My (fantasy race) are like normal (fantasy race) except they are (earth culture)

>Viking elves
My elves are Vikings except when they're Cossacks or pirates.

Dwarves are literally just jewish vikings with scottish accents who live in celtic underworld realms who look like exaggerated neanderthals.

And that's just Tolkien.

Well Scandinavian folklore does have their own elves, dwarves, and trolls, you could easily make a setting inspired by their folklore to have just that: viking elves

>but but but then they won't be a copypaste of Tolkien Elves

Dwarves usually have extreme familial bonds, long lives, obsessive dispositions, live in very atypical for human enviorments, may or may not have a fundamental relationship with stone and the earth and may or may not have abnormal manners of producing young.
They are a significant departure from humans if executed well, but are still human enough to be empathized with, which is the recipe for their enduring popularity

You know what was meant

Sure, but they are also everything I listed in pretty much every major depiction. (also extreme familial bonds is something humans do to, especially jewish families in popular culture, e.g. overbearing jewish mother trope)

And in every major depiction they've been very human in culture and form. OP is just being an idiot and troll who doesn't understand the basis for literally every fuckign race and their culture since we started making them up to play pretend.

Examples?I've never witnessed human being interesting,they're always the default race. It's getting so absurd that sometimes their description and culture is skiped entirely, along with "the thing" that suppose to make them unique .

Having influences from human culture isn't the complaint, it's lazily playing culture + species = look how original my setting is, my dwarves are japanese xD
You can always flanderize a fantasy people to "like x ys" even if they're very original, you can call dunmer "ancient middle eastern drow" the problem only comes up when the authors also think of them like that.

Of course dwarves have influences from human cultures but a well executed iteration of dwarves has a culture hugely influenced by not just human ones, but also by their unique environment, bodies, and priorities. They aren't merely a two dimentional "Vikings who are short and live underground" they are a holistic amalgam of many human cultures, fully fabricated elements and their enviorments, which makes them in treating to play pretend with, because they give a reason to want to play instead of humans.
You are probably unironically autistic if you have never been interested in humans in a fantasy world

Ripping off real-world cultures for your world-building is a time-honored tradition dating back to Howard, plebian.

...

>cossak elves
Elf slav, what do?

My first setting was similar, but gnomes were mayans, goblins aztecs, orcs comanche, and drow conquistadors. Crazy murder worship goblins are the best.

Fuck Chechnya.

That's what goblins are for.

Stealing the best bits for yourself =/= copypasting
Great post

Dunmer are very Slavic.
>fucked up climate
>raped everyone in war, but succumbed quickly to cultural imperialism
>extreme supremacy complex
>xenophobia
>all look same but have dozens of special snowflake cultures that hate each other

You'd be hard pressed to find a mythology that doesn't have analogues to elves, dwarfs and trolls.

nice post
not

My Orcs have no capacity for negative emotions other than anger. No sadness, no grief, no fear, no trauma, just rage, and they love to be angry.

So in a way they're the most happy and blissful race

...no? They're the angriest race.

I'm sorry but this makes no sense. Anger is a negative emotion that motivates you to act fast to end it as quickly as possible. If you love it then it's no longer anger.

I think anons are misinterpreting the op as being anti real world influence when it was meant to be anti lazy "subvsersions" of standard fantasy races done for the sole goal of being "original"

For the first one, I would argue that if you do this by fusing (fantasy race) stereotypes that are unique to them with the (earth culture) instead of going (race appearance) + (earth culture) it might actually be interesting.

I agree with the other two though.

So a mix of domination and wrath?

Christian mythology maybe?

I would say you can enjoy anger, anger is a very broad scope of emotions. I would call what you're describing is wrath, but the excitement and emotional energy of being angry can be exhilerating in a pleaent way

>>my (fantasy race) are like normal (fantasy race) except they are (earth culture)
I had a GM that did that, but with space. Every single faction and planet was "X but in SPACE!" to the point that space exploration became ridiculously boring.

My elves and orcs have gone through so many re-writes they're not even elves and orcs anymore. Turns out if you want green people who raid trade posts and cut the ears off of captives, you can just make them a culture of nomadic humans whose brown skin looks "green" because they have a shit load of tattoos.

>angels = elves
>lesser demons = dwarves
>greater demons = orcs

So you played a game of Star Trek.

No they are crocodile- like beavers that ambush children in the water and eat then whole. Just ask the Welsh.

That's quite a bit of a stretch.

I have very long arms.

they're actually small, insanely spiteful hillbillies with bullshit wish-based magic powers and a habit of getting their beards stuck in shrubbery.

source: German fairytales

Are these the new
>vampyre
>faerie
>sandwyche
threads?

