Our [Race] are different

Broo

I like the sroop pot, thats good shit right there.

I knocked the alignment out of my DnD based setting pretty quickly because fuck all that noise, even demons and angels have agendas more in line with what they actually are rather than ~DA GOOD~ and ~EVUL~, specifically self appointed arbitrators of morality, So yeah demons still attempt to make mortals do hellacious shit to bolster their own power while angels are much the same but for positive energy reasons, both could vanish for all it matters.

Also, since there's no evil or good, monsters are just races like you or me, more or less horrifying or stupid but not intrinsically bad.

Goblins and Kobolds have become part of life because the various kings and monarchies largely have outlawed enslaving 'people', tricky merchants have instead moved on to enslaving 'lesser races' who the powers that be are unwilling to apply the term 'people' to, gobs and kobolds are the most common since Kobolds are naturally servile and Gobs are usefully humanoid but easily cowed, orcs are used more like beasts of burden but are too volatile for regular city use.

Also goblins invented the art of deep frying stuff, originally in order to make boots and other leather goods more edible. They serve fast food on the streets from big pots not dissimilar to chippos.

Ah, thought I had a sketch somewhere.
As mentioned. They live out in the desert and are your fairly standard reptile race. Like sunlight, dislike the cold and all that. They're largely blind, and pick up on prey's movement through sensing minute electrical pulses that they give off.

No picture is better than a bad picture bud, always remember this.

It sounded cool right up till I looked at it.

Well you can always reimagine them.
I prefer putting pencil to paper to remember what they look like as I GM.

You the same user with the lizardmen/barrowfolk/beastmen setting?

So Chozo?

Yeah but picture this, I'm your player, you describe the monster rising, metallic compounds, electricity arcing over their strange skin as it distends its jaws, part eel, part reptile, all malevolence

Than you show me a fifteen year olds school book drawing.

You blew up the much cooler image I had in mind, in exchange for that, its going to take me hours to adjust after that, because now instead of being a rad blind electric eel beast its 'a dude in armor'

They're supposed to be a sapient race, not drooling monsters. But drawing some enormous hulking drool beast cousin of them would be a fun little exercise. If only my drawing skills matched your imagination user.
It's ok, I still love you.

>Humans
Different nations get different bonuses

>Elves
Look weird, High Elves are nobility, Common Elves are burghers/villagers

>Dwarves
Surface Dwarves are know for wine, olives, ships, philosophy, and heavy cavalry, Mountain Dwarves are known for heavy infantry, phalanx, and mining. Dwarves grow large mustaches instead of beards.

>Orcs
Divided into Savage, Black, and Green. Black are normal, Green are wannabe humans, Savage are Stone-Age. Same height as a Dwarf, but porcine.

A sapient race need not always be humanoid

Me and my pal have polynesian reptilians with a tail instead of legs and the head of a Dunkleosteus.

They like to chew wooden things just like many parrots do, and it keeps their toothed beak sharp.

Their basic weapon is a hook staff, just to bring the enemy closer to their jaws.

My fantasy setting is actually a sci-fi setting in disguise where most of the races are actually genetically engineered humans.

Which is why there are catgirls, wolfgirls and bunnygirls.

> Elves
Are the personification of kindness in the world, and are basically hippies that love everything and everyone.
Dark elves are just physically darker-skinned and live near the sea, being bro-tier surfer dudes.
Their themes aesthetic is based off the ancient meso- and south-American cultures.

> Merfolk
Are a sapient race, trading with coastal cities of other races. Most are fish-dudes, but one subrace that lives deeper at sea are dolphin-dudes and the swamp/river merfolk are cephalopod-dudes.

> Gnomes
Are an evil AF subrace of dwarves, using their technical ingenuity mostly to create and sell weapons to other nations

> Goblins
Are horrible mad magician-scientist types that have no regard for life and experiment on their own, creating the bestial berserkers which they named "Trolls" and the blood-drinking serial killers they called "Orcs".
Then they set all of these out on the world and also made them sworn enemies of eachother, since their magic takes its power from pain and suffering.

> Lizardmen
Live in deserts and near volcanoes and have a penchant for war and conquering. Their all-out attacking style and their inability to want to stay in control of the same place instead of waging another war makes them unliked but mostly harmless in the long run.

> Fairies
Are insect-winged free-spirited types. Smallish humanoid sized (about the size of halflings / dwarves). What little government they have is ruled by the women. Their close cousins the Sprites (bird winged) are obsessed with beauty, fashion and social standing. Their other close cousins the pixies (bat winged) are lolrandom and make no sense to anyone else.

> Angels
Are light elementals and not the messengers of any god. Also a lot more free-roaming and less organized army type than usual.

> Chimera
Are constructs created in one of two ways:
1. When you take a part of a living being's existence (their body, blood, soul or consciousness) and pump it full of magic or cut it out and replace it with a magical element.
2. When you build a being entirely out of these artificial magical components.

> Undead
Are death chimera. E.g. a Zombie is a person whose mind and soul were replaced with death magic, but body and blood were left as they were.
The more powerful undead are chimera that just have LESS parts affected with death magic, since death magic is withering and unmaking.

