What unusual races show up in your fantasy games that aren't (a) the D&D standards, or (b) obviously weeaboo?

i keep trying to introduce sporks, which are like dog equivalent of ork, domesticated and bred to be helplesly obedient, often castrated, always protecting humans from orks, the idea of them being total traitors that cannot help themselves as they colaborate in genocide of actual orks turns me on

other players never seem to like the idea

I decided call them manders to differentiate them from their bestial cousins, treating the suffix sala as meaning something like "lesser" or "beast" in their language. Elementals called salamanders are entirely unrelated: the manders have a different name for them and consider the Common name for them to be highly offensive.

However, since I'm designing the race for 5e there is a sub race called forgemanders that favor volcanic regions for their hot springs and easy access to heat sources for smelting ore, and boast a resistance to fire damage.

Skaven.

They make a great alternative lowbie monster, and I have enough of them with enough variety to make them compelling encounters.

Developed them into a totally fleshed out creature. Not just stats, but biology, mental condition, culture, aesthetics, social structure, etc.

Just scratch elves/dwarves and redo all the races.

Exactly what I want to do, but coming up with new races that feel distinct is hard. More often than not scrapping elves and dwarves only nets you *insert color here*-skinned not!humans, not!elves, and furries.

Mermaids with robot pants.

Fauns are the first to come to mind for obvious reasons. They aren't a major player, but occasionally trade with other peoples and it wouldn't be that uncommon to see a few in a city.

Breezebuilders. Humanoids with avian features and a predilection for machinery.

Tarmangani. A human subrace. I have a lot because I decided to actually do something with the "humans are adaptable" cliche, but they're probably my favorite. Basically a nation of Tarzans with their actual structure of their society being largely a combination of the mangani and people of Opar.

That satyr boy, he is so cute.

I wish he could be the protector of my forests.

A generally mercantile-oriented 4-armed race of bipedal pinnipeds.

Yes. Crazy seal sales people.

>What unusual races show up in your fantasy games that aren't (a) the D&D standards, or (b) obviously weeaboo?
It depends on what you mean by D&D standards and weeaboo.
Do you mean the core D&D races or do you mean every race created by D&D? Because I have plenty of races that show up in D&D but aren't exactly core, since I really like the races of D&D and they tend to be creative enough but not too crazy.

I'm not even sure what you mean by weeaboo races?

Rat people. Currently I have a rat person dmpc acting as the group's shadow and informant.

Small catfolk.

I have a race of 6-7' goat horned forest people in my setting. The majority of their culture is based around old nature cults, fertility, and child rearing.

Still spiderbro.
I guess you could class them in the "beastfolk" category but it's neither standard or weeaboo.

I made them an underground race (yet undetermined legends have them being chased from the surface) because fuck it and actual spider senses.

Since most spiders aren't social animals, a lot of them are semi savages, but some are part of a very strict empire with a rigid cast system. It is believed to be necessary to make them work together at that scale. At least it is the Empire stance.

>That point when you just let the players play whatever they want

That's a dude? Guess I'm bisexual.

It's not gay if it's fey.

I'm pretty sure fags are called 'faeries' for a reason.

...

Dragons. Just straight up dragons bro.

I know they're common but it still surprises the players every time. I just use straight up ghosts.

Armitae. A race of suits of armor possessed by the spirits of a long dead empire. They just sort of pop up occasionally when a suit of armor is left unguarded by divine magic. They have vague fleeting memories of their past lives but are mostly amnesiac. As a result they are often childishly optimistic and love finding new things about the world

Counting the extinct ones, my homebrew setting has some fucking shit. The Prauns, Cepros, and Crawlers are all extinct, and they weren't remotely humanoid. There was also a race of crystal-people called Spirelings that were humanoid, but not even a little human in their religion or history.

We have this every time this gif comes up.

It's not a dude, but it is a lesbian.

Interesting, I saw a post earlier today with these exact same images, same filenames, on another board!

it was pretty fucking apparent to me for both of those conclusions upon the first viewing.

armatures. the lot of 'em. .

happens more than you'd think

that's not bad, but the older more battle worn armors wouldn't be cheery as fuck as a well kept one

Subgigas: Crabmen who live in elaborate cliff-dwelling underground cities with magically reinforced viewing glass windows built into the side of the abyssal shelf right off the coast of the continent's main Magic University City. The city is thematically elementally/magically shaped Sand Castles and giant overgrown conch shell buildings. The University is about 33% Crabmen. Evenly split between Sorcerers and Magi-Monks. Have regular sized overly muscled arms that end in crushing Crabclaws as well ass a second pair of tiny arms that sprout about halfway down their torso used for fine manipulation but which can't be used to hold weapons or shields or anything like that.

