK did the Hobbits come from. I think they are aliens, like fucking tellytubs.
What is the difference between an all human game and a game where all races look and act like humans (like witcher and dragon age) after being humanized?
How do I make TRULY alien species, Veeky Forums?
Either human only or multiple races but my hard rule is "if this race could put on a hat and look like a human from behind in broad daylight it's not going to be in my setting"".
So no Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halfings, Aasimer, Tieflings, or Genasi.
Seconding this.
You are absolutely cancerous. Stick to Japanese video games please.
I like to put in some of the One Piece races.
I am especially fond of Fishmen, because fishmen genetics are wonky and hundreds of genereations of intermixing basically mean a shark person and an octopus person can produce a child and it will be a dophin boy. I like them because they are fun, make for interesting and varied PCs and NPCs and are not really heavy with those retarded ero fantasies.
If a player asks for some shit like cat people, I usually take in One Piece Minks as well, which are basically the same as Fishmen, just with "normal" non-funky mamals, if they agree to roleplay it with the given restictions of being a Mink: No procreation with Humans possible, having your type of Mink REALLY have an effect on your personallity, and the typical Mink over-loyalty to anyone you like (which could also be noone if you are a jerk)
If they go for some weeb-shit cat people I tell them no.
I am not fond of Dwarfs or Elves, because they are normally just annoying in one way or another. I don't mind Elves in The Black Eye, if you really play the non-typical Black Eye elves: Autists with no sense of ownership, that thus constantly take things from others. If they go kender mode with stealing I remind them that they are not cleptomanic, but simply think its normal to share anything you have more of than you can use.
Lizards are okay if they are not faggy "hurr-durr-I'm-a-proud-dragon"s but actually lizards.
Dehumanize its characteristics and give it other weird perks. The key is lack of communication. The less you understand something or can relate to it on a conscious level the more 'alien' something feels. Give it emotions you can relate to or a way to communicate and suddenly it gains human characteristics through humanization.
This is very useful for making horror fairies and weird shit too.
Reskin 'em without changing character.
>elves
Plant-men
>dorfs
Ant-men
>gnomes
Sparrow-men
>halflings
rabbits
I think so too, but more on an anthropological level. If it looks too similar to the point they could interbreed than it is the same fucking race, just an off-shoot species.
How do I give alien fuckers motivations and emotions that I can't relate to without devolving into "lolrandom fuck players"?
>EVERYTHING MUST BE D&D OR TOLKEIN ELSE YOU'RE A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE FURRY FAGGOT WHO ONLY WANTS TO YIFF AND MAGICAL REALM
You can still be "that guy" even with the most boring races available. How about instead of taking it out on the setting you just stop playing with idiot players, or better yet stop being such an autist yourself.
I only like using the default races. Really I prefer to just use humans since in fantasy, any other race is just "HUMANS WITH AN INT OR STR MODIFER". Worst fucking offender of this in my eyes is Dragon Age
>DUDE OTTOMANS WITH HORNS LMAO
>DUDE IRISH TRAVELLERS WITH POINTY EARS AND BOWS
>DUDE MEDIEVAL JEWISH TRADERS WHO ARE REALLY SHORT LMAO
I also laugh at retards who think playing as rat or lizard people or something adds any depth. You're doing the exact same shit in the exact same way as a human would. But yeah, I just let people play as the standard line up of the setting because I'm not a stickler like that but I do reject retarded shit like super duper special snowflake anime races
Ya confusing things.
Different species don't interbreed and give fertile offspring. Races are parts of same species.
Holy shit, fucking neck yourselves, you pieces of horse crap. I am so sick of fags like you ACTUALLY DEFENDING this shit. Please explain why the FUCK you are ENTITLED to play some shitty ass race that doesn't even fit into the setting?
I don't give a fuck if the book has it. All D&D editions from 3e and onward are shitty-ass SJW bullshit pro-body-positivity crap that thinks that everyone including drow deserves a goddamn pity party and if I don't let you play one I'm a shitlord.
Well guess what fucktard.
