Why do settings like to throw in actual real life mythological references and creatures...

Why do settings like to throw in actual real life mythological references and creatures? Doesnt matter if the setting has the obligatory orcs, dwarfs, dragons and demons, behemoth and leviathan, some hinduism or shintoism creatures, or some of your hipster special snowflake hawaiian mythology in there - most settings seem to rely on fictionwork thats already there instead of inventing creatures and races completely from scratch. Is it lack of creativity?

Even whole storylines get stolen in media from time to time." Hurr its a subtile biblical reference" yeah wow, do you feel intellectual now? Be creative instead of stealing from the literal oldest book of humanity and calling it a clever reference.

Nothing is original op, we all stand upon the shoulders of those that came before, and their influence s shine through no matter what. Some are just more obvious about it than others.

Let's see what you come up with then. Build a brand as large as D&D with all PC races original, monsters and your own story ideas.

because they're cool and they're already written and statted out

Isn't the literal oldest book of humanity the Epic of Gilgamesh or something?

I think it's actually the Vedas? If i recall rightly, they're like 10000 years old.

One of the oldest written tales yes, but stories existed long before it.

What can I say OP people like familiarity. It's the same reason superhero movies get repeated every four years.

Things are a little better with science fiction rather than fantasy where there is a lot wider selection of races. Sure your gonna get some pretty cliched stuff like warrior or insect people, but you're not gonna see the exact same races every in every setting every time.

>most settings seem to rely on fictionwork thats already there instead of inventing creatures and races completely from scratch. Is it lack of creativity?

For a long time I had the same attitude, thinking it was better to invent totally unintuitive and bizzare races and creatures for a fantasy world.
Eventually though I realized that not very many players have the patience or interest to sit through an explanation of these things. Since RPGs involve other human beings, you have to present your ideas in a form that people will bother to care about.
So it's psychologically more inviting to create derivative works with a twist than to produce wholecloth new worlds.

Huh. Interesting.

Because PCs are supposed to be natives of these worlds, and for that to work the player needs to be familiar with the world as well. If the world is totally alien to the player, then he needs to listen to the GM explain even the most mundane bits of his snowflake setting in order for his PC to act rationally. It's not fun and it brings the game to a standstill. So why should we be valuing creativity over the familiarity that makes tabletop games fun to play?

That's Hindutva propaganda. The Vedas at most date to 2000 BCE.

This. It's a matter of communication.

Why is the Gospel of Mark a retelling of Isaiah, Matthew a depiction of Jesus as Moses and Luke a Homeric Greek story?

People talk about what is meaningful to them. By retelling and reinterpretating ancient stories people can easily communicate their moral values and the emotional significance of the world around them.

Pretty much this desu.
Don't reinvent the wheel, just realign it.

I have to play the devils advocate here, and ask if you've made uninteresting alternative options or have presented potentially interesting options in a uninteresting way? That said I will agree with the overall point. Many derivative fantasy races have established rules they follow and at most those twists are going to have the original idea as a reference.
That and these old races are more often than not pretty much just humans with some special ability and a different but still very human culture. So anyone can just look at them and immediately know how to play one of them. Now if you start introducing new races you pretty much have to sum them up in an elevator pitch or nobody is going to get the same "Oh I know how to play one of these" feelings that they get with elves 'n shit.
At the end of the day if you make something too inhuman then you're not going to get anyone to play it because it will feel too alien, or even better they'll take an alien creature and play it like funny looking human. Humans know how to think like humans, make a race too different in that regard and you'll lose people.
Likewise if you give them a huge write up instead of an elevator pitch, you're making the race too intimidating. Cool if you have that document, or notes, or whatever so you can answer questions, or they can read it at their leisure (if at all), but as an opening it's almost oppressive. Gives the potential player the idea that you've handed them a race bible full of laws and rules they need to follow to play that race right, now their fantasy game has homework attached.

So at the end of the day I think you absolutely can introduce new races without issue, but you need to keep them similar enough to humans (at least in mindset) to be relatable, and you need a strong and comprehensive elevator pitch.

>Is it lack of creativity?

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

It's what people do, it's what we've always been doing: everything is just riffing off of or inspired by something else, there's really no need to get all that excited about it.

I think it has to do with those stories already having a frame of reference. Having to absorb a completely unknown world is already quite a lot of information, if you have a plot that's not very obvious from the get go or has lots of intrigues and untruths than it gets really hard to make sense of it all. If you can make a comparison to something you already know then it's easier to put it into perspective

>my setting is entirely original! every concept was invented by me and has no history, resonance, or meaning!
yeah wow, do you feel intellectual now?

I think at least half a dozen posters miss the point of OP entirely.

There's a difference between borrowing bits and pieces of something existent and assembling it into something with a decent amount of uniqueness to it...

...and literally just grabbing stuff straight from myth or just popular media and shaving it down.

Don't be an idiot; we are all of us part of a world culture going back to before we were even human, of course what has gone before will inform our stories today, be reused, reinvented, and rehashed a giga-jillion times, and indeed, has been already. There is nothing new under the Sun, or in the shadows. Everything's been done.

"Be Creative"? "Stolen"? "Ooo! Ooo!, my Not-Elves are covered in spikes and are bald! My Not-Orcs are all like greasy Greek Mattress Salesmen with terrifying body-hair! My NPC Wizard Flignarf The Puce loves to help PCs and fondle the Small Races!"

The fecking Public Domain exists for a reason. Use it.

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