I hate Tolkien elves. Here's my original fantasy race, alike in all but name to those very same elves

>Believe it or not but...
When world make Elves, but their version of elves are NOT tolkien elves? They just wanted the same look and name recognition but make something completely different.

>Magic is a science that anyone can do by following three simple steps

>the gods are all assholes and you're better off without them

Isn't this pretty much true of Greek mythology?

>Three simple steps
Study
Practice
Have the material components

>Reed thin greasy anarcho communist guy makes a civilization
>"So my civilization is more advanced than all the others and they are much higher culture, and they are all anarchocommunists that constantly win victories over the evil primitive capitalist kingdoms!111!!!

I'll take things that never happen for $100, Alex.

>The beast races are only goons for the more human looking ones
This annoys me no end.

>Multiple writers
>Everyone making their own civs
>Every brainstorming session this one guy I swear to fucking God
>Every time someone explains the theme of their civilization
>"Oh my civ does that too but better"

A lot of European and Near Eastern cultures tended to be like that.

While I respect your trips, I must say you would be fucking surprised

why is that? I'm actually curious now

>So I'm basing this off an anime...

Oh god I'm guilty of that, not just in wordlbuilding but in all discussions. No one told me to my face that I'm annoying but I can't help but interject "yeah that happens in/to something I know too!" every time.

Oh god. So much this.

Not even just anime, just... That a person doesn't seem to understand a carefully crafted character arch, compared to a Chaos Drive PC.

>A wealthy democratic/mechantile city on a coastline/river that has an adventurers guild, is diverse racially and culturally, with little to no strife between any portion of the population.
>All of regions/towns surrounding this city are essentially theme park stops that correlated to a stereotype expected in every fantasy setting.

>people try to base their cosmology on indian myth but don't actually know anything about it
Pretty shit, to be honest. Just because Kirkbride could do it doesn't mean you can.

I blame modern interpretations of ancient religions. Also Morrowind, not everyone can do it but they still try.

Linked wrong one.

Shared Indo-European cultural heritage.

>yeah that happens in/to something I know too
Total difference between being into something and assuming you know more than everyone else

>assuming you know more than everyone else
h-haha yeah only assholes do that right

>"So this is my fantasy race."
>Pallet swapped humans that simply live longer and are better in every conceivable way for no real reason, and of course are all attractive.

>"technology" as a thing that changes more or less linearly over time, with ages
>a fictional setting that lines up absolutely everything to one real-life society because anything else would be the "wrong" tech level
>the above, but it's medieval, however guns are somehow an exception and there's none of them because if there was it apparently couldn't be fantasy

>The adventurers guild also has portals there and is the perfect adventurer shopping mall.

Literally everything in GURPS does that by design, including the "just like an IRL society but one or two technologies are absent or present for no fucking reason other than I felt like it" thing.

>tfw I legitimately do know more about most of these topics than almost everybody else

Do not build a setting based on GURPS mechanics. If you insist on using GURPS, at least build the setting first and then go to mechanics.

Joke's on you I use GURPS as a crutch even when making unrelated settings.

>guns
>mfw
youtube.com/watch?v=Dp0cNZopl_U

If it's backed up by reasonably thought out history then everyone hating each other when he devil at the door is fine. Probably happened more this way throughout history than the alternative

>races

I don't risk guns unless something specifically keeps them from clashing, or if something explicitly makes them special in the setting

>...because of [x] the region has recently seen a big influx of (throat clearing, narrator voice engaged) ***~Aaadventurers~*** (wink wink, nudge nudge). The governor is a former ***~Aaadventurer~*** (and thus matters). this fucking pervasive PC centric writing. As if there was a class of people chosen by destiny to be roaming murderhobos.

>Literally doesn't know what TLs are for.
>Doesn't know mixed-TL societies have been canonically recognized by the system for over a decade and unofficially long before that

>risk
Do you risk swords? Do you risk bows? Do you risk polearms?

explain further, because this is vague

I like it better when the king has a fucking line of mercs and sell swords lined up infront and behind the players, they aren't special and are generally seen as a nuisance that must be endured for the greater good

Neither Sumerians nor Elamites nor Semites were Indo-European. The Hittites and Mitanni were Indo-European but they were far more influenced by Semitic Mesopotamian civilizations than the other way around. Mesopotamian mythology was basically grimdark as fuck long before the Hittites were even a thing, and Hittite beliefs were actually comparatively optimistic (the gods would wreck your shit and the shit of everyone you knew or cared about if you pissed them off, but IIRC they were generally somewhat more reasonable and predictable than the Sumero-Akkadian deities, and would forgive you if you confessed and made amends, plus at least the Hittite royalty and nobility got to ascend to the heavens and live among the gods, even if it appears that everyone else was doomed to the same sort of bleak underworld that Sumero-Akkadian religion said everyone went to).