I just applied fantasy race stereotypes to the human races that I was building and used them to determine a few things about their race.
>Elves
Tall, bronze-colored humans from fantasy Persia. They practice a nature-centric Taoist-inspired religion that follows the 'standard' pantheon.
>Dwarves
Stocky, extremely capitalist not!Spaniards with unique talent for corruption and bureaucracy. Also inhumanly good at wrestling.
>Half-Orks
Tattooed olive-skinned nomads who ride water buffalo and have an aesthetic affinity for covering everything in chains. Secretly, extremely good poets.
>Gnomes
Bastard Italians. Homosexual and extremely dangerous.

>Elves
Lived in a caste based society centered around a magic tree until the dark elves fucked it all up. The tree is now killing their world, and bleeds an addictive sap the dark elves supercharge themselves with. They also dose small quantities to their slaves to ensure dependency on their masters. Free elves fled to the setting's main world and planted a cutting from the old tree. They and the local humans work together to keep everyone else the fuck off their land and away from the tree, and have succeeded for 3000+ years.

>Halflings
Voodoo practicing, ancestor worshiping river nomads. Like to keep bone trinkets of their dead relatives. They also like to throw birthday parties for the deceased, during which they may allow possession of the living by said deceased.

>Goblins
Engineered race created by spoopy far realm types eons ago. Their masters got assaulted by other far realmy things from space, and the resulting devastation sent the world into a mini apocalypse and destroyed the psychic link they had to the goblins, causing them all to go feral. Goblins starting getting back sapience a few thousand years ago, but it's too late in the game to amount to much more than annoying savage midgets that nobody likes.

>Orcs
Polynesian/viking-esque sea raiders. They're actually only seafaring because previously mentioned mini apocalypse literally blew up their ancient homeland. Nobody actually remembers of course and think it's always been like that.

>Dragons
All hatch as limbless serpents, transforming into a unique form after their first hibernation, in which they believe they enter the dream world and are told by their god what they're supposed to look like. There's also little dragon people who think they reincarnate into dragons if they live their lives properly. They also hibernate and enter the dream world after about a century of living, but whatever their god tells them drives most completely insane. Most try not to live that long.

My dwarves are cute. They were also created by a wizard to be loyal guards for his treasury, but this has been long forgotten after the wizard passed away and the vault has since become a palace with a sprawling dwarven kingdom surrounding it.

The only home brew race I ever was excited about was a variant on ratfolk called packrats. They could carry more stuff.

So the wizard created a race of very intelligent guard dogs? That's kind of neat.

Yuan Ti, remade to fit into the Dragonmech setting as outlanders from the main setting.

Based on a combination of Japanese/Chinese influences in some ways, but not very overt. IE some elements of dress sense comes from Japan, silk robes are popular. Chinese civil service exams were a big influence on their culture.

Government is a kind of 'open aristocracy' where you can be born into a position of power and influence, but unless you pass your tests and prove your worth, you'll never be given any actual responsibility or authority, and where commoners who pass their tests with great ability can be admitted. Used to be ruled by hereditary emperors but the last one was a dumb jerk who died without heirs and they had to make a new system in his absence.

Are totally oblivious of the steampunk technology of the rest of the setting due to their isolationist nature, but as a result have advanced magic to the point where it fulfills similar roles.

Their magical tradition is based less on casters, more on crafters. It is considered a mark of great skill to be able to craft a magical item that is powerful, useful, and so easy to use that a commoner with the standard state-mandated education can use it safely. Thus most houses have many petty artifacts filling the roles technological gadets do elsewhere.

Haven't gotten too far into examining them yet because it's only my one character currently, any suggestions or ideas?

Ancient wizards being the creators of common things is my fetish.
It's just so old-school D&D, I can't help but like it.

>spoiler
Agreed.

I purposefully wanted to keep most races in my fantasy setting pretty close to standard, to avoid having to spend a lot of time on explanations that tend to boild down to how the Xorblax are pretty much like elves, but blue and with three pairs of arms, or whatever.

However, I replaced the standard drow-style dark elves with radiation-scarred, mask-wearing, Lovecraftian abomination-worshiping cultist elves.

Sounds like a combination of Chozon and Arakoa. I approve. Arakoa are one of the best things to come out of post-WC3 Warcraft games, and definitely the one gloriously awesome thing from the otherwise shitty latest WoW expansion.

>Industrialist
>Druids
Explain further

Cute.

What do the other races think of them?

I've done this a lot with my current setting. To keep things short

>humans are divided up into four (or six) elemental races over two (or three) separate creation events. The first (water and earth) were pacifist artists and philosopher priests, but were eventually supplanted by the second generation of warriors and scholars (fire and air) when the gods found them lacking ambition. Some conspiracy theories say that people are devolving into decedent degenerates (wood) while cold hearted engineers and their homunculi (metal) take over.

>Elves are the leftovers of a Fey invasion, and are only half real. The many different types of elves aren't all the same race, just descended from creatures of a common origin. The fey are creatures of narrative and story, and the things that would become the elves were their extras and props, settings and special effects. The true fey were basically petrified by the mundanity of reality, so the proto-elves that managed to adapt grew into societies and roles based around their original purpose, but are slowly realizing how limited and stagnant this has left them

Cont.