>when people think good world building means inventing new words for already existing ones, and using their own special names instead of standard ones (sh-trae = potato, alsiel = amphibian, akut = death, etc.) whenever possible
>the fictional language also belongs to humans so there's literally no point to it existing other than being meaningless fluff meant to hide how generic the setting actually is

I'd be intrigued by a setting that uses a special word for potato.

Ah yes, the afanc. A creature only barely able to be called a dwarf considering it shares next to nothing with them except being described a couple times as a short person but is much more commonly regarded as a monstrous beaver with supernatural powers. It's basically just a beaver version of a kappa or evil water spirit.

The german fairy tale dwarves are what is now known as gnomes, please see pic attached. They are far too short in their descriptions to fit the common size attributed to modern conceptions of dwarves. In fact I do believe that's quite literally the inspiration for this particular book.

In addition, you should have been able to easily understand that I was talking about their form as it is in very commonly conceived in RPGs as that is literally the fuckign topic we are talking aobut.

theyre literally called dwarves, not gnomes. gnomes arent a thing here

>Tolkien wrote RPGs

Intriguing.

learn the difference between fanfiction and world building

Yes, I know. But their description is quite literally that of gnomes. Im sorry, but in the rest of the modern interent, your dwarves are just tiny little earth people with large hats called gnomes.

No (and you know this), but his conception of them is the broad foundation for them in modern media and especially RPGs.

My world is a non-euclidian rotational plum shape populated by liquid methane beings of unknowable sizes. Is that original enough for you?

>Amerilard raised on diluted pop culture thinks he can lecture anyone

how bout you get yourself a culture first

Actually they're jews with japanese and mongol features mixed with Dune, Nausicaa, catholic church, Assyrian names and Aleister Crowley. You haven't read enough about their culture if you see anything slavic there.

>having non-human races

So it's the Earth, but populated by liquid methane beings.

>calling dunmer jews
skyrim babby spotted

The Earth is one planet of many in a world.

No offense but trying to pin a real life culture on a fantasy race, and failing horribly, is kind of cringy.

Neck yourself, n'wah.

>I'm too devoid of creativity to actually develop cultures
Yep Elf vikings is totally creative and interesting and not a stupid idea that sounds like you just use a word generator to combine a culture with a race at random.
>Chinese Dwarves
>Viking Elves
>Indian Orcs
Taking parts from a culture purposely or inadvertently is fine but you should develop cultures so that they stand out.

I agree wholly. Cultural differences are for cultures. I want my "races" (really species) physiologically different in a way that adds things to their cultures which do not exist in human cultures.

Actually they're jews already in Morrowind. Exodus, roman occupation of judea etc. Tons of similarities.

Still they're also Japs in their ancestor worship and Ashlanders are mongols like said.

>my (fantasy race) are like normal (fantasy race) except they are (earth culture)
This is vastly preferable to "my (fantasy race) are like normal (fantasy race) except they have absolutely zero depth whatsoever."

Stealing from real life cultures might not bring anything new into the world, but at least any real culture will have plenty of intereting aspects that give some flavour to your setting. Even if it as lazy as stealing an aesethic it's better than "well my dwarves are like Gimli and they like beer."

Any recommendations on how to create cultures? It's easy enough to make a broad statement like 'they're warrior-priests' or 'they REALLY like to make new ways to murder people' but making up something to go along with that is a little more difficult.

>having races at all to begin with
Fantasy worlds are cooler when everyone is there own thing

start with the Greeks

OP, show us your fantasy then.
Show us you can do it better.

In my oriental 5e world I made elves kitsune and gnomes into tanuki, is that okay OP?

I disagree, standard races are played out but are solid, and you can focus on the story or interactions between them without encumberance and you can get immersed once more into the familiar comfy world of standard fantasy. All the legwork is done for you.
When they have lazily nicked human cultures painted over them it becomes difficult to get into it because of how deeply forced it feels.

Start with generic Hunter gatherer animists, consider the details of their environment and go from there, just keep thinking of specifics and adding them up to something more robust.
Musical instruments and styles, agricultural opprotnuities, domesticated animals, natural barriers forming indpendent kingdoms or large flat area forming empire, the reality of any gods or monsters nearby, what materials are available to them for housing and clothing, what medium they use for art and writing to determine artistic sensibilities, ect ect. Culture starts as a reaction to environment and becomes tradition over time.

This.
Cultural differences of different races should always be influenced by their physical differences.
Always.
Otherwise make them human.

>Any recommendations on how to create cultures?
Figure out what you want to be a strong feature of that culture and ask yourself what would cause that to happen.
And then ask what other things needed to be in place an order for that cause to happen.
Then ask yourself how that feature would interact with other aspects of daily life.
Then ask more questions.
Make it make sense and be internally consistent.

My advice is always to look at beautiful enviroment, and imagine what kind of cultures would flourish there. A hard land means a practical culture.