Nautiloids: Somewhat similar to the classic Mindflayer except they are a naturally evolved race descended from ancient Cuttlefish precursors, they're generally stockier with spongy flesh and short face tentacles, they all naturally grow a curled shell like structure over the tops of their heads that protect their brainpods, the shells are shed and replaced as they grow and naturally shed every 8 years over the course of 2 weeks which they generally spend vacationing in their home cities as they're slightly vulnerable while regrowing their shelmets unless they wear helmets which they dislike since they see helmets as un-natural. Bright colored skin, Reds, Yellows, Whites, Blues. Their shelmets grow in to about where a human's nose would be and form with holes for their eyes. Mainly Book Mages and Techies/Artificirs.

They both share an deepsea Home City a good ways off the coast that's very magi-tech Rapture-esqe except for the fact that it's actually a giant Bug/Squid creature burried in the seafloor and they travel through it's thousands of hollow tentacles in clear veins that they navigate from inside the shells of giant Hermit-crab creatures that serve as elevators and trains. The city is actually their God and they commune with the high-council that lives inside it's skull where it speaks to them

I like that a lot. The more beat up the armour, the more badass.

>Fomyr
Highly social insectoids that are specifically not a hivemind. They're based primarily on ants, and have some minor traits from social bees and wasps; most hymenoptera, really. Humanoid-ish, with two legs and four arms. They can communicate silently with pheromones (follow me, food, attack, danger, PANIC, etc.) and do have an actual language to transmit more complex ideas, but most other races can't fully understand them without magical assistance due to the pheromones and dancelike body language that are just as much a component as the spoken portion.

The vast majority of the race's member are female, save for the drones, but they have no humanlike sexual characteristics whatsoever. Young males and virgin queens are winged and usually adventure to find and impress mates before settling down. Regular workers typically adventure for the benefit of the colony when they get older and close in on the end of their lifespan, which is only slightly below that of a human. Any Fomyr has the potential to go full individual and set off on their own, but in practice most don't. The ones that do are often mated workers exiled for laying their own eggs, or just ordinary outcasts and rejects on the tier of your average murderhobo.

The queen doesn't really lead, but is more of a symbolic ruler in what's sort of like a true democracy with forums and such. Fomyr in general aren't great with traditional tech, but are all about the biopunk and use domesticated insects like the Flintstones use dinosaurs. In battle they tend to be speedy quad-wielding jerks with weapons made of chitin slathered in acid, in addition to their sting and bite. Some of them can fly.

Neat.

...same.

What do you like in particular?

Saiyans.

Very far and few between, they are the simian counterpart to cat girls, minotaurs and whatnot. They generally show up as rural bumpkins who have no idea they aren't regular people and kind of fill a niche of half orc or half elf. So far we've had 1 PC (Chaotic Good barbarian) a few NPCs and a one shot ranger.

In a world with beast folk and way too many sub variants of elf this helps balance things to make things slightly less foreign. Truth be told they got put in by a the one shot player pulling it out of his ass and never got retconned out. I tried to think of a better name for them but have yet to come up with anything.

Call 'em Wukongs or Wukongo or something.

Sure, what's it a reference to?

Sun Wukong, from Journey to the West. The inspiration for Goku and saiyans in general.

Monkey King's Journey to the West, an ancient novel from china about the Monkey King Sun Wukong, who Goku/The Saiyan race is based on, though Wukong is depicted as a lot more simian than the saiyans are.

Gotcha, I quite like that. Thanks user.

For some reason I'm thinking there is a more simian race in either one of the Not Quite China supplements or L5R or something.

For a really short campaign in D&D Basic I basically just let the players either make something up to be or let me make some shit up for them. For one of them, a ranger, I made up a race of Snake People (Humanoids that are reptilian, not nagas) that, instead of being the usual "Ooh, I'm a femme fatale" race, they were a bunch of herculean motherfuckers since they were descended from anacondas instead of vipers.

In that same game I had an NPC race of pitch-black humanoids with no lips and bright-white eyes. They were a race from another universe who traveled via magic from place to place to conquer and assimilate people roman empire style. Can't use divine or hellish magic themselves, can only use more obscure forms since they're so disconnected from most realms' forms of it.

So the variant Yuan-ti from the Deep Jungles in Serpent Kingdoms and Looney Toons' Martians (ala Marvin)?

...

Niggers.

>not going with the based shroom of migrant doom every single game

Well hell, I'd never get with her anyways so her being a lesbian is just a bonus.

