My elves are pointy-eared folks who live in the woods and shoot bows and are in harmony with nature...

>My elves are pointy-eared folks who live in the woods and shoot bows and are in harmony with nature, because that's just the way elves are I guess.
>My elves are edgy cannibal fair folk outsiders, because I'm sick of generic elves and I have the completely original idea to take them back to their folklore roots (but like, ten times edgier)
>My elves a sentient hivemind of fungi and shrubs in the shape of a person who command merchant fleets, because I need to turn everything about elves on their head to make my truly unique replacement elves stand out!
>I don't have elves, because my setting is avoiding tolkien cliches. Anyway, my original race called the Al-kai are pointy-eared folks who live in the woods and shoot arrows and are...

Which is the worst, Veeky Forums?

2 3 and 4 because they really don't add anything to the situation.

This. Don't fix what ain't broken, and don't change shit to pander to people who hate the genre.

All of them.
If elves aren't doing anything humans can't do, why have elves at all?
Bird people? Okay.
Sea folk. Go on ahead.
But literal "humans but prettier and live longer" can fuck right off.

1, 2 and 3, because Tolkien races are shit and having them exist in name only for recognition is weak ass pussy shit.

>having non-humans at all

>If elves aren't doing anything humans can't do, why have elves at all?
To play with real-world racial themes while maintaining a degree of separation to avoid your players getting uncomfortable.

My elves are dwarves and my dwarves are elves

Nobody actually thinks like this for real, right? This "humans only" thing has to just be some sort of stupid meme.

I don't get why people aim to be original all the time in fantasy. Aim to make what you're doing good if it uses tropes and cliches so what?

I care much more about the game than arguing about this. I don't mind dealing with woodsies or cannibals or fungi or whatever, let's roll.

3 and 4, 1 and 2 can be good when done well.

When people who grumble about how non-human races are superfluous spout the "no non-humans" meme, they actually only mean "no non-human player races."

As soon as they realize a true "no non-humans" setting leaves their character with no giants or ogres or fairies to fight, they're quick to backtrack to "I-I just meant no elfs and dwarfs as PC, I swear!"

2 is pretty much Darksun.

It's because GMs and worldbuilders are storytellers at the end of the day, and since the internet has allowed us all to pick apart every narrative, meta-narrative, and subversion there is it's easy to feel like every original story idea has been done already.

That's why people gravitate towards self-awareness, satire, meta, irony, and deconstruction so much these days. It allows you to tell a story that's already been told in a "safe" way while being able to wink-nudge your audience that you know you're doing something that's already been done before in order to avoid being called on it first.

It's not backtracking, you idiot, it's a clarification. I don't like nonhuman PC races because they devalue both humans and nonhumans, rendering down the elves into funny humans and making humanity just one of 6 choices. I actually like the elves in Burning Wheel, because they're actually just better than most men; They come with a disclaimer that they're VERY powerful, and that was a good choice. In D&D, elves are mental retards who come out of adolescence at 60 and turn into level 1 adventurers. I presume they spend at least 10 years shitting their diapers and still trying to master language.

OK, I didn't ask why. Let's play already.

>Nobody actually thinks like this for real, right? This "humans only" thing has to just be some sort of stupid meme.
it can turn out okay.
Not in this book but it works
I like you user

3 and 4
2 can be done right.

This is truly the worst.

>muh Tolkien
Just asking - and I know this'll probably attract shit, but I'm not trying to - is this an American thing?

There were a lot of people that wrote before Tolkien, and Tolkien is not the sole influence on a lot of good fantasy/SF we got after Tolkien either. I feel like seeing things only on the Tolkien axis is dooming yourself to a lot of binary positions you don't have to hold.

3.

1 is boring, yes, but it works.
2 can work.
Even 4 can work well if the ocdonutsteel race has at least a few traits to differentiate themselves from elves.

A lot of people on this board have had D&D and D&D novelizations as their only contact with fantasy. This is why you get people like this:

>"My elves are edgy cannibal fair folk outsiders, because I'm sick of generic elves and I have the completely original idea to take them back to their folklore roots (but like, ten times edgier)"
>"Oh cool, my elves are happy-go-lucky forest spirits"
MIURA DID THIS and he writes one of the most absurdly edgy manga of all time.

Of course, the fake elves were edgy as fuck as were the trolls, but still. Alfheim is just beautiful and harmonious and it kind of works.

