What's Unique About Your Setting?

In my bronze-age setting, water manipulation, darkness manipulation, and necromancy are one and the same.

Halfings and humans are so closely tied that you won't know if your child is a halfling or human until it grows up or not.

Nothing.
):

In MY setting elves are short, bearded folk who live underground while dwarves are tall, fair forest dwellers!

Most of the setting.

A sub-race of humans that wear hazard suits to protect the environment from themselves, not vise versa.

Humans are rare. The majority of them were killed or forced into the ocean because everyone else got tired of dealing with a bunch of entitled, non-magical assholes that think they deserve to rule the continent. The ones that are left were the ones that integrated into the other societies. They're still treated with suspicion, but most don't cause trouble.

In my setting, there was never an advanced civilisation in the distant past that had an apocalypse leaving behind relics for the present, primitive civilisation to find. I have researched the matter carefully and come to the conclusion that it is the only fictional setting like this that is not set in a modern or futuristic period itself, ever.

>or not
don't know why this made me crack up

orcs are invading and taking over the world, but they are also reasonable

I reverse the positioning of knives and spoons and I use two salad forks.

Get out of here with your magical realm bullshit. That is legit disgusting.

My elves are nomadic sea raiders.

My orcs are trapped in the arctic.

My humans are split into three factions, the north-men, the south-men, and the Romans.

In my setting dark elves live on top of mountains

Wood elves are crazy cannibalistic raiders who live in the forest

High elves made a deal with a dark god for immortality at the cost of eating 95% of children born

It's a not-medieval-Europe setting, but there are potatoes.

FUCK YOU

How does that work? Did the dark god just say "Yeah, we're down on our baby-eater quota and according to my calculations if you ate approximately 95% of your newborn population we should make bank."

They where looking for a method of immortality that would cause little changes to their physical bodies and the god offered this to them in exchange for the souls of 95% of infants born and eating them is part of the process of transferring their souls to him.

Hasn't actually come up in the campaign yet, but all (humpback) whales are bards.

It's an electropunk styled game set in a dimensional nexus where people and many races of ayylmaos end up having greasy noir adventures with scrap metal guns and hover cars.

Quite a bit, come to think of it.

That's stupid.

It should include earth manipulation.

Life expectancy in mortal races is tied to size, with Gnomes and Halflings living for centuries, Dwarves living for many, many decades, humans live about as long as they live now, Elves live at most to 60, Dragonic races live to around 50, Orcs can expect at most till 40 but the average life expectancy is 25~.

Giants and Goblinoid races are exempt from this rule, Giants being nearly immortal and goblinoids life spans varying depending on diet and lifestyle.

So the opposite of real life?

Also
>Humans living longer then Elves

Nice 'subverting' a common trope, you hipster fuck. Trash.

Elves are borderline feral forest dwellers who live entirely solitary lives unless they are raising a child, who they will abandon when it's old enough.

Otherwise theyre physically and mentally identical to conventional elves.

So a bunch of attractive, high and mighty bears.

Elves don't sleep. They don't have beds. Elven furnishings are hand-made cushions and carpeting with low tables.

Elves suffer from ennui easily, and so follow their hearts desire no matter the consequences. Elves don't marry, and elven families/clans are full of half-siblings than all elves refer to one another in familial terms.

In my setting, the world used to be lightless oceanic void, until the Gods came from another plane of existence, fought the primordial Old Ones, and formed the land. The Old Ones slumber beneath the ocean, and are the source of most of the setting's black magic. Earth and fire mages are seen as holy, for fighting the fathomless void and all within it. My last setting did have earth-based necromancy, I just decided to do something different.

Basically yes. Their life is sort of based on that of a polar bear, and by that I mean the popular perception of the life of a polar bear since I'm too lazy to do research, cranked up a bit and set in a forest.

Listen here you little contrarian fuck.

In my setting Elves CAN be ultra long lived stereotypical elves, but they have to dedicate whole years to meditation and moderation, sacrificing their lives of questing and warfare. Elves are basically stereotypical Vikings, and live to slay beasts and plunder loot.

In my setting the more "active" and warlike the race lives the shorter lived they tend to be. The candle that burns twice as bright, you feel me?

That being said the shorter lived races are usually great martials and potent sorcerers, but shite wizards and other classes that require years of sequestered study and reflection, like certain kinds of Paladins.

This is an imput balancing mechanic emplaced by the gods who used them for little more than RL MOBAs and RTS games. Which is why mortal kind killed them all

Oh and they follow a more whimsical christmas elf aesthetic. Colours, pointed shoes and boots, tunics, tights, tassels. Elven fashion is some of the more outrageous stuff.

They're illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano.

Humans have only existed for about 1000 years. Elves had an explosive final war with dragons that ended with elves shattering the laylines, killing every dragon, and absorbing their essence into their bodies. The resulting draco-essence filled dead elf bodies resesitated into humans, who have no idea where they came from, but have an intense urge to conquer and learn.

