Urban Fantasy Races?

Did a weeboo piss in your cheerios today?

Why would 80s/90s Japanese culture be in a 1920s American city?

Can we get this thread back on track please?

80s/90s new york culture. Its surprisingly accurate all things considered, kinda like gun smith cats

Rat-like people obsessed with the gaining of wealth, currency and objects of value. Stick to their own. Tricky, scheming with twitchy noses and grabby palms. Found in large urban cities typicaly in charge of highly profitable industries like pornography and visual entertainments.

Rat people are kind of unoriginal though.

Maybe because of how common rats are in cities? Not to mention that a city-dweller's greatest fear is if the rats are more than just mindless vermin, and there's something more living beneath the streets and sewers?

Skaven, Pickman's Model, take your pick.

So is urban fantasy

So is basing your setting on a culture at a set time in a set location.

So is making your entire setting a city.

So is having a setting.

>caring about originality when the setting is based on non-fiction

Non-fiction cannot be Fantasy and vice versa.

I came into the thread to suggest this, you got some great taste user.
Ratfolk fit into the "Seedy underbelly" that a lot of urban enviroments can come across as. They fit a lot of fantasy really.
They're kind of under-used actually.

Outside of time and space you say? Why include aliens at all when you could include other potential sapient species that this planet has to offer in its past and future?

A hominid group that includes us and others in those potential timelines where they became the dominant force. You could have a group for every mass extinction event that assumes that event did not happen and sapient life managed to arise. Take a look at other intelligent earth species that could potentially inherit the planet in the future should we go extinct like crows or octopi. Toss in some AI to cover the future in which we replace ourselves with machines. There's so many options.

I agree, Rat-folk are much underused or if they are they are typically canon fodder and not used in the scheming manner which they could be.

Attach to them all the negative Jewish stereotypes and it could be interesting.

How about ghostly janitors?
Like, creatures from outside space and time that are that way naturally, and for whatever reason work in the city as janitors or maintenance crews.
To normal-space creatures they look like weird, 2-d shadows creeping around. The thought of some terrifying shadow-creature just working on the plumbing in this motel is kind of a cool one.

As much fun as scheming ratfolk are, I can't get over the fact that real-life rats are actually very kind, altruistic (or about as altruistic as an animal can be) compassionate and smart animals.
Then again a lot of nasty shit comes with intelligence so...

One thing about the ratfolk though is I already wanted to add in a few animal people races but having too many would feel redundant.

Currently I wanted a race of loony wolf men, but having them and rats may feel redundant. Maybe for compromise I could make them dog-rats instead?

There have been examples of altruism in rats, but also just about every other behavior you can ascribe to humans is present in rats. They could make for a very curious society.

You could have them be an off-shoot of rats. A different culture maybe?
Hell since there's aliens they could be ratfolk colonists that adapted to their planet or something.

Pic related..?
Also yeah. I swear the whole "Clever ratfolk" thing is so ignored in fantasy. When you have 5 different species of midgets that all feel kind of samey you think someone would just add rat-folk and have something stand out.

Pic related is Militia Vox, lead singer of an all female Judas Priest tribute band.

Though I agree. I think they have been sterotyped as dirty, unclean vermin considering European history. Though they are typically very clean animals, cleaning themselves like cats and are a lot more socialable too.

>magical stormfront jews

Let's just say that it could be used... not so well.

I kinda liked WW take on rat people with the Beshilu but they're probably too animalistic for OP's game. Still, worth a check. Azlu too.

For something a little underused, you know what kinda of intelligent animals are VERY present in the city and mostly ignored in urban fantasy?

Birds.

And they're actually pretty diverse. Granted, I'm not sure players would take a sparrow-thing too seriously, but at least crows and gulls are an interesting possiblity.

Building on the lizard dude on the right, how about anthropomorphic sewer gators? Or better yet, a population of kappa who immigrated from some other land?

>Crow and Rat folk living throughout the city, in a permanent competition to out-clever each other
>Much to the annoyance of everyone else.

City of 'Vermin'?

Yisssss. This pleases Many-As-One

I've always liked using some kind of race that's able to "Wear another race's flesh" or such. Disguise person and the like are fun innate abilities. Something like the Kandra from Mistborn are cool, but could be OP in their current state.

