Beastfolk General: Worldbuilding Edition

Honest question; would you play in a wargame where one faction - or at least one unit - was based on rifle-toting American Western Settler-themed bunnyfolk? Or, really, any of the beastfolk from ?

Sure, depending on the overarching setting, the factions involved, and whether or not the rules are pants-on-head-stupid.

Lizardfolk and the great Reptilian Empire are sort of a staple in my worlds ever since a child dreaming of dinosaurs and playing Chrono Trigger. I combine them with the Howardian snakemen. Basically a secret reptilian empire behind the many kingdoms of humans and others. I also draw a bit of the conspiracy theory stuff with it too.

Other types of beastmen, specifically mammalian beastmen, I prefer as an unnatural aberration or creation, very much in the vein of Warhammer's Beastmen. The result of terrible experiments, chaotic or demonic influence, or the curse of a god.

The only place where I would put them not as that sort of thing is in a fairyland type world, where they are more like animals dressed in human clothes and walking on their hindlegs.

I always wanted to do an all beastfolk game. It would be fantasy but no "normal" races, all intelligent races would be some kind of beastfolk. They would be a bit archetypal as far as different racial cultures and personality tendencies, such as dogs being gregarious, bears being grumpy, rodents being skittish, etc. Will try to avoid too much of homogeneous nations, though something like mammals vs. reptiles vs. bugs three-way animosity could be good.

Something different but not too complicated and still easily relateable for players.

I love it. That kind of stuff is fun, but I feel that there isn't enough cultural baggage to add to bug nations since they tend not to have too great of personalities. Lizards too.

Bugs would probably end up being a common enemy with their super loyal hive-mind type thing going on being alien to both the other races.

Also, mammals would easily live in higher and colder climates, lizards would want warmer and lower lands, so uncomfortable peace could be found there (and fish-folk in the water of course), bugs though, they are everywhere and step on everyone's toes.

I have it that Beast-Folk are shapeshifters who can take lycanthropic forms. They do this via ritual, and all have religions based on astronomy (wolf-folk worship the moon, cat-folk worship the sun etc.).

Then there’s a difference between ‘wild’ beastfolk who tend to live in tribal societies, and ‘donesticated’ beastfolk who are either servants, slaves, or the descendants thereof who’ve acclimated to the human cultures and religions.

Oh, forgot to add, one thing I wanted to do with this setting, not sure how important would be to individual games, would be that there are "precursors" who knew the secrets of "dark magic". The idea being that arcane magic was very dangerous and potentially damaging, the precursors were elves who left behind the more "natural" magics for "magically industrialized" society using the arcane stuff causing a kind of "magical global warming" which they only realized too late. Before they all died the few remaining druids left the seeds to "uplift" the beast races, in hopes that they would be better caretakers of the world. The last elves taught the beastfolk the ways of natural magic and to fear other kinds before fading away.

Maybe you can find old magic cities or actual members of the race in isolated spots.

Alternately, replace "elves" with "humans" and "arcane magic" with "technology" I guess.

The "humans and technology" variant is basically the premise of pugmire, isn't it?

Oh yeah, don't they kind of worship them as some kind of ideal though?

>For example, I've been thinking about a Japanese-flavored race of sharkfolk physically based on the bamboo sharks of Asia.

So, honest question; how would I actually pull this off? Bamboo sharks are, to the extent of my limited knowledge, mostly stealthy bottom-hunters, and they're small & docile enough to be valued as pet sharks for aquariums. How might that plus Asiatic influences work to make a culture?

You do know that bugfolks don't have to have hive-minds, right? Look at thri-kreen, or xixchil, or aranea. Heck, even PF's Thriae are interesting, for all they're bee monstergirls in design.

Well, "Asiatic influences" is pretty vague. Might help to read up on countries where they're common-see what sort of cultural points you can shamelessly rip off.

My first real homebrew campaign is going to include a decent amount of the more beastial races because I enjoy the flavor of having lots of different races. Problem is I'm wanting to make them as enemies too so I'm gonna have to edit a bunch of different existing monsters/creatures to make new enemies that aren't just reskins with the same stats. Anyone have any existing beastfolk monster statblocks I could use, or where I should look on how to make them?