>The true fey were basically petrified by the mundanity of reality
What man

You can burn all the trees you want if you can regrow them next day.

In general, they're thought of as a little too simple as they concentrate more on practical matters and what's currently affecting their clan/family/self at the very moment rather than theorizing and planning things out long term.
They make fantastic adventuring companions however, as their knack for navigating underground caverns is indispensable, not to mention their loyalty. There's a possibility one would betray you or even flee, but more often than not a woofdworf will stand solid and fight by your side.

>Dwarves are the artificial, golem like custodians and servants of the machinery of the world, and the second oldest race. Most of them are completely inhuman, being strange communal insect-robot-golems that live deep under the earth under the watchful eyes of their godmachine "mothers". The surface dwarves are a fairly recent invention, a race of gregarious, community minded pseudo-human farmers and craftsmen designed to infiltrate human society to supply their underground kin with aid and resources

>Halflings and gnomes got rolled into dwarves.

>Orcs are the oldest, most primitive race, the old gods first crack at making independent servitors. Unfortunately they patterned them after the boar like God of strength and freedom, so they wound up with Porcs who despise authority and control, and try to fight everything. They're fantastic shamans, because they're viewed by spirits as kind of little brothers due to the age of their race. They've never really accomplished anything on a major scale, because they can't tolerate any rulership above a collection of tribes, save for in the case of exceptional individuals. They're also not evil per se, just alien and angry .

>Goblins are somewhat ratlike magical tricksters and conmen from the space between worlds. Their entire plane and way of life is based on contracts and deals, which they can magically seal. All of them are incredibly arrogant and vain, even the ones who can't afford an estate and are forced to slum it on the mortal plane. They loath to do anything for themselves, either recruiting some sap to do it via contract (and get shortchanged, naturally), hiring hobgoblin (which in this case means any creature enslaved , changed or created by goblin magic) slaves, or using an ancient racial ritual to create shitty knockoff goblins called Grots. Grots are dumb as hell, weak and fragile, and generally incompetent, but they're free and loyal so many goblins use them as minions regardless of ruined plans

I wanted to make a Lamia race that evolved from Mermaids (tail got elongated and lost its flipper, adapted to amphibious and eventually terrestrial locomotion).
When I looked into how snakes move, however, I learned that they depend entirely on their scales—their rigidity, surface, and shape—to get around:
youtube.com/watch?v=ZSHzDesFe6U
youtube.com/watch?v=5CchyctRFrQ
Since my Mermaids, being mammals, do not have scales, it seemed too far-fetched that the skin or faint body hair would evolve into full-fledged snake scales in any reasonable timescale, especially without any strong evolutionary pressures.

Oh well. ;_;

They were inherently creatures of change and chaos, and in their home plane they changed themselves and reality to suit their whims. In the mundane world, things didn't change as easily, and they were locked into one form. They also basically hemorrhaged energy like crazy, so those that didn't outright die in fights with the locals withered and hardened into sort of lumps of solidified fey power. They generally 'died' surrounded by their lessers, or fawning over their superiors, so you often find standing circles of elfstones

I'm working on a tribal stone age barbarian-verse for a new campaign. So far :

>halflings
Are not!inuit hunters with giant polar bears as Bond Creatures, all because of the inuit thread a few days back.

>dwarves
Are ancient precursors, their moutain halls all dead, abandonned for eldritch reasons and dungeonnable . Plan on allowing the players to be Last of Their Race if they want to be.

>humans
Are the most technologically advanced race (very early bronze age) because they're physically/magically weaker than the others. Come in savanna or steppe flavor.

>orcs
Are nomad tamers with big dinosaurs and huts on top of those.

>half-orcs
Happen often because or orc-human wars OR alliances. No particular social stigma most of the time as long as they do their part in whichever tribe they ended up.

>elves
Are wild jungle hunters, reclusive and cannibalistic.

>gnomes
Are magical not!celts, druids in an alliance with elementals and feys. Genasi are randomly born to them.

>centaurs
Are fast-moving, tightly-knit herds of archers.

>lizardmen
Are replaced by salamander/newt-men who live in mangroves and brew drugs.

My elves are completely fucked and dragging the world into oblivion down with them.

Goblins and Orcs live in a symbiosis, and have formed an unstoppable and well organized empire

Dwarves became too dangerous because of their technomagic, and have been nearly wiped out by others

humans are locked in a massive war with everyone and everything including themselves

"forest folk" are your usual satyrs, centaurs and furry shit. they got fucked over by elves and forest spirits

undead are completely lost and desperate, the more intelligent ones trying to find a powerful necromancer to follow.

demons are just fucked up, one succubus having brought an entire kingdom to horrible cursed ruin by herself

Gnomes are chickens

My humans don't exist

My humans are the biotech cyborgs left behind by the fall of the old civilization. They coexist with both the remnants of nature and the feral machine ecology that supplements it, and their views on the technological aspects of their world are shrouded in terms of magic and mysticism.