I am the one who spent time putting together this world to make it feel like Lord of the Rings with a dash of high fantasy, putting in just enough detail to create an engaging world but not so much to make it rigid and inflexible. I am the one who designed dungeons for you so it wasn't just on the fly shit like most of the campaigns I run. I am the one who created interesting yet standard origin stories for the races. I am the one who created interesting kingdoms to differnetiate different cultures.
And what did you do?
You tried to play a fucking furry half-catfolk piece of shit with some angsty backstory.
You tried to play some tiefling warlock or some drow rogue bullshit ripped off from legend of Drizzt which you haven't even read you illiterate piece of ant jizz.
I am so sick of you weaboo virgin shitstains asking me "CAN I PLAY AN ANIME CLASS IN YOUR GAME" I just want to beat your stupid face with a hammer until your dental plate falls out in a wash of blood. Fuck you, and fuck your shitty ass homebrew shit. I created a semi-functioning world and you want to shit all over it just to feel special. You will die and be forgotten you mongoloidal motherfuck and if I outlive you I'll kick over your goddamn gravestone so no one remembers you. You aren't special and you sure aren't special for playing the same fucking edgelord race everyone else does.
Use the God's Machine motivation. They are there to fill a purpose, but whatever that purpose is is your prerogative. It gains bonus points if you can make it so people can't work out what it is.
Like, the Predator is pretty human-like right? But have a society and a communication system that makes no fucking sense, and that is alien in alienation. The Shrimps from District 9 are also good examples of miscommunication at work.
My best advice is look to what worked in the past and work from there. Also, some human characteristics can be pretty terrifying if isolated and magnified.
TRUE! Thank you for catching it.
How are qunari the Ottomans in any shape or form?
Not even trying to defend Dragon Age, but that's fucking retarded, lad
But in my magical realm they do, and females elves are specially known for partaking in this.
And yeah, it really does. Thanks for sympathizing. I like new races especially the ones from Heroes of Destiny in 3.5 since most of those were pretty close to being human. I included a lot of them in my world. But then I ended up deleting half of them because these fuckheads wanted me to have Dragonborn and Eladrin and Minotaurs as well. Fuck 4th edition. I don't know why I even botehred converting to it. They also made Faerie NPCs that they pulled out of their ass when they got to low hp and whined when I said it wasn't allowed and unaminously claimed theyd been part of hte campaign before. I know they were lying but the little fuckers wouldn't shut up so I let it go then stopped responding to their messages. This is why when I GM I literally NEVER play at my own house. I don't want the sons of bitches to know where I live.
>>Are you feelin' OK man?
>HOW CAN YOU DEFEND THIS SHIT REEEEE
I choose to believe that this is an elaborate bait.
Yay, a new copypasta.
Virt, put your trip back on
Woo boy, user. Dial it down a bit.
I don't even disagree with you much but jesus man
What the fuck did you just say to me you little bitch?
...
Yeah, no, I am with this guy
The tone and setting feel less grounded. Elves and dwarves are totally redundant in the Witcher games. From what I can tell they were added solely because he thought fantasy needed them. It's pointlessly derivative of Tolkien.
The developers said that you scumfuck cuddie
Why don't you fucking kill yourself, you smarmy little fuck? I bet you play kender you piece of shit. The setting isn't the issue fucktard, it's the fucking game that thinks "new content" equals twenty new races that have fuck all identity, and some of them are literally SJW monologue classes like drow have become, basically existing as professional victims. I am so sick of listiening to these woe-is-me backstories, I am so fucking sick of htat shit.
I am sorry, I used to like new races and still do but they are so fucking overinflated I've become a goddamn hardcore EDO shill as a result.
Yeah I might need mental help but honestly it's too late, I will enjoy killing every tiefling and dragonborn character I can with OP encounters that rape the shit out of those parties and record them whining and crying about their dead characters so that I can jack off to it later.
So sick of these fucking cunts. Just play a normal race and come up with an INTERESTING character who isn't defined by you projecting your leftover teenage angst and ruining the experience for every reasonable person involved.
