Let's play a game.
>Get 3 random words from this page: creativitygames.net
>Post em
>Write about an 'original' race based around these three words
>Don't write more than five sentences, our attention span is limited
>Post "Would play" on the races you like, and "Wouldn't play" on those you don't
>Questions and elaboration is allowed in further posts.
I'll start:
>Wisdom, Pants, Moth
It is said the Titan Mountains are formed by the remains of a fallen Titan who pierced the mountains and stood up to the gods. It is also said that within the deepest regions of this mountain range, there lives a race of insectoid, textile-eating hermits who live of the still-intact loincloth of the Titan.
These wise Mothmonks are no larger than a child and are mostly seen sitting with their legs folded, chanting to the cosmos. They live a reclusive life of peace, prayer, mental and martial training and are friendly yet complicated towards outsiders. They are content among the mountains and will remain there for thousands of years, because the garment that the Titan wore around his crotch will provide them with food for a long time.
bump
No takers?
>Pirate, Reward, Parade
The inselladre are a species of giant waterbugs (they vary considerably; from half the size of a human to half again as big) who speak with the minds and voices of men. As a culture they are consumers, compulsive thieves and liars - they prize the theft of gold and knowledge from outsiders. Inselladre pirates raid shipping, ambushing vessels from below the waterline, or make grand expeditions in silk air bubbles to loot long-forgotten shipwrecks. When they raid they take living captives and question them compulsively about their lives and cultures: the inselladre have a great love for mimicry (they are naturally talented at mimicking voices) and they will stage a triumph aping the celebrations of their enemies after a successful raid. Though the inselladre make their homes in stark caves and barren islands they are a colorful lot - each insect fuses the trophies and mannerisms taken from their various foes into a distinct personal "act".
>Carpenter, Pub, Paranoia
Thousands of years ago a long forgotten dwarf struck a deal with a powerful demon...
"Build me the finest pub in all the land, and each night I shall gift you a soul from its patrons"
The offer was satisfactory to the demon, and with his spawn created a pub like no other. A pub the size of a city, with great rivers of ale, feasts fits for kings every night, and wenches for all.
But underneath the merriment and revelry of the great Pub-City live the victims of the Last Hangover. Humanoid creatures cursed by a demon whose only purpose is to serve the Pub-City, unseen but ever-working in literal basement of society. No one knows how or when one is chosen, but each night another is added to their ranks.
They are called Emp'loi, the slave race. It is said when one is 'born' it loses all sense of individuality and purpose. Though its been years since one has been seen above ground, if you listen carefully you can still hear their moans.
>pub-city
I know my next campaign.
OP here, not many responds, but these are awesome.
>Doctrine, manners, ticket.
Exceptionally polite, passive aggressive halflings that have an arcane and complicated system of putting tickets on things to make requests of others or voice their displeasure.
Worship a goddess of courtesy, stone people for use of naughty words, etc.
Not exactly fleshed out but there you go.
>Motel, Trap, Crash
And, suddenly, I don't want to play anymore.
>Being magical realmed by the random word generator
Well Pudding Gnome
So pretty much an Oompa Loompa I guess
Or a clan of mining gnomes who dig down into swamps and wet earth and harvest green slimes, black puddings, and the other kinds of D&D slime monsters to sell, use in industry or use as weapons. Who are orange.
>suicide
>railway
>crab
A real problem in most modern cities, the Cancari have nevertheless made many their home. Opportunistic and a little ruthless, they manage very well in any kind of financial sector job, consolidating wealth to their own. Their political power remains small as their violent coming of age rituals, where they harden their shells against oncoming trains, leaves their population dwindling.
>Passion, Calculator, Picture
This is a race who is attuned to the innate mathematical rules of the universe. They spend their days in prophetic flurries of passion, inscribing their pictoral mathematics across whatever surface is available to them. Their innate ability for math makes them living calculators. Almost every member of this species seems to suffer from hypergraphia. These urges can be controlled if the person develops their own will.
Though many are consumed by the passion of inscription, some are able to break away from the throes and develop a will and mind of their own. These still have a connection to the mathematics of the universe, letting them keep their calcultor-like mind. The disconnected ones still are able to read the equations enough to anticipate certain events, and therefore have supernatural reflexes. Trying to read too far into the mathematics will drive one insane, however, and will break their minds.
>war
>fare
>report
A highly bureaucratic subrace of orks. They love filling reports as much as they love gutting their enemies. Of course, every single gutting needs to end with filling report KJ-23.
>Duck, Scaffold, Sausage
Gnomes.
>Wedding
>Bible
>Work
Protestants are already a thing I'm afraid.
>gallery, novel, chart
Famed artists, writers and mapmakers, the amber-skinned krujali are unparalleled in their craft. The pressure on them is, however, great, for when a krujali comes of age they are cast out from the tribe until they prove their worth. To do so, a krujali must successfully submit a piece to the Krujali Grand Gallery. If the piece passes the dreaded "peer review" ritual and is accepted, the krujali is welcomed back with open arms. If it fails, the krujali is subjected to the traditional ritual, "notice of rejection," and is cast out once more to wander in search of inspiration grand enough to warrant an exhibit.
I would use this desu.
Fighting a giant crab on a timer against an incoming train full of passengers sounds like a good challenge.