Other than that, they are much like the old hunter-gatherer and early farmer tribes said to be part of mankind's prehistory.

Humans are resilient pack hunters that become bolder in large groups,they love civilization and the comforts that it offers. Their capital city is NotLas Vegas. Physically, they are more or less like real world humans but males live longer and have a better sense of smell, while females are stronger and more aggresive. They have managed to tame several breeds of baboons to act in a variety of roles such as guard dogs, atack animals and, for the calmer breeds, companion animals, basically taking over the role of dogs. They invented vending machines.

I also have a race of deeply religious, intelligent troll like beings living under the banner of a theocracy on the brutal north. They are more or less the heroes of the setting, mostly because no one else steps up to it and the setting is very, fucked up.

I'm working on an arthropod race. What I need to do is figure out how they can vocally communicate. I'm thinking that they would use a form of stridulation situated around where a human's vocal chords would be, but the biological materials and textures would be much different. What would they sound like?

Considerably modified OSR. Elves in my setting are extremely sectarian, even more so than dwarves. They believe every other sapient race to be inferior. They just choose to have a kind of patronizing sympathy toward other races rather than be outright bigoted.

Elves are regarded as natural spellcasters similar to later D&D sorcerers. They don't need to scribe spells, but automatically gain new spells on level up. Also, they don't prepare specific spells in advance; they just use their spell points to cast any given spell from that level on an as-needed basis.

Elven spellcasting restrictions differ from human magic-users. As long as they aren't gagged or silenced, and they have one free hand, elves can fire off spells. They can do so while wearing any type of armor.

Dwarves get the ability to use two-handed weapons if they have a high enough Str rating, but they can't use any nature of missile weapon. At higher levels, I have the dwarven characters' deity grant them some basic clerical spells. I don't think this necessarily goes against the dwarven ethos since clerical magic is just magic by proxy, and isn't inherently bad since it's granted by their deity. Dwarves are nonetheless forbidden from using magic while in combat due to the perceived unnatural advantage it would grant them over their foes. Dwarves are very much obsessed with personal valor and all that junk.

I'm also experimenting with the idea of giving halflings level 1 and 2 magic-user spells, within the context of spells that might be thought of as cantrips or illusions. (not adding new spells) They can create light, summon illusionary creatures, etc., but can't actually harm their enemies with their magic. Halfling spellcasting would be functionally similar to that of the elf character and its restrictions. (or lack thereof)

Lastly, I'm looking into ideas for simplified thieving skill progression and checks.

I don't have any bizarre demihuman characters to contribute.

humans are really good with arcane magic, it's usually versatile but not very powerful.

beasts a race blessed with innate magic and diversity, ranging from simple animals to dragons, sapience/intelligence is not very common for most of them

not!orcs are a tribal race created to be servants and protectors, each tribe has different characteristics accordingly to their "patron", from which they can channel powers and abilities.

feys are a little like the lesser deities, drawing their power, aspects and characteristics from their "domain".

not!elementals form-less and able to shapeshift at will, they usually are toned down versions of walking natural disasters. And they are the major reason behind racial mix-ups and other weird stuff.

reproduction is more a matter of matching magic natures rather than biological stuff. not!elemental having "simple magic natures" and shapeshifting at-will gave birth to most hybrids, and across the ages bridged the distance across most races.

note: dragons used to represent the beasts as the most civilized and intelligent beasts, that is until they got too powerful tried to conquer the world and were turned into not!kobolds, deprived from magic and their natural powerful forms.

forgot to mention, dwarves are feys with domains over the craft and earth, while elves are fey with domains over "social aspects"

>without any strong evolutionary pressures.
Less competition for resources on land, needs a way to move on land. Bam.

They would probably sound like a human with a scratchy voice, considering that's who would be playing them.

I want to start a DnD-alike campaign by saying that there are no Tolkein races, including humans. Everyone gets to add races and cultures to the pot, and that becomes the setting. Requires players who are into worldbuilding, but as a GM and therefore someone who is into worldbuilding, I like the idea.

I wonder what the new stereotypes would be. Probably animal-people and robots.

Ideas that I have for my main setting idea:

> humans
I kinda want to different races of humans to have greater physical variety, sorta like the more tame Star Trek alien appearances (Vulcan, Bajoran). Even wanted one that was blue, for whatever reason. But blue people became something different, since my rules was 'humans have city-states and above, the 'wild men' have tribal structures and below'.

> wild men
Stuff like kobolds and gnolls. Want them definitely to not be human. Also, one of them are (now) blue Polynesians, looking like shark people. Kinda like the Na'vi from Avatar.

> zombies
Newest race in terms of world timeline, oldest one I have come up with. Necromancer hated how quickly undead made from whatever decayed, so he bred his own race that was meant to die and become undead servants for him. He actually made a necropolis for them before an adventuring party killed him. Now they have a society based around their threefold existence, and claiming that the land is now their damn it.

Just had a session of the Quiet Year to add backstory to the campaign (a player couldn't make it, so we did a hundred years ago in the capital of a nearby region), and apparently elves are from the moon. But only the asshole elves. The other elves may have come from the moon in the far distant past, but Earth life has rendered them non-assholes.