>those ethos

Fanatic Materialist/Individualist for LIFE

>being individualist
Enjoy being not-individualist in a few galactic cycles, anarchist.

1.5 when

>Implying my pops will ethically diverge with the insane Individualist happiness boosts

Though I gotta admit the lack of purging sucks.

>being individualist
>not being able to replace your entire population with synths and become a true cybernetic ubermensch
Are anarchists even trying?

I'm delighted with how many of us like that game.

I tried to get into it but my computer couldn't run it on min settings and I am to poor to get a better computer. Got a refund at 119 minutes

Is this not exactly what you described?

>Black Aliens with just bright eyes.
>Strange alien magic "odd elemental science from a different world"
>Roman as fuck
>still susceptible to Bugs Bunny's Illusionist/Trickster Bard spells because they're unfamiliar with it because they're disconnected from his world magic

I mean if you just randomly spitballed Not-Martians on accident that's pretty neat.

I actually didn't intend to make them Not-Martians, but now that you point it out it's really similar.

Not that I have an issue with it, I love Marvin in the shorts he belonged to, and Duck Dodgers was a fun show.

A setting a few friends and I have been working on has some neat races of which my favorites are:

Cactusfolk hermit tinkers, who are the most technologically advanced race in the setting, and due to their unique physiology are the only onees capable of operating their assorted inventions.

Birdfolk who are based off of magpies, and as such tend to be pirates or merchants. Also not humanoid, but bigass birds.

I've got monsterpeople that are a result of ancient humans magically fusing with monsters in order to climb from the bottom of the food chain, but monstermen turned up hereditary and basically supplanted humans. Pure humans don't really exist anymore, they're just monstermen with so much diluted and mixed bloodlines that no traits manage to manifest.
They kinda have "muh human versatility" in that they MAY through great effort to manage to bring out and strengthen the bloodline (like the dragon disciple prestige class in D&D) and can basically choose whatever species of monster they want - but 99.99% never even get close to managing to do that and are just the lowest class anyway.

>Mermaids with robot pants.
Too predictable. But what if we mix things up a little? Pants with robot mermaids.

>not protecting him and his forest

Insectoid things that crawl inside human corpses and use them as puppets.
They're actually alright dudes.

Am I wrong or the only one that were able to do it well was star wars?

Probably stealing less knonw sci fi race and reskinning it for fantasy will work.

Let's try it. Give me a random race.

Now that I think about it elves and dawrves the most popular fatnasy races have very few changes from a human.
Pointy ears and small with beards.

We can try to pick a small alteration and develop it into a full race. For example human with a split tongue.

>For example human with a split tongue.
Snakemen.

Lets try
FOUR EARS

Setting up trades with human settlements to "buy" terminally sick or infirm people, or criminals sentenced to death penaly.

>FOUR EARS
batmen. Or if you want exotci sounding names Pipistrelli

Nah we need to chose one feature (it can be 4 ears no problem ) and then develop a random culture around them. None of th elven or dwarfish culutre is about pointed ears or beards.

So will we be going with 4 ears?

Bug-eyed lizards with fu-manchu style tentacles on their faces. They come in colours yellow, red and black.

Do you think it's racist?

You can't be racist against germans.

*Slime people
Back in the day when psionics were common, a woman with an exceptionally powerful mind was ambushed and devoured by a slime, but her personality psionically dominated the slime's primitive instincts. Driven mad by her new form, she resorted to devouring other humans to reproduce and make others like her.

Though amorphous, the "memory" of humanity is well imprinted on their minds. They appear as brightly-colored slimes in humanoid shapes. Lesser individuals tend not to keep distinct legs, instead letting their lower halves melt into a blob. While they're social creatures and enjoy company, actual societies are rare. While they appear to have males and females, their gender is purely vestigial.

In present times, they maintain a small population by raiding settlements and managing to survive eradication. Their intelligence has faded somewhat, becoming simpler and more single-minded than their human prey. They tend toward evil behavior, indiscriminately attacking non-slimes when left alone, but their intense desire for companions makes them easy to talk down and befriend (or manipulate).

In particular, they adore clothes and will gladly serve others in exchange for pieces of clothing (assuming they can't simply kill the wearer and take them.) Maintaining humanoid shape is a wearisome task and clothes help in that regard. A slime person's intelligence rapidly increases when wearing clothes, as less of their mental bandwidth is required to hold a shape and can be devoted to intellect, personality, and social behavior. Armor is particularly valuable to them in this regard for its rigidity and protective quality.

