First, I want to include ratfolk in my setting- but with a few caveats. I don't want them to be unclean monsters, I want them to be different from other ratfolk or beast races, and I do NOT want them to be oversexualized or so special and perfect and oppressed by others just because they're different.
How do I make them tolerable?
Secondly, I want to say something that I've wanted to say for a long time. Too many beastmen and beastfolk threads have been started in the name of fap and ended with a slew of "no, you" comments. Conversely, anyone who wants to introduce a race of animalistic people ends up either having the thread derailed by horny neckbeards, trolls, or both.
The best advice I can give you is "they are already integrated into normal society", treat them as mundane. Give them some vague origin story like they were humans that mutated thousands of years ago due to the blood of some rat-god spilling on them, then they bred and found their children all came to be the same. After generations... rat-kin were just kind of things that existed and nobody really thought too hard about it any more once the original generation of human-turned-rat died out.
So they just exist.
As for your latter question... there is no changing Veeky Forums. Live and learn to ignore idiots.
Thomas Nguyen
>How can we fix THAT?
We can't. Just make up a beastman culture you and your players enjoy and ignore autistic REEEEEEEEEing.
I too am upset you can't discuss more human-like catfolk without waifufags treating them as exotic pets. Luckily my players aren't faggots.
Levi Myers
Just show them at face value? 'They exist, it's a thing, deal with it yo' sort of thing. You could go into the cultural nuances and how they fit into society as a whole, but only if prompted to do so. No better way to make your players think you are injecting your obsessions into a game than being too eager about them and using any excuse to talk about them. As long as they aren't the only other race, it should work out fine.
As for your latter question, you're an idiot. Veeky Forums gonna Veeky Forums, it's a known nest of scum and xenophilia. If you don't like it, there's not a lot you can do about it save learning the patterns and avoiding them. For example: >PEOPLE ARE SEXUALISING BEASTFOLK IT MAKES ME MAD >Says OP, accompanying his rant with one of the most well known examples of sexualised beastfolk
Jaxon Collins
From a previous rat-themed thread:
>City is under attack from Dick-ass Drow raiders >Rats, pressured by the potential loss of their home, join the war to defend. >The Drow laugh this off and ignore them. >Rats, from years of hiding, scurrying, and having to pummel the occasional monster, are excellent at stealth, street fighting, and setting up ambushes. >Rats consistently manage to lure the Drow Raiding parties that get through the walls into always or sewers where there is either a human barricade with crossbow-men, bunch of Rats ready to shank them, or both. >Rat rogues are almost as good at stealth as Drow assassins and use their superior knowledge of the city to cut them off and prevent them from completing their mission, even capturing some alive. >The Drow are actually having a net loss as Dick-Ass Rat theives keep stealing all their stuff and sneaking into their camps and releasing the prisoners. >The Drow say "Fuck this shit" and go home with their metaphorical tails in between their legs, because they got beat by a bunch of mutant Sewer-dwelling beasts. >They Swear their undying hatred upon the Rats. >Rats are celebrated as heros and given places of honor amoungst the city.
Bentley James
Call them Mouse-Folk Problem Solved
Eli Ross
Fluff-wise? Honestly, there's a lot you can do. I got a post-apocalyptic setting where my (admittedly Burmecian + Nezumi-inspired) ratfolk are essentially a race of goodly aligned souls laboring towards the grand racial philosophy of "let's fix the world!" and generally being the closest thing the setting's got to paladins.
Pathfinder has ratfolk as peaceful traders and merchants who're just considered normal, if a little erratic, because every ratfolk is looking to try and become a respected elder.
Wicked Fantasy has ratfolk as the "noble gangster" race; they moved into the quarantined ghettos of various city-states during a horrific plague, made themselves comfortable whilst tending to the sick and dying, and now they reject all attempts to root them out. People willingly live alongside them because their culture is big on the "do unto others" creed, so ratfolk (rodduns, in-verse) take looking after the people who are depending on them Very Seriously.
Oliver Morales
>I don't want them to be unclean monsters
They already aren't. Rats are incredibly clean, social, intelligent, and empathetic animals. Le Skaven are a retarded meme, literally nothing like rats at all.
Julian Brown
In fairness Skaven are magical crack addicts.
Jordan Foster
Maybe, but they also made DOOMWHEELS. So there's that going for them.
Xavier Smith
They live, they expand, they socialize, they organize and in the face of great foes, they will die. Yet tomorrow, next month, or next year, or decades later, they will try to take that hill again. Their triumphs and tragedies come in generation waves of expansion, building, loss and rebuilding.
This lends them to a certain level of gallant fatalism, a tendency towards resourceful reclamation and recycling of resources, and haphazard industrial progress that stagnates until driven by the need to adapt to otherwise insurmountable odds.
That's a thread about elves secretly being shapeshifting rats. Which I guess might be an option, but I'm not sure people will go for it, except to freak out that one guy who macks on every knife-ear in the game.
Zachary Baker
no, it's about rats who secretly shapeshift into elves
Jeremiah Myers
Speaking of which, there was never a link to more of the artist's work. Damn shame
Connor Ortiz
It's Akunim
Asher Garcia
Play them as Jews
Gavin Morgan
He said he DIDN'T want them to be unclean monsters user.
Xavier Barnes
Isn't Judaism, like, super concerned about ritual cleanliness? I wouldn't think they'd trend towards uncleanliness.