I suspect this is because I'm playing an elf who is not that big of an asshole, and another player is a super-asshole elf.

Play Dawn of Worlds. It's literally 'build a landscape and the peoples who live on it', and one of the easiest things to do on your turn is make new races and subraces.

can confirm you get a lot of animal folk

bumperino

Do you know the aumaua from Pillars of Eternity? They look exactly like what you described (mostly blue polynesian shark people).

>Elves
Ancient, powerful, immortal, and arrogant, they ruled over the world in ancient times and thought themselves greater than the gods. They enslaved the peoples of the world and sought to overthrow the gods to gain absolute dominion over the world. However, in the end they destroyed themselves in a massive civil war that leveled continents. Now the only elves left are the holdouts still living deep in abandoned laboratories and factories. Long since gone insane from centuries of isolation, they toil away on forbidden research and plot the downfall of the usurpers who inherited the world.

>Daemons
Daemons have a varied appearance but most have wings, horns, and a tail of some type. In their language their name means "people of the gods" and they were indeed servants of the various deities in the past. However, abandoned by their patrons and persecuted by the humans, they have fled to the south building city-states and fortresses in the high peaks. The daemon lords often send their agents to meddle in human affairs, and for this most humans are distrustful of daemons.

>Sphinxes
True sphinxes are all but extinct, with the last few holdouts living solitary lives atop inaccessible mesas. However, the race lives on in the Lesser Sphinxes and Demi-Sphinxes. Lesser Sphinxes are not particularly intelligent, and look like tiny winged lions (about 50% larger than a housecat) and are favored as familiars and pets. Demi-shpinxes, on the other hand, are a bipedal humanoid sentient race. They're basically catfolk with vestigal wings. They live on a continent in the east, as well as in Not!Japan and often send missionaries to other lands to spread the teachings of the wind goddess.

>Orcs
Orcs are poor magic users, but compensate with technology. They worship the gods of war and knowledge and have an alliance with the giant peoples that has lasted for a thousand years. The expansionist ways often brings them into conflict.

Yes.

I picked up on Tolkien's Orc/Gobbo take with the twist of them being descendants of giantkin, like Thyrs and Jöttun, and this relation being the reason for such extreme variety of physiology among them. Some Orcs/Goblins appear as though they were feral wood elves, with long limbs and wiry muscle, while others will appear like hulking mounds of flesh, and they may actually be related by blood or even siblings. Their most striking feature is always their canines, in rare cases developing tusks and fangs that break through their closed lips. Their skin is, as opposed to most modern fantasy, a fleshy bronze, but will irreversably turn black as coal when exposed to the sun for an extended period of time. This has led to nomadic steppeclans being addressed as "Black Orcs", which in turn has become synonymous with the fiercest and sturdiest warriors of all due to the nomads having a much more warlike lifestyle.

Orcs are highly social people who value their family's survival above personal luxury, although it is not unheard of that certain chieftains will shamelessly flaunt their personal wealth to represent their clan's well being. They take great offense if their clan is insulted, and orcish bloodfeuds are the reason they have a reputation as warlike and bloodthirsty.

The orcish love for pork is legendary and the wild boar as well as the house swine is considered a sacred animal. As such, helmets and warmasks will often have porcine features and carrying a boar's pelt is considered good luck in battle.

>Humans, Elves, Orcs, most Giants, pretty much any race over 5 Feet tall.
Dead and gone, nobody knows why.

>Halflings
Live in a feudalistic society. Families live in structures called Hillocks, which are organized into Moots. Moots are based around a large plot of communal farmland divided between each hillock and all the families of the moot work it and provide for its maintenance and common defence. A group of Moots are organized into a Teeg, with a central Teegtown as their main center of governance. Each Moot in a Teeg's jurisdiction votes for a Maestro to run the Teeg for life. Teegtowns are populated with the descendants of those who were exiled from Moots and Hillocks for breaking laws, and thus are seen as an unsavory, yet necessary part of Halfling life. Their religion has a god for every day, week, month and season and a hidden trickster god whose holy day changes every year and is similar to Halloween. Their holy book is a combination of an Almanac and a Horoscope than a guide to morality, which is more governed by tradition and family politics.

Well...
I got this one species I have dubbed "Ichormen" on behalf of one of their more unique abilities.
They're a relatively tall (median height for men is 6' even though the gravity they face is 1.1x that of Earth, women on average are 5' 8") and somewhat lanky (average man's weight being about 150lbs, women's being 90lbs)
Their limbs are quite longer than a human's, extending between 2-4 inches over what one would expect for a human.
Their circulatory system is quite unique in that it's stronger than ours on average with an added 500 or so feet of veins and arteries, along with a 5-chambered heart to accommodate such blood flow.
One may argue that this explains how they very rarely get fat, considering just how much energy that takes.
They also have larger lungs which only contributes to that.
Then on the topic of fatness, when fat does form in an Ichorman, it is stored inside the fibres of the hair, giving it a look we would likely consider incredibly lush.
If there is no more space in the hair, it is stored in skin, giving a look of constant hypertension.
The way their pregnancies work is that the women drop two eggs every three to four months, leading to an increase in the amount of twins in the population. Sisters who are born as twins may often stay with the same man, if there are no couples of male twins in their communities.
Facially, they have large cheekbones and a somewhat extended-looking face, with a longer chin on average.
The men normally have sunken cheeks, where as the women have the potential to have fuller cheeks.
They live around a stable yet dimmer star than our sun, and thusly their range of eye colors is darker: dark blues, purples, dark greens, and browns.
They occupy about half the planet, residing on 1 out of the three continents and on 3 of the four subcontinents, althought it's unknown if they live on the uncharted islands, but estimates suggest their species has occupied only a rough 10% of all islands for certain.
pt2 l8r