Darksun is alright.

I know 2 3 and 4 are all awful, but #3 and #4 tie for me, and I legitimately cannot think of which would be worse to me.

Tolkien is the most well known "nerdy" fantasy author to normies, so people blame him for everything.

I'm just sitting here with mayan elves.

Joke's on you my elves are indentured servants banned from the woods and bows by the human not-nazi empire founded by hitler

>my elves are vampires that live on the moon and only visit the planet as diplomats from their spacegod theocracy or for a snack/sex tourism.

If I released a movie that came with a pamphlet that explained the basics of the setting in 2 pages and the finer terminology in 3, pic relateds would whine about how nothing made sense and how it was cuntfusing them. Why are they cuntfused?

Because they didn't read the pamphlet. In short; people don't read as much as they should.

Damn dude. Where'd you get my setting notes?

you'rs all blood-eyed moongrass addicts? Horns or antlers?

I like antlered elves

>my elves are the descendants of an alien race that interbred with humans, forming half-breeds that were abandoned, but retained lingering elements of their parent's culture and technology that were later reinterpreted as magic
>they used to have a strong empire where they ruled over humans from 'heavenly courts,' but repeated human and orc invasions have destabilized their traditional power structure and the barriers of class that kept them immune from harm in petty warfare between their human soldiery
>their culture is slowly dying along with their 'purity' of race, with many of the 'pure elves' living in backwoods communities, others surviving in wider civilizations as the priestly or noble cast in city-states and isolated petty kingdoms, nursing dreams of rebuilding their empire and confident in eventual cultural victory - even now the orcs and humans are adopting elven language and customs

My elves are stocky short people who live in caves and love mining and metalwork.

the true elves are a collection of many different ways the elves have been represented in fiction mithology and fairytales. So that's cool I guess.
if your movie needed extra movie content to be understood your movie would be shit

Valid tiering of takes on non-human races:

>done right tier
either
>Going with the trope but shaping it with lot of depth and complexity and not being bland face-value copy of old trope - examples original Tolkien's elves
or
>Utilizing other, less known but equally valid source as a base (fae elves, melnibonean assholes, wagnerian dwarves, german original kobolds)
or
>no standard races, either humans only, like hyborian age or most of classic fantasy novels for that matter or completely original non-human races, provided they're good

>meh tier
bastardized versions of above, so basically what op stated in point 1. because that's actually shallowed and watered down and decomplexized version of thew original trope, not the original trope itself. D&D evles are example of that and 2.
plus
>no standard races, completely original non-human races, but not very well designed

>shit tier
>pointles renaming (basicaly OP's last point)

>kill yourself tier
>using estabilished race names for completely different creations for no reason (OP's point 3.)
>stupid inversions aka tryharding to be funny/original but failing even harder than trying (le in my setting elves are industrialized and dwarves are close to nature, orcs are good and halflings are bad and so on)

Nah, we're different after all. They're like Ras Thavas in the John Carter of Mars series. Some of them are all tribal like the Green Martians. No horns or antlers. Extra-wide ears.

>Which is the worst, Veeky Forums?
I don't know what's worse: the fact that a good thread died to make place for this shitty thread, or the fact that you expect me to make a choice without even having played those four settings.

A game is very rarely made bad purely by the setting, execution is 90% of the story. All four can be executed well, or they can be executed horribly.

tl;dr: ur a faget and i fugged your mum

>If elves aren't doing anything humans can't do, why have elves at all?
if done right, they add mysticism, faggot

That's kind of a poor metaphor because something coming out in a mass-audience accessible venue that requires proprietary material to study beforehand is indisputably pretentious.

Generally, you should be able to establish your setting within the medium without mandatory supplemental material. If you do, you're probably a shitty writer/director. Either parcel it out slower, like a mini-series, cut it way down to fit the short-term medium of film, or just write a book, but a creator should be able to work to the medium's strengths rather than trying to hamfist a large square peg into a small triangular hole.

This is fine for niches and cliques, though. An audience that's already selectively read up and studied need not have supplementary material, or is just fine and dandy with reading up on supplementary material because it's the kind of thing they're used to or committed to because they're just as invested in this small group as the creators for it are invested in them.

But go ahead and spam your art film across major film venues for mass-audience appeal while simultaneously expecting them to do the required reading beforehand. That's not being more intelligent than your audience, that's being a bloody idiot sticking a pipe in the spokes of his bike and blaming roadway.