The elven gods are trying to fix the laylines and have created pixies as a temporary replacement to elves, because a human with either too much magic inside them or too strong of dragonic essence can turn back into a dragon. If they have enough dragonic essence a human can ulilize magic or dragon abilities.

Dwarves are cursed halflings (they stole the anvil of the god of war to make a weapon so he turn their whole bloodline into his shock troopers)

Orcs were made to exterminate humans by the god of the death so that elves and dragons don't have a chance of coming back

I read back in one of the old players handbooks that elves change physically based on their environment and kind of rand with that.

High elves, because they live in warm semi-tropical island forests have no hair, are tan, and are weirdly tall. They're kind of like deer.

Drow from living underground have weird grayish skin, that kind of layered skin that deep sea mammals get to keep warm, small bio-luminescent spots, and have traded hair for tendrils.

Since most of the world doesn't see them very often, they think they're some kind of horrifying monsters. Which is not entirely inaccurate.

Dragons in my setting are not loners and have a full functioning society with other dragon kind and is primarily based on a caste system with dragons on top and kolbolds at the bottom and dragonborns in the middle with half dragons.

long story short the last campaign ended with "not-cthulhu" breaking free and ravaging the world bad_end.png

However all the races of the world banded together and banished "not-cthulhu" but the brandishing left a weak spot in the fabric of reality. a sort of gate, a gate that could be used to travel far into other words. a "fargate" if you will.
well without further ado a group of volunteers was put together to explore this fargate.

and I've been pretty much running whatever idea pops into my head on game night since.
>What's Unique About Your Setting?
it's all the setting at once, just one at a time.

My little eldritch god can't be this cute!
Space gnolls invade and enslave fantasy land for being moefags. Phantasy Star ensues.
Not very original I guess since I'm ripping off quite a bit from PS and Muv-Luv Alternative, but I don't think space gnolls enslaving centaur barbarians and lizard/serpentfold shamans as a backstory is similar to something that was done before.

>water manipulation, darkness manipulation, and necromancy are one and the same.
Sounds like Dark Souls.

OP here. I've never actually played Dark Souls but I've heard a lot of good things about it. What's the necromancy system in Dark Souls like?

Essentially, death is a consequence of the existence of life and can only exist because of it. The natural state of all life is undeath called Hollow. What sort of original soul from the First Fire you place into a Hollow determines what it is.
The Dark Soul creates Humans. In opposition to the Light Soul, which creates Lords/Gods. The Light Soul represents fire, and the Dark Soul represents water/the Abyss. There's a Human priest in DS3 who envisions a future of endless, infinitely deep water, which may be a future in which Humanity comes to rule.

Magic is the language of the gods.

Only the gods are unknowable beings from the depths of space and it takes a sane person decades to learn a rune in a capacity that allows it to function, insane people, far less time, which is the reason why intelligence is not the generic magic stat

These runes are so powerful, even fragmented abstract representations, such as one formed by your thoughts, can affect the real world.

I emphasize fragmented because nobody really has any idea of the depths of the powers they toy with.

If a fireball is the most fragmented form of a rune, then creating an entire star is the true rune. Additionally, not all people understand a rune in the same way, which is a sort of metamagic feat system that allows you to customize your spell.

I've thought of the following concepts. "---" means that they're completely separate ideas:
>ice magic, dark magic, counter&dispel magic, and time manipulation are all under the category "Void Magic" because it does things opposite to the universe's tendencies such as release energy
>Magic is about energy manipulation, so you cannot create or destroy matter, but you can reduce it to a less problematic state. You also cannot do anything intricate or requiring a fuckton of energy unless you use inhuman precision, and even then some things are practically impossible such as polymorph or transmutation.
>Technology has made some complex magic possible. For example, one can make a convincing replica of one's self through illusion magic, which is a type of "Light Magic", instead of a mere human shape.
----
>The humanoids are merely hypothetical subspecies of humans. All humanoid races are Homo Something, but there might be sapient non-homonid races.
>I am trying to see if it's possible to make humans not the default race, but I don't know what their specialty would be compared to other humanoids such as dwarves and elves in other settings.
>Likely no dwarves or elves, but there are hominids such as:
>Merfolk, who are kinda like "aquatic apes". Don't know if they have gills, but if they don't, they definitely have high lung capacity. They also have high stamina and all-around body strength, but have somewhat weak constitutions.
>There are hominids that are gorilla-like in stance, but still have a human-like skin and body. Pretty much they're physically like gorillas. Below average intelligence, agility, and dexterity, but fucking strong and tough.
---
>There is a faction of transhumanists who want to upgrade humans into cyborgs. They're not good, but they're not all evil either. They want to compete with the regular humans and show them the "wonders of overcoming human limitation". A small renegade faction wants to convert by force.

Don't know how unique, but my setting's main undead are Goblin freedon fighters secretly backed by an apathetic god of life.

is a setting with only humans feasible to play a rpg? I am not even sure about having any kind of monsters. would it get boring fast?

>would it get boring fast?
Only to Warcraft-addicted casuals and people with ADHD. I'd play the shit out of a setting with only humans.

what about monsters to kill? without adding monsters playing d&d would be meaningless. so would this game automatically become something like the asoiaf rpg?