>Humans
Winged lizardmen based on medieval Azerbaijan. They are also the smallest race

>Dwarfs
8 foot tall aquatic centaurs based on bronze age Cambodia

>Elves
Sapient chickens who live in the desert and are based on a mix of Blackfoot Indians and Estonians

Now THIS is what I call worldbuilding, not some boring dime a dozen Tolkienesque drivel. Unfortunately normalfags will never appreciate my setting despite how lovingly and creatively it was crafted

Nice doubledubs, memeposter

Now we get to why they're called "Ichormen" and more specifics about fighting.
Due to their longer limbs, they have an affinity towards ranged weapons, notably slings and javelins. Other weapons they use mostly include forms of war-picks, maces, mauls, pretty much anything front-heavy due to their added leverage.
Bows tend to be less common on the continents where they reside, as for the springy wood necessary is a rarity. While softwood is aplenty, not much of it is as effective for bowery as such woods like Yew and Osage on our planet.
However, a ruler in the center of the main continent over 100 years ago, after defeating a tribe which used bows extensively, found quite suitable woods in the captured forest which has been farmed in the heartland now for a century, so bows are not at all uncommon among the central countries, and are only spreading. At least, everywhere but the North, where the conditions are too cold for that type of wood to grow.
Rather, in the north of the main continent, there resides an incredibly dense wood that has a ridiculously straight grain, and is used for javelins launched by hand, sling, and a heavily specialized type of stick.

Now, as to why their name is Ichormen.
i·chor
ˈīkôr/
nounGreek Mythology
noun: ichor

the fluid that flows like blood in the veins of the gods.
literary
any bloodlike fluid.
Ichormen have a remarkably active part of their brain which regulates sensory intake for it's whole purpose. (Causing a larger skull, while also freeing up other parts of the brain)
It actively tells a smaller gland in its body which secretes something similar to adrenaline about all sensory intake, most particularly danger.
Whenever an Ichorman may find themselves in trouble, they receive a huge rush of the chemical that increases their bloodflow and airflow, leading to a swelling of the muscles.
While this sounds amazing, it has two grave consequences both in the long run and in the short term.

In the long run?
Premature death, heart and lung damage.
It's suggested a few months are lost off life every time it goes into effect.
In the short run?
Immediate muscle tearing and damage requiring large amounts of proteins for repair.
Now, normally, this isn't much an issue for the common civilian, but for soldiers this may have devastating effects if they aren't fed the necessary foods they need to recover or learn to control this chemical.
Most soldiers retire only after a handful of battles, and almost none who want to live long stay in duty for over a dozen or two battles.

Their cultures vary wildly wherever they go, and it would take a very long time to catalog each, although there are some cultural universals they all share, for the most part.
As a general rule:
-Men are expected to do heavier labor, be it heavy labor of mind or heavy labor of body.
-Women may only have one man, but one man may have two women if a pair of twin sisters so wishes it.
-There are lax informal customs, with mores taking a much higher priority over folkways in day-to-day life, and mores are much more observable, whatever they may be among the different cultures. (If you don't know what that means, they normally tend to care less about actions or activities that are not based in morality or logic)
-Those who live longer than average are almost universally seen as cowards.

Other random facts:
Their hair is layered to protect against the weather and either curled or straight dependent on the person, wavy hair is rarer. It also grows longer faster on average, typically tied with how much one eats.
They normally have just tanned or slightly-tanned skin, not quite white or brown, mostly due to the fact that their planet rotates on a lower axis, with more of the surface exposed to the star directly.

(gtg, more later)

I appreciate it user

Don't have a name for them yet but general outline is something like this
>agendered
> 3 jointed tripod with suction cup type feet
>3 arms, one comes out of the sternum
>2 fingers 1 thumb, sternum arm is a 3 finger grasper type deal
>greyish elephant texture skin thats actually quite thin and taut despite being around the same durability as human skin
>3 oval eyes in a spokewheel set up on a face lacking any other features
>telepathic communication only but no telekinetic abilities
>all in one organ that only works due to their unique "issue"
>joints and limbs move in uncanny directions and almost insectile ways, related to next bit
>relatively advanced civilization focused on combining math, what tech they had, and group based magic
>tried to ascend to a higher mathematical plane in hopes of finding their god or at least being one step closer
>whole race shoves their mojo into this ritual
>it either goes wrong or at least partially succeeds and they are now physically entangled to some degree between the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th dimensions but missed the 6th they do desired
>big issue was the Vanishing Syndrome that hindered them for a few millenia
>if anyone outside their race actively thinks of them that person is shunted from time and space for a little, but ultimately random, while and will return as if no time passed for them
>ultimately if you think of one of their racd you're thinking of them all as they're budding clones of the original precursor so they tended to just up and disappear until they were ultimately forgotten
>eventually once properly forgotten they migrated far and away from the public eye and rebuilt their pillaged civilization only suffering minor relapses
>don't know how yet but ultimately they gain some control over their new nature and can force their physical bodies to act according to a certain dimensions logic in our 3 dimensional plane