/thread

me too

exactly this.
There shouldn't be any more need for any other discussion.
This post should be stickied.
Or at the very least copypastedd any time this sort of question is asked.

2 is the worst

I have never been a fan of alternate races, but pic related is super awesome and I intend to implement it somehow, someday

if only there was some way of screencapping it or anything

The dont have elves is worst followed by the edge then fungus then traditional.

2 and 3 are just trying to hard
4 is even worse I guess
Just go the TES route if you want interesting elves
Sure, the Bosmer are a bit as you describe, but at the very least the Altmer and Dunmer are original

ugh

TES Elves are best Elves.

4 is the worse, followed by the edgy one and then the fungi tryhard elves and the hippies. I guess the folklore elves with less edge would be better, but let's be honest that doesn't happen.

it's impossible to determine without context. what does the fantasy setting as a whole aim to provide?

Everyone has experience with bad not!elves, but does anyone have experience with cringey not!dwarves or not!orks

>If elves aren't doing anything humans can't do, why have elves at all?

What a stupid philosophy.

Which one do I count as?

>Classic races like elves, dwarves, and halflings are all different human societies that are only loosely based on them via stats and culture.

>Other races are more animal-like such lamia, minotaur, dryads.

screencapping is too passive aggressive, copypasta is better

4

What if my elves are pretty standard, but by being one of the first races, managed to master magic to the degree that they basically created their own pocket dimension and basically became the more typical mysterious Fae that other races see as strange and alien?

3

Good Job user

Patrician taste user

Cultural differences, variety, experimentation with mysticism and magical themes...probably the biggest one I can think of is that honestly it's harder to work a bird person and sea folk into the average adventuring party.

You failed to present a scenario in which elves truly are absent and there are no analogues.

> Want to write a race that's known for being alloof, magical and somewhat isolated
> Has tons of other traits besides
Call them Elves
> oh wow look at user calling his OC race "Elves". Why don't you just create your own race name instead of basterdizing old cliches beyond recognition?
Don't call them elves
> user, no amount of OC Donut Steel Bullshit will hide that you're ripping off Elves. If you're gonna do that you may as well call them Elves

Same goes for dwarves or any race with vaguely defined "identities"

>You can't please everyone: News at 11

Thoughts on these guys?

Really like them. Making them living in the woods because it's he best place to build a lot instead of just being nature hippies adds a lot.

That art is for ants, though.

A good example of elves who are clearly elves, and still original
Using your attunement with nature to become hard core industrialists is pretty ingenious

What about
>My elves are pointy eared folks who used to live in forests but then became jack-booted fascist industrialists

see

Tell me about your vampires then.

I kind of like settings with the whole "high" and "low" (wood) elf thing where the high elves see wood elves as savages, and wood elves see high elves as ones who betrayed the old gods and ways of nature.

Tweak as climate needed. No need to make them super snowflake-y.

>Tweak as climate needed. No need to make them super snowflake-y.
badum-tish

Snow elves?

There's nothing automatically wrong or bad with any of those. All can be executed well, all can be executed poorly.

Any other answer is at best misguided ignorance and a lack of creativity, at worst an attempt to anger other people for chuckles.

disase that makes you drink blood and be sexy might be a thing.
host to a Worm of Avarice is a thing, basically a goauld.
and then theres Jing精 sucking undead.
but -all- my undead are incorporeal, often possessing corpses or objects.

>having humans at all
Why bother existing if all you're gonna do is compare yourself to the other races?

They're all the worst. Elves are terrible and you're supposed to hate them.

Oddly enough, it works

>If homo sapiens aren't doing anything neanderthals can't do, why have homo sapiens at all?

In my personal head canon I like to think of my elves as just another offshoot of mankind. Homo sapiens evolved to be jack of all trades, which is why elves are "better" Elves evolved to specialize in specific branches of the arcane arts. The way cheetahs evolved to be super fast. Is a cheetah "better" than a lion or leopard just because it can reach speeds of over 60 miles per hour, but lions and leopards can't?

Dwarves are basically the same, but rather than specializing in actively using arcane arts, they simply specialized in making themselves immune to anything and everything. Like an arcane equivalent of a turtle, turtles don't use their shells, their shells simply exist. They don't have to think about it at all.