I think too many anthro-animal races would cause some issues with making them seem unique or interesting.
Why not swamp-aliens who are naturally acclimated to the slimy depths of the sewers?

Already has this in mind, thanks. Do love the worldbuilding aspects of it though; my favorite about it is that creatures of this race are like crocodile sharks- having several rows of constantly replacing teeth. Plus they lay eggs and when the eggs are incubated it can actually determine if the baby hatched is intelligent or not- as in if its too cold the baby becomes a bit like a feral alligator monster but that runs and fights like a scrawny little lightning fast lizard but in the huge body of a lanky crocodile monster thing. Artificially warming these eggs actually allows the race to continue to spawn with the 'mutation' of language and sufficiently higher IQ.

Zombies. More specifically, corpses inhabited by a symbiotic organism that adopts some of the personality traits of the host and preserves their body. While they are sentient, they are discriminated against due to a talking corpse being creepy as hell.

>A Shambling, heavy-footed corpse comes marching out of an alleyway
>A grim-faced, muscular man comes marching to it, cutting it off in the street as he smokes on a massive cigar
>He takes a huge drag off of it before breathing the smoke into the corpses face
>"Jim! I missed you man, how's the host-body treating you?"

>The corpse raises its pale hands, rapidly firing off a sentence in sign language.
>"You know they cut the guy's tongue off before they dumped him in the river, right?"

>Knew 'nothin' about that... shit man, my source was dead-wrong.
>Say, howabouts we go find you a new hoste huh? For old times sake. Free of charge.
>The man hefts a baseball bat, three railroad spikes driven through the business end.

These corpse-patrons or whatever you wanna call them could be something VERY cool.

Sounds like it. Mechanically, I'm thinking that since all of their vital organs have been relocated, they'd be harder to kill, but the substance they secrete to preserve the host's body is highly flammable.

>To protect heir hosts and prevent burns, they cover themselves in thick plastics or other materials
>Often adorning masks to protect the often-disfigured faces

Maybe over time the organisms grow through the body, resulting in extra, tentacular limbs or odd growths.

>Female patrons grow a retractable bone spike from their wrists
>They reproduce by injecting an egg directly into the spinal column of the host body
>They attempt to use sentients as a host, but in a pinch will go for other animals of similar mass, such as dogs.

Rumor has it that in the undercity, there are groups obsessed with those so called "Patrons."
So far gone in their madness that they would willingly give themselves up as hosts. The process of assimilation on a living target has been described as unbearably painful.

>The process fuses the two minds, more often than not driving the new creature completely insane.
>However, with careful concentration and days of agonizing pain, the hybrid can shape the form of their own body.
>It's not uncommon to see hybrids with mantles of bone, things with writhing tentacles where their arms should be, and yet more monstrosities.

>The creatures are often snatched up from their "Nursery's" in the Undercity and picked up by the more reckless or cruel street gangs or mercenary groups

What would the culture be like for a bodysnatching race?

I'm assuming, as someone with no anthropological or cultural studies that they would have been the smartest, but not the most dominant species on their planet.
I'm assuming they'd be opportunistic, cunning, predetory, but not naturally "Evil" or sadistic.
Just a mindset that would seem very aggressive to other sentient races.

Would there be any cultural taboos regarding the treatment of host bodies?

Gargoyles are natural city dwellers.

It depends I suppose.
I have no doubt any number of Patrons would find the act of willfully mutilating ones host body wasteful and rather distasteful.
But at the end of the day, this is a species that can switch their body around as long as there are hosts to infest. Think of it like being poor, and willfully busting up your only car. Sure you can eventually get another one, or even borrow a friend or family members, but it's wasteful, stupid, and just destructive.

We've got corpse-infesting opportunists, clever, charming ratfolk, cunning crow-people and maybe even Sewer-Aliens and Gargoyles.
This is kind of neat so far!

OP here- only 3 of those are getting in and all of those are based on preexisting ideas.

I wish Veeky Forums was more helpful today :/

Which three?

Friendo, if you're looking for absolute, 100% originality, you are fucked.
There has been 2016 recorded years of human history and we have as a species have thought up so much shit that anything wholly "Original" would be being different, just for the sake of being different.
Don't be ungrateful.

only 2016 years of recorded history?