>just little shit though like their steps taking them further than would logically make sense or perhaps "taking more time" to push something thus imparting more force or a shorter timeframe like a punch or lifting something
>more adept users can temporarily shave off all but 2 dimensions which can be an issue if you swing at an object who's edge is infinitely smaller than the gap between your weapons atoms even if its just for a second or multiple instances of the individual or parts of that individual for a single attack though these are extraordinarily hard and rare talents
>pretty sure they eat basic minerals via slathering some sort of fluid they secrete and/or artificially mass produce onto particularly tasty veins or outcroppings before quickly absorbing them through the skin on their palms, doesn't work on flesh but depending on the clothing can harm plant material somewhat.

Over a shorter timeframe*

My elves (although at this point we've moved so far away from elves, I might just end up calling them the gray instead) are the product of alien gods cribbing the human design off the earth gods and making various "improvements". Then the alien gods were brutally slaughtered by the divine equivalent of copyright lawyers, and the elves were taken in by other gods.

They have smooth, white (not caucasian white, but porcelain white), somewhat rubbery skin, similar to a dolphin, with no pores or hair follicles, little in the way of facial features, and painfully thin bodies.

Being a fairly heterogeneous bunch, they pretty much universally have a fetish for body paint, jewellery and other colourful decorations to set themselves apart from other elves - although wigs tend to be looked down on as a sign of low self esteem.

Compared to humans, they have a very narrow range of facial expressions, and their sharp teeth make friendly smiles very difficult to pull off. They have almost no natural body language, which, combined with a height that forces them to look down when talking to most other races, makes them give off an aloof, eerie air that tends to make others uncomfortable.

In terms of stats, they occupy the high dex/wis, low con/cha position (although I'm not using DnD rules).

>Elves
>Sapient chickens who live in the desert and are based on a mix of Blackfoot Indians and Estonians

Honestly, I wish you were serious about this one.

Dwarves are an all-male species that reproduces via symbiosis with yeast.

Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Bugbears are three castes of a single eusocial species.

Orcs are a slave race created by breeding humans with goblinoids. Orcs cannot give birth vaginally: every birth is surgical, though this has been ritualized and made a part of their religion.

Dryads are hallucinations caused by a type of flowering plant that uses the sexual urges of humanoid males to spread pollen.

Conversely, any differences between elves and humans is entirely cultural.

To simplify it to the point of pointlessness:
>our dwarves are tau
>our elves are dwarves
>our goblins are elves
>our lizardmen are orcs
>our orcs are worse orcs

>our dwarves are tau
Now I'm offended.
>our elves are dwarves
Eh, mythology did it first.
>our goblins are elves
Eh, mythology did it first.
>our lizardmen are orcs
Pretty common trend for lizardmen, if you ask me.
>our orcs are worse orcs
I like it.

This strikes me as far too complicated, and I also get the impression that you've made it complicated just for complication's sake. Worse, I'm not getting a coherent picture at all. Why would I want to play this?

>Tell me about your [Race], Veeky Forums. How are they different?
what this week?
well...

So at this point I only have 3, and their not completely fleshed-out, they are both based on... I'm going to call them "internet archetypes"

> Sparkledogs
An off-shoot of the Cynocephali of distant lands, the sparkledogs are anthropomorphic canines with erratic and seemingly random fur-patterns of neon and pastel colors, they typically adorn themselves in even more garish clothing, Sparkledogs are typically insufferable attention whores, and most other races find them annoying and do their best to have as little interaction as possible with them.

>Anonima
A race of beings void of any distinguishing features, they appear as pale-skinned humanoids of indeterminate gender, they usually have red varicose veins radiating out from around their colorless eyes, or lip-less mouths, they have no noses or earlobes, just corresponding holes there these should be and serve in the same manner, they also are completely hairless. they are usually born in litters of 6-8 and each is a clone of the other. They claim to be able to tell each other apart but this has never been demonstrated to outsiders, Because of this most act like jackasses around others believing that so long as there is at least one other Anonima in the community they will never be identified accurately. a few, for whatever reason will try to scar or tattoo themselves to set themselves apart from others, something that is considered taboo in their society.

>Morgs
these people are a wonder among those who study arcane magic, as they are technically immortal, when a Morg dies, they are reincarnated into being from seemingly out of the ether at any one of a number of sacred sites scattered around their native lands, the individual usually has full and vivid memories of their past lives, but rarely retain the skills and training of their past lives, They are known to be petty and hold grudges for "generations".

Thoughts?