In the case of bronze-age Mediterranean/Near Eastern Indo-Europeans like the Hittites and the early Greeks I think a lot of it was due to Eastern influence. For the rest, I'd say it's probably a matter of harsh circumstances resulting in a pessimistic worldview (or being influenced by cultures that had said Eastern influence).

Do I even need to point out the obvious here?

>>The existence of gods is a known fact, but gods still need faith.

Is that your way of saying that you don't have any method to "point it out" that actually illustrates your point, so you're going to just act like it's totally a given already and hope everyone just rolls with it¿

My trips combined with your lack of self awareness proclaiming your expertise on everything should say it all.

Odds are Chuck that you don't know any more about anything than your daily acquaintances .

>everything and everyone is as awful as possible, every viewpoint character is either a huge baby-eating rapist war criminal or a naive fool who gets lectured by said rapists before getting horribly murdered, viewpoint characters keep getting killed

>"realistic" fantasy
>there's plenty of murder, rape and commoners living in shit, yet STDs don't exist

>"cyberpunk"
>there are elves and dwarves

>"hard" scifi
>there are vampires

>william gibson pls go

>I'll give you that, though, I vaguely recall the vampires being in there for a thematic reason other than being cool, but he could have just gone with 'psychopath' like the rest of the "heroes".

>My world is different. Instead of a Black and White Morality its a grey morality.
Fuck you George Martin

What? Martin does a pretty good job of having less banal morality without being a memelord about it.

You can still see who is evil and who is good.
He also claims it would be realistic. Yet Daenerys is still alive even when she fucked up more times than any other characters

There weren't as many STDs because women didn't fuck random strangers who bought them a drink at the bar.
Maybe the one thing religion was actually good for, keeping STDs in check by telling you sex is evil.

>people who fuck up a lot don't always wind up dead
Yeah, that's how it goes. You ain't dead either, are you?

>religion telling you sex is evil
Not sure if you're intentionally trolling but either way this is another thing that fits the theme of the thread.

Shadowrun is supposed to be a science fantasy story, not pure cyberpunk

I don't mean it literally, obviously.

>Dwarves

Lets be honestly here; no one doesn't anything with dwarves except copy Tolkien's Jews with Scottish Accents and Nordic mannerisms Dwarves.

What possible way could you have meant it that wasn't bullshit?

Well if you wouldn't do that, then they wouldn't be dwarves, they'd just be a bunch of hairy midgets.
Elves atleast have pointy ears to differenciate them as a race.

You know what, just forget it.

This, not everyone in the medieval times was a xenophobic asshole and the church was nowhere near as corrupt as it is commonly seen in "realistic" fantasy. In fact the "LG church is secretly the fucking gastopo" is used so often it's almost become an assumption that this trope is in a setting even where it should never happen, this is why the Dragonlance Cataclysm or whatever the hell its called made no sense to me.

If pointy ears is all it takes to make a different race, I'm sure a race that never grows higher than 4' counts, too.

Hell, the only thing I've seen interesting done with Dwarves was a friends setting where Dwarves were basically Halfling Tieflings; a parish of them stole a sacred anvil from the god of the mountains and he cursed them to forever use it to fight in his war against the gods of the underworld

I like the Brandon Carbaugh dwarves. They're underground jews with 19th century utopian societies and millenial social issues.

My dude, what about the Dwemer?

>this setting is realistic
Instant turnoff as I realized anybody saying it more than often disregard enjoyment of readers or players and use it as a soapbox platform to bitch about his/hers oh so hard life of being ignored by pretty women and mocked by men.

>this setting is historic
Very few can make this fun since the author simply want to self insert their own mary sue into the era and have everyone else watch as peeping toms.

>this setting is sci-fi
See the top.

Which religion you might be talking about? Are the absolutely no fertility cults or adulterous relationships, and is sacred prostitution not a thing? And if rape is a common spoil of war, doesn't that literally mean that lots of strangers will end up fucking each other?

Elves.

Not that user but the dwemer are literally the only good dwarves.

And they're elves. Really makes you think.

You know, i found my mistake.
With "realistic" fantasy i was thinking middle ages with a mild fantasy favour, not just a low fantasy setting.