When a slime-person acquires a more-or-less complete outfit, he or she can gradually develop intelligence on par with humans. Not only are they capable of hardening their liquid membranes to a skinlike toughness, they can extend and morph their bodies with ease.

Legends say the progenitor still exists, referred to as the Slime Queen, hidden away.

Random ideas for a race.
Not hivemind insects based on COMUNISM. All female all workers all for the greatness of the hive. Male xist but are treated as cattle and only the queen have access to them. The queen is a normal memeber of the hive as you and me but was chosen by the people! It is a pure cionicdence that the last 3 queens were each an apprentice to the other. All hail glorious leader queen. Once chosen the queen starts to eat becoming fat.

Also they should be based on some insect with conections to color red or Korea. Ideas?

I'd say that four arms is better than four ears.

>not paying attention in history class

>individualism and collectivism are opposing concepts

Gil urselfs gommie.

too high fantasy!

Last time I played i was a communist alien cyborg, later I became a nazi.

Is it good enough?

Ooh what's the sauce on that? Googling keywords from the speech didn't find anything.

Fukken Dryads!

They're underused and fucking amazing.

Silkmen, a hiveminded insectoid race that's mishmash of ants, spiders and cicadas. They communicate thoughts through touch, though some individuals vary (the "coordinators" can send out thoughts over distances and the "secret-keepers" can receive but can't broadcast at all). They can also imprint thoughts on the silk they produce, creating textiles and web networks out of it for mass communication. They live underground, tending subterranean gardens and boil up out of the earth generationally to gather raw materials and expand, an ordeal that has become ritualized warfare for the races that live nearby. The secret-keepers are pariahs to the rest of their culture and live as nomads, making their way on the surface through hunter-gathering and trading their silk, earning the race it's common name.

Their physiology changes throughout their lives, hatching as larvae, pupating and becoming about three foot tall, four armed armed adults that gradually grow larger natural weapons and thicker shells while also slowly losing the ability to produce silk. These elders serve as warriors of the colony and once there are enough the colony enters it's expansion phase, laying eggs for the next generation and raiding the surface en masse. I'm also toying with the idea of transitioning through sexes as they age, but I'm unsure of how well that would work

Their religion is centered around the worship of a gigantic crystal cavern which they believe to be the heart of the world. It also serves as a mass burial site; they believe resting there adds their thoughts to the world's dreams, granting a measure of immortality. The truth is the crystals are shards of an old god, broken and scattered across the cosmos. The silkmen have traces of it growing inside them and it compels them to seek out other shards as the bits call out to each other.

devilscandycomic.com/comic/prologue-01

I make tons of homebrew races for my world. I have a few favourites, but at the moment I have electric hornet folk. Still a work in progress though.

Thanks!

In my D&D setting, I include the Glumph. They are green, misshapen blobs of fat with chitinous patches, who reproduce asexually and speak through phlegm vibrations. Despite looking like half-dried snot, they have a culture based on the early Ottomans and are extremely cultured and intelligent, possessing the world's finest wizards.

He's a she, actually. But one of those Tumblr-types.
>pic related, from her Tumblr

I have included Homunculi as a playable race in my campaigns before.
Artificial humans made with alchemy. They have gray skin, yellow eyes, no hair at all on their body or head and are genderless. They have an especially long life-span and heal from wounds fairly fast.

Depending on the skill of the alchemist that created the Homunculus they can range from being only a few feet tall, deformed and stupid to 6 to 7 feet tall with human like intelligence.

Homunculus PCs will be complex enough to have human level intelligence and stature.
Most alchemists make Homunculi to be personal assistants in the lab, but occasionally some develop enough of a personal identity to escape. Others are abandoned, or given freedom by their creators, while others are created to go out in the world on personal errands.

They can only reproduce through alchemy, so their numbers are restricted to the number of skilled alchemists in the region.

There is nothing wrong with anything she says here.

That seems super reasonable to me.

Is there anything Tumblr about that?

Compared to the rest of that hive of scum and villainy, it's pretty tame. Would still hit on her. Never met a "true" lesbian in my life, most that tell me "oh, I'm into girls" I usually find out is taking the D on the regular.

The Nagai, a race of serpent/eel people who's lands recently (within the last 100 years) appeared in the mists.
They are primarily amphibious, but if they spend enough time on land they lose their ability to breath underwater and become more humanoid. They have weird ass magic, and are in discussions with the empire for assistance/statehood because they have no idea what is going on, and would prefer some kind of semblance of control over their destiny.

Zelda races. Particularly Majora's Mask.

Deku, Goron, Zora.

This thing would really make for a good light-hearted highschool setting, with some occasional horror/mystery elements for additional spice?