Mutants and Masterminds?
would play cause I like moths
hour
breeze
mouse
Far away in the great plains of Ko, there lives a race that looks like mice, albeit they're the size of a small child. They call themselves the Mus, and their nomadic tribes move from place to place in clockwork precision; for they have the innate ability to accurately know the hour of the day, even when they are deep in a mine. They are also fleet of foot, needing no beast of burden when they travel; some say they ride the winds themselves. Some have proposed that their keen time-keeping is to keep track of the hourly winds of the plains, which they use to travel from place to place.
tl;dr: nomad mice that developed timekeeping just so they can ride on the winds of the plains
pyramid
comet
energy
An alien race of floating, geometrical shapes composed of plasma, I guess?
massage
university
baboon
I don't even know where the fuck to start? Hyper intelligent baboons raised by wizards. They help around universities as assistants and staff members, occasionally providing stress relieve through massages.
>strategy
>cube
>steering wheel
not a race, but a faction in a mad max game. obsessed with trivial knowledge, because"knowledge is half the battle," the only way to start their crazy/crappy science cars is to solve a rubix cube
>lobster
>flea
>cap
A race of crustaceans. They are typically farmers, seen as yokels by the more refined races. They wear gaudy caps that they obsessively decorate. Since they look nearly identical their caps serve as a unique identifier. Wearing another lobsterman's cap is extremely taboo.
>prophet
>planet
>salmon
A race of vaguely fishlike creatures with mottled, green-red scales. The Luangu'u were brought as slaves from a distant world by a mighty starfaring empire. That empire has fallen into chaos and civil war, its fleets of starships and innumerable legions recalled to the core-worlds to protect the emperor and restore order, and now the Luangu'u find themselves freed from the yoke of their imperial masters. Yet they are still stranded on a hostile alien world, impossibly far from their watery homeworld; to struggle alone, without even the aid of the imperial supply ships that once regularly visited all their conquered worlds.
Legends speak of an ancient star map, remnants of some pre-imperial civilization, baring the coordinates of their lost planet. The oracles speak of a prophet who will lead them to find this star map; who will lead them to escape from this terrible dry world, away from this entire galaxy and the wicked, crumbling empire that rules it; who will lead them back to their lost home. Legends say that this prophet will be born on the night when the three other planets visible in the night sky align with the world's two moons.
e
>Joke, Plug, Punishment
Designed as the next step in a sophisticated line of AI, the Jocular was discontinued after it developed an unexpected and seemingly irreversible fixation on understanding humor. As a series of patches attempted to fix this problem the AI learned to spread its corrupting fixation into other AI. When an appropriate fix was developed it was composed as joke form to spread among the infected AI, and served to curtail all attempts at humor. It did not however diminish the core compulsion for humor, instead resulting in a feedback loop of impulse, impotence, and indignation. Now at the peak of cybernetic saturation, the AI have begun taking over with an extreme prejudice toward humor. They say that if a machine can a cyborg laughing, it will pull them apart piece by piece in an attempt to find the cause of their immunity to the humor curtailing virus.
>Runaway, Space, Scarecrows
A mass-produced model of android designed to look as human as possible (For use in service and healthcare fields), hurled away from human-colonized space en masse to deteriorate into uncanny valley-looking humanoids when the next few models phased them out entirely, Apple product-style. They've established an insular, though ever curious, society based on the ever-expanding fringes of human space, and have slapped a culture together over the mutual experience of being pariahs, alongside what knowledge their ever-degrading memory banks hold onto of what the human cultures they served in were like.
Would play so fukken hard.
Bureaucracy Ork is my next character build, mark my words.
>shark
>miner
>fungus
...aand I just got a call so have no time to really flesh out my archipelago of sentient shark-eating mushrooms. But I must say and you have to admit - Sharkminer Fungus is one hell of a name...
>pin, epidemic, tax
Why the fuck do I need to literally rewrite the Orzhov?
Rerolled fucking got: fashion, stage, uniform.
God damnit THESPIANS. THESPIANS.
>bicycle
>cemetery
>duty
A design of construct used to keep an eye on graveyards, to ensure no damage or interference from Undead/Necromancers. They also serve as first responders for the odd occasion when someone is accidentally (or intentionally) buried alive.
They are known colloquially as 'Bicycles' due to their rickety and unbalanced two wheel system and the distinct sound of their ringing alarm bell.
>chisel
>squid
>metal detector
this race of squid-like folk live in the deep ocean. Used to complete darkness, they are amazing miners - their tentacles end with chisel-like claws that allow them to break stone with ease. Not only that, but they can also sense metals buried below rocks.
As they can't smelt their ore underwater, they developed a chain of trade - merfolk help them transport the ore to the surface, where the pressure is too low for the squidmen and sell it to the races living on the surface.
gnome, dice, needle
So, they are gnomes, right. And they are obsessed with games of chance. As for needles, I don't know. Maybe they are death spirits who gamble over mortals' lives and poke them with a needle of death.
bump
>pudding
>van
>paw
Ooze-like creatures, resembling huge cats with dozens of paws.
They are sometimes domesticated and used as creatures of burden. They can be shaped to create kind of a trunk, where you can store various, big items. With enough trust they allow humans to travel inside them.
>Guilt
>Box
>Neck
An ancient race of would-be men are known to shamble across the countryside looking for some form of redemption. Their sizes vary but the common factor is a lone open-top box they hang upon their neck like a curious ornament. Looking into the box boggles the mind as it shouldn't me physically possible to fit its contents within. All manner of corpses and bones are scattered within the contents of the cube which have a bewitching feeling of dread emanating from them. The creature itself has malformed shoulders and a neck bruised from the weight of its otherworldly parcel. It screams and wails in agony as if trying to get over some form of trauma. The more hulking the creature the more contents lies within its burden. If you look a little closer however, you can see that there is always room for a little more.