I agree with you in the Witcher mostly because we never hear of their struggle to fit in human society or WHY they are fitting in in human society (outside of the first game, but no one wants to play that).
What do you think would make a setting feel more... stable and down to earth?
>Please explain why the FUCK you are ENTITLED to play some shitty ass race that doesn't even fit into the setting?
>putting words in my mouth
stahp
No races unless they are enemies and have behaviour that doesn't resemble anything akin to that of great apes
Then the devs are retards, doesn't make it any more true though
Also, you shouldn't just parrot others without putting any thought into it, you sheep-fucking down syndrome fuckwit, I will kill you
What if
hear me out for a second
what if
we removed humans
...
But how would you come about it. It is known that homo sapiens kinda eliminated any sort of threat there was to them with the passing of years, so why would there ever be anything other than 'generic human'?
That is the question I wanted to answer before I begin worldbuilding races for my setting, honestly.
It's true though
>medieval caliphate
>Qun is their religious text
>Qunari are followers of the qun
>are interested in militaristic expansion
>also have a scholarly class
90 IQs everybody
heeey, that's a curious idea
I'm not really much of a stickler for races. If something is setting appropriate (and doesn't break the system) then aces, go for it.
If it isn't setting appropriate by default you get a chance to justify it being there, but you can't just teleport in a Dragonborn into an environment where they don't otherwise exist. Case-by-case thing.
>What race should every fantasy setting have
I guess humans so people have a baseline. Everything else should exist to serve the setting specifically. If there isn't a suitable place for elves then don't involve them, simple as.
Did that. It feels... ok. You can't totally dehumanize the races, but you can make them exaggerations with pretty good success.
Qun doesn't resemble islam in the slightest
Qunari are turbo austere which is literally the opposite of the decadent Ottomans
Militaristic expansion is what everybody is doing you nigger
Why dont you shut the fuck up you pussy ass cowards? You don't have the balls to play a real fucking character,, that's why you HIDE behidn these shitty angsty emo characters from your fucking anime, because thats all you know how to do. How to whine.
And yeah I did just say something to you you little bitch, I said that your shitty homebrew alien extraplanar races that don't even exist in the real world, are total shit. That's what the fuck I said to you, and you can take that to the bank.
You motherfuckers. Do you know why your races are shit?
Tieflings are fucking HALF DEMON SPAWN for fucks sake, they would bE HUnTED DOWN AND KILLED MERCILESSLY
SAME WITH DROW
BUt when I do that you just whine and complain about fursecution or whatever the fuck you are on about now.
KEnDER WOULD bE BURNED AT THE STAKE EN MASSE
You think you get away with pickpocketing? I remember some guy tried to pick my pocket in New York City and I caught him and showed him my knife and chased him for 40 feet before I realized the cops would probably get pissed at me so I ran away too.
In medieval times pickpocketing fucks like the kender would be killed in graphic brutal ways. I fucking love the idea of a kender having his toes burned off one by one. Or having that thing where they hang you upside down and saw through the penis/vagina then up through the torso. I'd fucking love to watch that happen to a kender, I'm not even being edgy, I hate the little shits that much.
It's YOU fuckers that are in the wrong, playing these shitty-ass races and refusing to play something goddamn normal for once
> a bloo bloo its not fun to play teh same boring orc elf dwarf though
HOW WOULD YOU KNOW FUCKTARD YOU HAVEN'T EVEN FINISHED PLAYING THE CLASSE SIN THE GODDAMN PLAYERS HANDBOOK. YOU PLAYED LITERALLY ZERO CHARACTERS BEFORE AND YOU WANT TO PLAY A FUCKING KENDER WARLOCK AS YOUR FIRST CHARACTER
FUCK NO
FUCK OFF
I bet my PC could kill your PC
Yeah you get fucking far scape, big whoop
Continued....
I am so sick of these dark-souls-world-of-war-crap infused autistics who want to play something special and don't know how to create a unique character beyond some obscure race class combo. These people are the cancer of RPGs and should be excluded at every opportunity.