And this is why elves, dwarves, and humans are all genetically compatible. Although there is a 50/50 chance the hybrids will be born deformed. As well as a 50/50 chance the hybrid will be completely sterile.

Aren't elves and dwarves pretty much interchangeable in ancient folklore? Like, this is why Santa Claus has a bunch of short midget sized elves. Because in ancient Nordic mythology Santa Clause used to be Odin and he had "mountain folk" who served him?

And that it's only Tolkien who separated the fey creatures into the modern day concept of super tall androgynous super models and short hairy slobs?

>and my dwarves are elves
Someone beat you to it already

>Which is the worst, Veeky Forums?

The thread that asks this question.

...

No fucking shit though
Say what you want, but TES knows what to do with elves and they decided to do as much as possible with them
The only thing Mer have in common is that they are all stuck up cunts

It depends. I've seen all four executed well, so it really comes down to the DM.

Oh, wait, I forgot, I'm on Veeky Forums.

Around Elfs, watch yourself.
The only good thing elfs are for is raping

If you're gonna do Tolkien high fantasy, just do it. JUST. DO. IT.
Admit that you're doing it, and live with it. Love it. There's nothing wrong with Tolkien or the derivative works. If you want to put a spin on it, fine. But don't pretend you're doing it to distance yourself from Tolkien or to reinvent the wheel.

Iteration necessitates taking inspiration from earlier things to advance the thing you're working on.

Cars have more than a hundred years of constant iteration. Each piece of technology changes small things, until you arrive at the modern system. The internal combustion engine in the original Benz carriages is a far different thing from the ones we have now.

Likewise this happens with fiction. Someone makes a good idea. The modern fantasy story builds on ancient mythology to create new stories. It's different from the fiction before it.
But now we're arriving at a time where we use previously established fiction, history, culture, politics, to tell new stories.

Someone may claim that you can't do anything original. That every note in music has been combined in every possible sequence. But they're wrong, because each piece of fiction, music, all media, is the result of the context of that creator's experiences.

What I'm saying, basically, is that iteration is a good thing. People pretend to be revolutionary when they're not. The best people know that they're feasting on the efforts of thousands of years, to create something new. And that work will be digested with someone else's creation.

Heck, with the Pathfinder setting and other stuff, we're even beginning to arrive at the second true generation of D&D fantasy settings. Think about that one for a moment. Settings written by people who read Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance when growing up.

>Having identifiable races
Memes aside, why do people try to have races that are close to existing trope istead of trying to male original stuff ?
>ib4 impossible
unless you're trying your hardest to find the smallest link possible with existing racial tropes in order to spout shit like "lol they are mushroom people, obviosuly fucking elves amirite", you should be able to create at least 2 to 3 "original" races
It's not even hard, all you have to do is google wikipedia for strange or even common earth animals/insects/plants/rocks/culture/whatever at 6 am after not sleeping for a day and try to make a race based both on what you read and your own ideas

Not this guy, but
>implying

>There are snowflakefags who will try to argue with this poster

>'B-B-BUT IT'S JUST AN ELF! HOW DOES THAT EVEN-'

Please. If you can't make an interesting character without having to mention pointy ears or dark vision or +2 horse stat or whatever the fuck, you're shit at making characters. Humans only serves to force you to characterize yourself on something beyond being The Elf/Dwarf/Hobbit/Plutotron of the party.

Not that guy, but
>implying he's wrong

In my setting, the three main races, elves, dwarves and humans are really close to each other on purpose, like horses and donkeys, for example, and the differences are pretty minor.

I basically wanted to have humans with a few different traits to explore how culture would evolve differently if people were a bit different, maybe lived to 500 instead of 60 and didn't sweat as much and got tired quicker, for example.

>implying you can't make an interesting character that just so happens to not be human.

Have you ever read any fictional book, ever?

>If you can't make an interesting character without having to mention X and Y !
when will this meme stop ? The point is that some people want to play different races simply because they can
>playing humans pushes you to make interesting characters !
If you need to play a human to make an intersting charter, then you're shit at making characters

>implying he's implying he's wrong

>mfw my elves are basically 2
So what should I call them then, Veeky Forums, if it's such a problem?

>implying he isn't

Nah, non-human races are either just "human except X" that exist solely for optimized min-maxing or some wacky off-the-wall shit.
They really add nothing.

Outsiders call them a name based on the name of the region they're from, they call themselves something of spiritual importance based on their religious views. Easy.