There are plenty of human monsters, but I assumed user meant that only humans were playable and were the majority of sentient beings in the world. Not that there were no monsters.

Stars are gods. And they do literally whatever they want.

It has Assbabies.

>Wood elves are crazy cannibalistic raiders who live in the forest
So elder scrolls?

Two races, international corpse smuggling, orcs being unplayable bone-scarred necrogenic apes, maybe one of the gods but not sure, the war god's avatar is made of 300 soldiers acting in perfect unity, sea and moon goddess is a giant mermaid whose fins generate the sea currents and spawns spell pearls, ley lines are metaphysical links between people which conduct prana and are the basis of the whole Creation, leyships, spontaneous combustion is considered a disease, therapeutic curses, giant snakes made of corindon, sea centipedes with fins instead of legs, sultans are djinns and the top caste of their land, citadels of pykrete, a prison made from chained ship hulks in the midst of a lake, dwarven geomancy allows for the cultivation of geodes into city-sized chambers, imperial bureaucracy uses around 30.000 seers, dwarven war shovels and steel bows, a nation of megatherium herders based on gaucho romanticism, Universal Soldier-esque frankstein-like steampunk cyborgs opress the populace serving a titanic analogic computer. The Sun is hollow. Samurai use firearms.

I think that's it.

Nothing, it's all pretty derivative.

Basically add Bloodborne, Napoleonic Fantasy, Game of Thrones, and the Witcher together and stir. And a dash of Dark Souls.

Its a pretty bog-standard hard scifi transhumanist space game but with one conceit; the ability to alter an object under the influence of the currently-unnamed field to have its acceleration changed by a number determined depending on how much energy is put into it by a large equation with many exponents, logs, and roots. This allows for "torch" super-drives (accelerating reaction mass to phenomenal speeds directly is a lot easier on the ships power demands), shields and "inertial dampening" (setting acceleration = the inverse) (incredibly power hungry and only really seen on emplacements, military habitats, and cutting-edge space combat vehicles), and cannons able to fire slivers of metal at .4c (only massive artillery, power demands for both firing the projectile and recoil compensation are enough to power a town of 3000 for a week, man portable versions capable of a muzzle velocity of .03c are slowly being introduced to the battlefield). Artificial and anti-grav tech are feasible, but not really practical for power drain and size reasons explained above So its basically Mass Effect, but with harder science, an equation to internally the non-hard stuff, and Transhumanism.

My setting has only humans, plus two races that the players will never encounter (gigantic beasts in the forest and the deep sea, and the "high ones", a race around 50 immortal beings that live among the humans).
So far they never had to fight any monster, yet they had a lot of fun with diplomacy, assassination attempts against them, journeys through the bandit-infested woods, and fight against human necromancers.

Incan dwarves.

How do you communicate uniqueness to the players without overwhelming them?

It seems to me that either you go generic route (and then you can just as well use something published), or unique setting, but then you need to invest a lot of time to share your vision and and patient/willing players (which is not exactly commonplace).
Generic settings seems much more accessible for players and you can spend more time role playing, instead of describing trivialities.

>literally the elder scrolls

Ghosts are imprints of things upon the world. They're real, it's just that they always fade back into reality, because no one, not even the mountains, can recall a world without the ghosts. Sometimes ghosts appear before the person or thing that it's based on comes along, at which point it disappears, becoming the ghost it always was. If you were to take a ghost away from its natural place of rest, you've made a copy of that thing.

There's an island where everyone is a ghost in this sense and everyone who lives there is kinda half-aware of it but no one really cares enough to be alarmed by anything, but the foreigners are completely baffled at how it just perfectly resists the changing of times.

The afterlife is 100% known and is basically immortality in the endless domain of whatever god you worship, with passages between domains possible by believers so long as their god is friendly with the other god.

The crutch of this is your power and potential in heaven is based on how well you followed your gods beliefs while still in the mortal plane. This causes most people to see life as a hardcore video game mode where they need to earn the highest score possible before they die.

Innovation is everywhere due to even the lowest farmers constantly trying to improve their craft in hopes of earning a better place in the afterlife, but these rules also apply to dark and evil gods.

This becomes more popular with old age when people like the local bitter blacksmith who spent 50 years failing to make anything he felt worthy of earning him a good place in heaven, so instead burns down a packed church after baring the doors earning him an exalted place in the heaven of a dark god.

You know what, I like it. It's sort of Dark Souls/Bloodborne mashup.

In my setting drow are basically black slaves for the dwarf, who formed an antmagic inquisition, and the elves are religious zelots of pelor, or other deities, principally good ones, and the humans are great warriors who fight each other and the barbarians near, also human, because they can't move their armies past the deep forest of the dragonborns

Jesus Christ user, you just don't care about anything do you?

>95% of infants born

This just sounds stupid. Does the dark god have teams of hellish accountants and a bureau of population comtrol set up to take the numbers of newborns and calculate percentages owed like a lamer version of the IRS?