The protagonist in 99% of fantasy literature is a human, from a human culture, and there are plenty interesting ones.

A lot of sweeping generalizations made by people on this board about fantasy, role-playing or whatever, makes it very clear that they have very little experience of it, beyond their favourite system.

>his races have just one culture
>his setting doesn't have each race have a multitude of culture
The only reason to have a race=culture is if your setting takes place on an extremely small scale. On any scale larger than a single country, race=culture is just shit writing, and your a faggot if you do it.

What are some less common medieval folkloric races that could make decent player characters?

I think wildmen would work well.

Does it have to be medieval Europe?

Kikimora and other spirits with a role similar to elves
Merrow could be pretty easy.
The fifty billion varieties of gnome and elf and faeries to add variety to existing ones

I steal real culture and only change few thing.
Like not!Celts with tribal masks and war bears.
Or not!Vietnamese that tame tigers, leopards and lions as beast of burdens and have cat themed warriors.
Instead of the generic not!French feudal monarchy, I go with major merchant families as open feuding rulers.

>domesticating solitary predators
Really gets my noggin joggin

Not that user, but the setting the pic is from has pretty interesting humans.

>"born" fully formed with ink smeared on their eyes on a plane where the ground is made of stone faces
>awakened by screams of other humans dying horribly and have to immediately fight for their lives
>slowly have to develop their own culture and learn everything from language to where babies come from
>carve out a small civilization in a sunless world, with ever fading lanterns, surrounded on all sides by unimaginable horror.

magic
also tame isn't domesticated.

I want to include dwarfs but I don't want them to be Tolkien style dwarfs. No axe fixation, beards are optional and no special aversion to elves, among other things. Will people complain?

Depends.
How are they different other than just the beard/ax/no elf hate thing?

This.
You can, say, model your elven kingdom after the South during Reconstruction, where High Elves are Whites, Wood Elves are Blacks, and Drow are Appalachian hillbillies, but don't act like that's "never been done before" or is "a better way of explaining why they're the way they are". Take real world inspiration and actually build on top of it.

Elves = Man if they never fell from Grace
Dwarves = The Jewish Diaspora
Trolls = Pagans

Whoops, that's Tolkien.

I remember playing with someone who got INCREDIBLY angry when he found out that we used French, German, and Italian for stand-ins for Elvish, Dwarven, and Draconic respectively.

Apparently, that wasn't "faithful" enough to the spirit of the game.

If you depart too greatly from what is "dwarf" stop calling them "dwarf" lest you look like a cunt

Hes right, you should have used Celtic for elves, Hebrew for dwarves and (draconic screetching) for dragons

>(draconic screetching)
So Spanish?

What is "dwarf" in your view?

You guys know what sounds fun?
-sky dwarves-

>my elves are like normal elves except they are elvish
am i doing this right?

While that would have been "source" accurate, they were our stand-ins because we were global studies majors and those were the languages that we knew.

He was more angry that we didn't devote ourselves to learning "actual" Elvish, Dwarvish, and Draconic. He thought we were metagaming against him when the two people playing elves started talking in confused French when he made some elegant introduction to his character in Elvish.

That does sound neat.

already a thing in AoS. comming end of March.

Say what.

I've tried to base them on other depictions of dwarfs in folklore. So while they're still miners and craftsmen with subterranean dwellings, they are not great warriors owing to their small stature and have to compensate by using stealth, ranged weaponry and magic.

I made a single race for my D&D 5e campaign
>based on wildcats/pallas cats
>short, stout and with thick furcoats to survive cold climates.
>mostly work as merchants, selling stuff they find in the mountains, and also as guides for treasure hunters/caravans
>very good at identifying valuables
>have burrowing speed because they may or may not have their origins tied to earth elemental creatures

Blemmyes!

I would say of all the race Tolkien made try dwarves stuck the hardest with the stricktest stereotype
Neccesary traits
Dwarves without these are not dwarves
>short
>some degree of subterranean living
>lawfull disposition
Important traits
These are traits that while assumed are not absolutely essential, but removal of more than a few is dangeorus, a dwarf with none of these traits is not much of dwarf
>good craftsmen
>bearded
>stout of heart
>ancestor worship
>long lived
>northern European aesthetic influences
>in decline
>human skin tones
>fond of drink
>strict honor code
>look down on other races
>rune magic
Optional traits
These are dwarfish traits but are not deeply rooted. Can be changed without much issue
>connection with the earth
>society organized into federated city states and family units
>unhealthy love of precious metals
>obsessive behavior
>appreciation for revenge
>distaste for elves
>distaste for other subterranean races
>industrial
>on relatively friendly terms with humans
>more intelligent than humans
>unbalanced genders
>militaristic