Christopher Wilson
Yeah, there's lots of stuff regarding ritual bathing, proper diet, even a load of quarantine stuff. You can lift whole portions of it and actually improve the lives of modern day people if they followed it.
Austin Watson
Just go for a FF9 approach. They were fine in that game as your picture shows.
Robert Foster
That was a good thread.
Adrian Anderson
The stigma of rats being "unclean" is largely rooted in the fact that they are historically disease vectors
Angel Diaz
Alright user, you want your Rat-Folk to be different? Well how about you make them and their culture based off of actual rat behavior. Which is nothing like say the Skaven.
>Strong community based behaviour >Special attention to cleanliness of warrens >Will eat their own dead, in order to remove the bodies before they risk disease. >Friendly and inquisitive creatures.
I know this because I own rats as pets, and I'll tell you this. In fantasy they are depicted as monsters, which is fine I love Skaven, but thats just not what they are like.
PS Dont go trying to play with a wild rat like any wild animal respect them and give them room.
Gavin Thompson
This, if there was an alt-evolution animal who would be close to humans in intellectual, emotional and moral pursuits, it wouldn't be chimps, dolphins or dogs. It'd be rats or crows.
Rats are subjects of social engineering and mental health experiments because they're socially and emotionally very close to us.
Ryan Perez
Also this
Leo Perez
Exactly if you had actual Rat-Folk in your setting that werent lol evil. They would be the closest thing to humans. Really both species function on similar levels
Caleb Richardson
>Isn't Judaism, like, super concerned about ritual cleanliness? They don't look the part. Most jews I've known think washing their hands torougly after bathroom breaks and bathing often are wastes of money/time.
Logan Morris
Ratfolk in my setting are basically all gypsies. Their warrens are travelling caravans, and whilst they aren't equal among the more traditional races, but they're tolerated.
Hudson Scott
Funny. My ratfolk in-game are kind of like both of these. Essentially, three centuries ago, there was a mighty empire of mages, stretching far and wide. Some sort of cataclysm happened, devastating their capital and the surrounding lands and saturating the landscape with magic. This had the side-effect of mutating many of the inhabitants into rat-men, creating an anti-magic sentiment that would last for hundreds of years, and creating many species of monster. While many stayed, the rest fled to other countries. Though distrusted by most, their cultural emphasis on magic and highly insular communities enabled them to flourish- pogroms notwithstanding. Only recently have they become accepted in the communities of the world.
So far as behavior, some are as LG as possible, defying the stereotype, others are CE, embracing it- but most don't care.
Leo Cook
Hating on furries is just a Veeky Forums culture thing, just like acting like literally everything is Magical Realm is a Veeky Forums thing. You just ignore it. People telling the furries to go to hell are bumping the thread, so whatever.
As to the ratfolk thing, a race is what you make it. Have them as a race in the setting before offering them to your players, so they can see what they're meant to be. My one question is: is there any particular reason they are ratfolk? Because humans that aren't human shaped isn't interesting.
Jose Evans
My response to you OP is this: Kelsey Fucking Grammer
That is all.
Elijah Morales
Mice are a lot dirtier and less intelligent than rats.
Samuel Rivera
Not at all, various pre-war sources often mention how filthy Jewish districts were. Rat Jews however is not entirely new, see: Maus graphic novel.
Sebastian Gray
>How can we fix THAT? Rats are a proud and noble race! They are not LEWD! Rats, like humans, are one of the few species that fuck for pleasure tho
Isaac Harris
Make them master tacticians
Lucas Cruz
>are one of the few species that fuck for pleasure
Wrong. Every species 'fucks' for pleasure. That's the only reason they fuck. The observation of purposeful non-reproductive sex among animals is simply more common among domesticated species and higher intelligence species, but it is everywhere.
I appreciate the sentiment, but stop spreading this misinformation. Seriously.
Ryan Diaz
Skaven are monsters because they're creatures of Chaos, not because they're rats - just like how Beastmen are monsters, despite every single fucking one being based on a docile herbivore.
Cooper Wood
>First, I want to include ratfolk in my setting- but with a few caveats. I don't want them to be unclean monsters, I want them to be different from other ratfolk or beast races, and I do NOT want them to be oversexualized or so special and perfect and oppressed by others just because they're different.
First, make them like normal rats. Highly sociable, clean and empathetic.
Second, make them smaller. Yes there is risk of appealing to short stack likers, but we can avoid that. Make them halfling size.
third, modify their secondary sexual characteristics so they aren't obviously and inherently fetish material. Females should be slightly more lithe and hip rounded, and should not have breasts. Instead they have a row of six teets on their chest which can't really be seen unless naked.
All of this will STILL be someones fetish, I assure you. But it won't make them OBVIOUS fetish fuel.
Essentially you've made halfling/kobold/things that live in comfy warrens, enjoy food, have tails, are generally androgenous/non ratfolk can't tell them apart
Aiden Evans
That thread was going places... ...LEWD places...
Ethan Lewis
It really wasn't.
Anthony Morris
>Fuck the whole "ancient alliance with elves" thing, we're gonna bro it up with the ratfolk, they *get* us
Xavier Baker
also they are cute
Alexander Clark
It was going into "Everyone is a filthy LARPing descendant of the original race, elves, who have also withdrawn from the world at disgust of what they have seen." direction.
Then it died.
Jonathan Torres
If you knock up one of those false elf rats while she's in elf form, do the kids come out as elves or rats?