>Dwarves are an all-male species that reproduces via symbiosis with yeast.
wut

I have a setting where the elves take the role of the Phoenicians and Carthage.
I guess its closer to Melnibone then Tolkien elves.

>wut
I get it, they are Dorfs.

>erratic and seemingly random
This statement is redundant.

The life cycle of a Dwarf in my setting is as follows:

Occasionally in the life of an adult Dwarf, in a time of relative peace and comfort, a boisterous mood will settle on him, the result of hormones. He will feel an urge to gather his friends to him and drink copious quantities of Ale.

Dwarven Ale is created by, and home to, a particular species of yeast.

When the dwarves urinate in this state, they produce large, sperm-like gametes, as well as Yeast spores.

In the caverns below the dwarven settlement, the urine and other waste forms large pools, and the yeast, fed by this waste, forms large fungal cysts. Two dwarf gametes meet in these cysts and form embryos. These ebryos are extremely agressive once formed, and will kill other dwarf ebryos they encounter, until (usually) only one embyro remains in the cyst, at which point it implants into the cyst like a human embro does inside a womb and begins to grow, becoming a fetus.

After about a year, the fetus is ready to be born, and tears its way out of the cyst. Already physically capable, these infant dwarves instinctively climb back up to the dwarven settlement above.

About the same time the infant is emerging from the cyst, the dwarf whose boisterous mood began this cycle will feel a lonesome melancholy, also driven by hormonal changes. Often he will pray to the Earth Gods for a son at this time, and so when a young infant dwarf crawls up from the caves below the arrival is anticipated. The infant is then united with its father.

>Now I'm offended.
What's so offensive about dwarves being short communists with a knack for technology and rather naive views on diplomacy?

>Eh, mythology did it first.
>Eh, mythology did it first.
I guess neither of these are terribly original, but that's ok. Our elves are pretty much classic svartalfr and our goblins are just small, feral wood elves.

>Pretty common trend for lizardmen, if you ask me.
I should specify that they're more like Warcraft orcs, but yeah it's not anything unheard of.

>I like it.
Eh. They're my least favorite race in our group's homebrew setting. It was a collective effort so I won't complain, but they're underwritten to the point that several minor races are more fleshed out than the race that basically owns an entire continent.

Guess which race was the one I wrote into the setting. It's the underground elves. I'm a self-confessed elfaboo.

this, is disgusting.

>dwarves are literal pissbabies

This is an interesting Idea.

My only hang up is just that you are calling them "elves" because at this point it might be better to just make them a unique race; remove any preconceptions or comparisons to Elves of other works.

otherwise 8/10, would add to my setting if asked to.

Keep working on them.

Dwarves have a female god of law (Moradin and most of his pantheon was forced to leave the setting due to cosmological politics), so their clerics are mostly female as a result, their paladins in turn mostly male.
They inherit their clan name rather than the name of their parents, in general.

Drow used to worship Lolth, before the setting's resident goddess of chaos decided she wanted more servants and co-opted them, kicking Lolth out of the setting before Moradin/Corellon/Gruumsh were required to leave. Now they're all (more) insane and have personal psychic compulsions which can't be removed by magic.

The humans are not 'actual' humans, being a race that descended from shapeshifting giants and eventually lost their ability to shapeshift in return for the human statblock, which is kinda a raw deal but basically nobody alive knows this and most either don't want to tell the humans or don't think anyone else would believe them.

My orcs have a slightly different origin story.

I never knew I wanted this. Well done, user.

Bump

...

never said i want to play it. I just want more fleshed out races that aren't some minor variation on human. I'll probably par it down but theres plenty other races in tabletop that have far more bacostory and complicated lore.

bump.

>Our humans are Americans
>Our elves are French
>Our dark elves are Hawaiian/Scandanavian
>Our dwarves are post-Cold War Germans
>Our orcs are British to the extreme
>Our dragons are Nazis
>Our goblins are multiracial
>Our ratfolk are Jews
>Our halflings are tired of all this shit

My dorfs are communistic archaeologists who prize historical significance or even familial significance in artifacts above all else. They don't put much stock in gold or jewels or whatever, they have plenty of that shit lying around from the glory days, and gladly give them to humanity's Imperium as their required tribute. But find a stone goblet used by Urist McDorf the Great during the Armistice of Significance, and that shit's going to be highly prized. That's right, it's going to get a prominent spot in the museum it belongs in. Now get back to work, Urist the not great at all. That dirt won't brush itself off your ancestors' priceless artifacts.

Also, they're descended from shoggoths, but most of them don't know that. Only the elders are privy to that info. Also, that the real reason that the eldest ones retreat into the great tombs to "die" is because their bodies start to lose their ability to hold their shape, and it's best not to trouble the young whippersnappers' minds with questions of why great-great-great-grandpa is starting to sprout new eyes.

It's a science fiction thing billions of years in the future where there are only humans, but between the various genetic and cybernetic modifications made available to us, there are not really any "pure," humans as we'd know them any more. Some planets have their own cultural preferences of modifications, and some have carried down in various populations.

It sounds like a basic excuse to have space elves, but I promise it's not been used that way.