Either way, sure, lots of strangers fucking a couple captured women, but outside of them, how many other women do you think they would probably fuck in their lives? Even without 90% of the soldiers dying of said STDs, other illnesses, hunger and in battle?

Yes, technically. However, every theme and motif about the Dwemer is obviously Dwarf related. If you gave Trolls pointy ears and called them Trollmer it would still be pretty obvious what inspired them.

I like the Mesopotamian style of the Dwemer. But then again I also like the robber baron American style of the Dragon Age dwarves, so maybe I'm just a tasteless Armok-worshipping loser.

DF Dwarves best Dwarves.

The Dwarves are about the only thing from Dragon Age that I recall being generally well-regarded on Veeky Forums until DA:I came out and made Origins look so much better by comparison

Sex is one of the major leisure activities since there isn't any radio or tv or Internet back in the days.
Either you gossip, play dice or cards or fuck.

I liked how the DA Dwarves had a rigid caste system, ancestor worship (Paragons), bizarre superstitions about the above ground world, and a shady backstabbing political sphere despite being all 'muh honor' on the surface.

But I only played DA:O, how did DA:I muck it up?

Ok, one last try.
People were more likely to stick with just one person and maybe a few affairs than regularely switch their sex partners like today.

>Dwarves, Elves, Orcs and Humans

>Any setting that has more than five sapient races

>fucking a couple captured women
Or a couple dozen. Although this kind of thing is actually less typical for the professional troop setup of the middle ages than it was in some other periods, since war was more regulated.
>how many other women do you think they would probably fuck in their lives?

Some might fuck only their wives and perhaps a mistress or two, but you can bet there were ladykillers in those days too.

Perhaps the problem is not simply that you have a misconception of what historical sexual practices were like, but that you have a misconception of what modern sexual practices are like. Most modern people do stick with one partner for years at a time, or decades as they get later in life. In late teens and early 20s, there's a portion of the population that fucks like fiends, but there's a larger portion that doesn't, and you can bet there were sluts in the old days too. They just relied on significantly inferior methods of birth control compared to what we have now, but there was generally not, in most countries for most of the medieval period, a big problem with having premarital sex as long as you didn't get pregnant without also getting married.

Alright, i give up. You win the discussion.

>yet STDs don't exist
I've basically never seen that. All the low fantasy settings I know make passing references to at least one character that had pseudosyphilis or herpes or something, especially if prostitutes are involved.

first you fuss over limited selection, then you fuss over having too many?

Not limited selection, but rather the most stereotypical fantasy selection there is.

every attempt at "breaking the mold" always ends up literal reskins of the elves dorfs and orcs, so why not just be honest and stick with the archetypes that work without the pretensions of being "NEW"

Both of those things can work well if done by a competent worldbuilder.

My personal peeve:
>My race is original therefore it must be good

Originality by itself is never a virtue. I'd rather have a well done Elf than a ham fister Tr'uk'ai or whatever.

I done magic Dwarfs before.

I like you, I'll offer my own
>Nature/Magic vs tech
>especially if tech is the default bad guy

>I must turn this show/ book/ videogame/ anime I just binged into a setting or character

I've known many a player and GM guilty of this. I'm guilty of this, as once the shine wears off the end result usually lacks a soul of its own.

Even if you classify all new races as on of these four archetypes, all you are doing that way is disallowing variation. Even if its only "reskins", what makes one skin more valid than the other? Why should new skins be disallowed?

>Its just present day and there are hidden vampires or something, done.
>guys guys, every myth and conspiracy theory is true!

There is literally nothing wrong with these.

>Its just present day and there are hidden vampires or something, done.
You take that back right fucking now

>the setting is just the real world, but flipped around and with fantastical races

This is something I actually really struggle with myself, since I'm a huge historyfag and real history is what I know best. I have to go out my way to randomly generate a map and start forming an entire alternate history just to make a setting.

I hate contrarians.

I hate HFY

I hate people who bitch about answers given in the context of the answerers world, in threads about a general setting question.

I hate people who bitch about common fantasy races, but then also complain about races so unlike them as well.

And nature is always good (or natural for that matter)
>changing biomes into other biomes they like more
>micromanaging every population and biome eliminating natural change and fluctuation
>making every forest a fucking zen garden
>arbitrarily excluding species because they are unpleasant
>sending forest friends as battle thralls into a meatgrinder
fucking druids

Agreed. I like the pigorcs much better than greenskins and if you must have classic orcs at least make them not green.