...
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
What do you mean? Shit can still kill humans if we aren't prepared like Rhinos or Sharks. Also the mastery over the environment didn't really happen until the industrial revolutionary.
Best illustrative example I could think of would be an extremely intelligent, gigantic spider. Since it's a spider it is going to be reclusive by nature and despite being intelligent wouldn't be adept at communication or diplomacy (wouldn't even have the organs to communicate with humans in any meaningful way). Better at crafting traps and using simple tools.
Boring and tired example I know
...
Funny part is I don't even disagree with you. You are just making it really hard to like you.
I'm gonna post all of these dumb fish pictures
Thank you
>"Guys watch be a reductionist contrarian so I can argue with people on the internet xD"
I'm right, you're wrong - this isn't red dit. Go back there. You aren't saving face.
You really do sound exactly like Virt there
I'm actually working on a setting where there aren't naturally any humans, though it's more Veeky Forums related than Veeky Forums. It's an interesting thought exercise.
Is this amateur bait hour?
Yes. Now allow me to play a tiefling paladin, I promise he'll be hell of a guy
>mfw they all still act according to hominin neurology
I gurantee your setting is garbage not even worth burning to keep a fire going
>what is Lorwyn
I bet my PC would whoop your fucking ass because I'm the fucking game master, faggot. There's no game without me. And guess what motherfucker, players are a dime a dozen, but GMs are rare and good ones rarer. I spent twelve long years honing my craft, and I don't waste my time on shitty players anymore. I have a half-dozen different settings for different genres plus more I can create on the spot. I've played entire campaigns without any real planning and players didn't even notice. I weave intricate stories and I engage them and create great moments every weekend with my groups. You can't even compare because all you know is some faggot slobbering about his homebrew over a shitty-quality mic on roll20 while you sit in your moms basement and munch cheetoes. You will never know real roleplaying, I can offer that. And I do not allow pathetic cowards who play shitty-ass non-EDO races, into my games. So you can fucking deal with it, you pathetic faggot.
No no, it is a good example. To iterate on it I'd like to point out humans don't share much habitat with sharks nor rhinos, although in the rhino's case we kinda decimated them this last centuries.
So what I meant was why wouldn't a race smarter, stronger and/or faster than humans have knocked humans out of the ballpark? That is to say, if we do share the same habitats, hunting grounds, etc. Hum. I guess I kinda answered that question there, didn't I?
Of course, excluding theological meddling in fantasy settings altogether.
...
>Funny part is I don't even disagree with you. You are just making it really hard to like you.
I don't give a fuck if you like me. If you agree with me, you agree with me. My likeableness is not relevant, and your ad hominem is fallacious.
Who the fuck is that.
Get the fuck out. Tiefling paladin what a fucking joke. No fucking way. I am sick of allowing these gay-ass third party classes and I sure as fuck am not allowing them playing classes they wouldn't even be allowed into.
Lorwyn was pretty good even though it had kender in it.
Why don't you come and say that to my face instead of online, bitch and we'll see what happens
Lorwyn was kinda cool.
What's fun about this idea is that this has already happened! Homo sapiens and neanderthals used to exist side by side but in the end one species had to out-compete the other.
There can be more than one apex predator in an ecosystem. In fact, lions/tigers don't actually hunt humans unless there is something seriously wrong with their bodies like their teeth rotting or some kind of locomotive disability. As long as humans stay out of their habitat then they likely wouldn't have a reason to come into conflict with each other
>If you agree with me, you agree with me.
Yeaaaah, that is not how it works, Trump boy.
I agree with your sentiment, but I disagree with your means of conveying them and believe you should be less verbose about your pet peeves.
As I said, I have been there with you.
Nothing to do about it than try to come to terms with your feelings, mate, be they teenage angst or manchild impotent rage.
Bro just stop
Eddie are you okay?
Are you okay eddie?
We fucked them too. Neanderthal DNA is found in the genes of every race except Africans.