I agree with him but goddamn that was stupid

Whoops.
I knew something I typed out was fucked up.

I like the sewer crocodiles, the rat people, and the gargoyles. Obviously in this case the gargoyles are not made of stone, but might have thick rhino-like skin or something.

The truth is I was disappointed in this thread because I don't understand this obsession with races that are so far removed from any of the traditional human limitations and weaknesses they are essentially nonplayable.
>Corpse people can't get seriously injured as they'll switch bodies; seriously how would they exist in a civilized city and how would the person's loved ones see the dead corpse of their loved one walking around being piloted by an alien? Kind of bullshit
>Crow or bird people; giving people the ability to fly, especially implied to be at level 1 as a starting and at-will ability, is way too powerful for most games.

The same problem comes up with other races too, but these are some good examples.

I thought the point of the corpse-people was that they were discriminated against unless I'm reading this wrong.
Birds usually have lighter bones, so it's likely bird-people would have a high CON penalty. And from what you've described, most people are going to have guns anyway, so flight won't be as massive an advantage as you make it out to be.

Corpse people can still totally die, they're a parasite inside the body, that get's hit and they're fucked, we've mentioned a serious weakness to fire, and in the interest of balance you could add very long waiting times for host-body-switching and a temporary stat-decrease.

Crowfolk might only be able to glide, or maybe not fly at all.
There are answers to these problems, discuss them with people, express your problems. Don't just write off an idea as unbalanced without discussing it man.

Anime/Manga writers get autistic about authentically depicting something if they feel authentically depicting it.

Who gives a shit?

Kekkai Sensen was a pretty accurate depiction of New York from a New Yorker.

Originality for its own sake is a virtue.

That's not a good reason. If you want to be original, don't ask other people on Veeky Forums for ideas.

>ancient golems

>Not having new golems made of brick and I-beams, assembled by poor immigrant workers

>gargoyles
A species with a natural flesh-to-stone/stone-to-flesh power which only works on themselves. At will, they can alternate between organic creatures or immobile yet still conscious stone sculptures of themselves in whatever posture they'd been in when they transformed.

Their stone form isn't exactly normal stone. What kind of stone it looks like varies between gargoyles, but it always has the same properties of being ridiculously sturdy. If it's possible to damage a gargoyle in stone form, nobody's tried enough damage yet. Stone-form gargoyles have no apparent limit as to how long they can spend as statues. To avoid and-I-must-scream scenarios, their senses work in statue form and they can manipulate their own sense of time. Basically the same as Shrike's hibernation at the end of A Darkling Plain.

When in organic form they can move, but they're vulnerable to harm, need food and air and have a finite lifespan (although one they can put on hold for as long as they like by turning into stone).

Most gargoyles are found in stone form, having been trapped in situations where turning back into organic form would be lethal. Buried in cooling lava, submerged deep enough that they'd drown in organic form before they could swim to the surface, having turned into stone when mortally wounded or dying of old age, etc. There was a gargoyle civilization once, but something (the surviving gargoyles don't know or aren't telling what) wiped it out, doing so much damage that even now, gargoyles are still scattered and waiting. Eventually erosion will wear away the mountains encasing them, continental drift collisions will raise seabeds, etc. There's probably also some organization made up of gargoyles who already escaped working to track down and rescue the rest of their species.

>something (the surviving gargoyles don't know or aren't telling what)

To elaborate, individual gargoyles will tell what wiped out their civilization. However, most of their stories are different and mutually contradictory.

This isn't because they're lying.

When Gargoyle Civilization #1 fell, it took eons for the biosphere to recover and a few of the multitudes of stone-form gargoyles to find themselves in situations suitable for reanimation. Most of Gargoyle Civilization #1's surviving population remained in stone-form, even as the few survivors to reanimate proceeded to live their lives, breed a new population and have Gargoyle Civilization #1 dwindle into mythology while they built Gargoyle Civilization #2. When Gargoyle Civilization #2 was wiped out, things repeated, only Gargoyle Civilization #3 also recovered a few stone-form survivors from Gargoyle Civilization #1. Repeat until Gargoyle Civilization #several-thousand-something and the modern day.

This also explains the wide variety of gargoyle subspecies. Different populations breeding to fill different environments over sufficient time for evolution to take place.