There have been a bunch of other homo species too
Sometimes when i see these post i wonder if they truly believe this
This is you. This is what you sound like.
Huh, it's annie not eddie. I had no idea.
Yeah, this guy has it.
There's a huge debate going on if homo sapiens and neanderthals were as different as we think they were.
Yeah I know but I don't know if any of them intermingled and lived with homo sapiens as extensively as the neanderthals did.
I saw it.
what the fuck is EDO
To think of a multispieces evolution track is kinda brainwrecking, to be honest.
I guess that is why settings normally go "god did it".
Whether humans had anything to do with neanderthal extinction is highly controversial. We aren't even precisely sure if they cohabitated in any meaningful degree or not
Well they might have started different but that's the thing isn't it? When you have two groups of creatures living together who are capable of breeding with one another...well, the differences between the two of them tend to blur quite quickly.
The neanderthals might have just been fucked to death, completely absorbed and assimilated into homo sapiens through extensive interbreeding.
I personally ascribe to the not very human elves. 7-8 feet tall average with some taller than 9 feet, and also extremely lanky. Despite that they're fairly tough and significantly stronger than a human, as well as being exceedingly lithe and sharp sighted. Also I like my elves to have solid black eyes, almost alien like.
As a downside they have stronger magical affinity than humans, but that's also a negative because it means magic affects them much more strongly. In practice they take the full amount of damage from magical attacks, like say an Elf gets hit for 4 damage from a magic missile, they take 4 damage, whereas a human would only take 3 damage and a dwarf would only take 2.
Note, stuff like fire or disintegrate still hits a human or dwarf just the same, but they're basically 25% and 50% better at taking magic damage than elves are and also get +1 and +2 to magic related saves.
There are other things such as extreme xenophobia and how most elven cultures are totally resistant to change, so even though they're stronger, faster, smarter and more longlived than a human they only fight with magically created and infused wooden stuff grown from trees while humans enjoy iron and steel. Also how elves can't actually touch iron with steel having a similar although diluted effect to them.
Some more flexible elven cultures use silver weapons and armor infused with magic to strengthen it.
Dwarves I mostly like the way they are, except they're a bit more keen on grudges and violence and not particularly peaceable folk. They war against humans and elves as much as they do orcs. They're also not midgits, standing 4 and a half to 5 feet tall with extremely stocky builds. Humans average between 5.5-6.5 feet in the setting by the by, with barbarians being more disposed to 7 feet while backwater serfs might only be 5 foot on average.
Gives another meaning to Borg assimilation, does it not?
We know that humans fucked Neanderthals enough to get them into our DNA so some cohabitation must have taken place at some point.
>Holy shit, fucking neck yourselves, you pieces of horse crap. I am so sick of fags like you ACTUALLY DEFENDING this shit. Please explain why the FUCK you are ENTITLED to play some shitty ass race that doesn't even fit into the setting?
It's a game and who cares?
These ragepastas deserve suptg
I like making orcs have actual culture too. Super violent cultures, that generally keep them in a tribal state but with distinct kingdoms popping up as well. Still semi tribal in nature, such as the king being the strongest orc most of the time. But Orcish scholars exist and orcs are about as intelligent as humans, just with much shorter tempers and no magical affinity, although they still have shamanistic and druidic ability. Average between 6 and 7 feet tall, stronger than humans.
I like my humans to be a mix of European and Nordic, Far Eastern in general, and Native American as the three main subcultures of humans you'd find.
Dolphins are pretty smart comparatively
Fucking retards live in the water (no access to fire for construction/metallurgy), don't have opposable thumbs/manipulative appendages, and don't have a written language and they've been doing just fine for themselves
People think evolution is teleological which is a wildly incorrect. Evolution isn't working to create super strong or super intelligent megaspecies. Survivial of the fittest (which wasn't a term used in the origin of species or by Darwin) better understood as anything that gets the job done. Some species are generally fucking useless like the dumbass dodo bird but it found a perfect ecosystem for itself to live in before getting wrekt by humans.