What system are you using, user?

3.5, all the players will be their own unique warforged and 3.5 is a common system among my friends plus there is a large source of beastfolk races on dndwiki but I don't know of a good way to make enemies based on other creatures.. Sorry for not mentioning first, getting tired.

If I recall, there's a lot of 3.5 writeups for beast races in the Monster Manuals and various setting books. Are there any specific varieties you really want to use?

I'm wanting to have a selection of them that I can use even at higher levels kind of thing, but also some homebrew races I want to include, such as a race called the Mitocabra which are centaurs but dwarf and goat instead of human and horse.
I suppose I will need to use dndwiki's SRD as a good way to look for monsters instead of going through all like 5 MM individually.

I was actually running with a gypsy/hindi sharkfolk in my latest setting. Once I realized all their unique points were covered by other, more interesting, races I relegated them to mook-tier pc fodder.

>gypsy/hindi sharkfolk
>other races were more interesting

...What the hell other races were you running?

Hard to tell because there's a couple of different species; they've been found in Indian, Indonesian, Thailand, Japanese, Burmese and Australian waters, roughly.

Pick one at random, then. Or review all of them for various tidbits to Frankenstein together.

Fear of furries

If it helps, whilst it's focused rather more on beastfolk PC races, the Beastfolk article on 1d4chan does have a pretty big list of D&D beastfolk.

1d4chan.org/wiki/Beastfolk

Well, most of the 3.5 beastfolk have "monster as character" options-some racial HD, some level adjustment, and after that, it's all just PC class levels.

Propably uses plugs with muffs over just for a little extra even though they wouldn't be a bug help on their own. Designing full muffs for something like rabbit ears would be an absolute headache.

>thinks weaver stance is a poor stance for range shooting a pistol
>thinks locking your arms is a problem with an auto
1/10 nogunz detected

This is the kind of world I've been daydreaming/ idly adding to for months kind of inspired by the breath of fire series of games. I've fallen into the cultures are just expies of real world cultures that you all hate so much, but it makes it simple as a starting point.
The more I think about it, I think I'm getting race overloaded. I've got :

Cats are not!romans
Snakes are not!ancient egypt
Lizards are not!aztecs
Birds in mainland Europe feudal societies
Minotaurs are technologically advanced(ish) not!russians
Wolves are vikings
Hyenas are gypsies
Monkeys are asians
Elephants are Buddhist monks
Fish folk in underwater Greek cities
Deer centaurs are ancient celts
Horse centaurs are mongols
Rats are Jewish Inspired in that they are displaced from their homeland
And finally spider people in drow-like societies underground

Currently working on a setting that is focused exclusively on bugs. Also, post bugs.

i like merfolk
i made a pretty detailed merfolk race 5e

So, honest question; given half-dragons/orcs/ogres/satyrs are a thing in canon D&D, is it really unnatural in a setting with nonhostile beastfolk to say that sometimes humans have relationships with them?

...

Biologically unnatural, certainly. Socially unnatural, that's a bit more dependent on the setting, but in most cases, probably-not that someone won't go for it anyway.

...

>surfer bro pirate wizards
>mongolian used armor salesmen
>druidic amazons
>singing cannibal frogs
>sapient mana crystals
>mexican bandito bird lizards
>sapient ooze golems

Gypsy Sharks weirdly intruded on a couple of racial niches, so they had to go.

What exactly is your game about, user?

Really, you could argue that the half-dragons, half-demons, half-angels, half-fey and half-elementals are just as biologically unnatural. And don't forget that we've had canon half-dwarves and half-gnomes in some D&D settings before - admittedly, Dragonlance.

Honest question: do anons consider Dragonborn - and their Draconian and Dray predecessors - to be a kind of beastfolk race?

I'm not saying they aren't-if anything, they're more unnatural than beast-human hybrids.

Certainly. Why wouldn't they be?

Dark Sun: Tropical Edition.

try Polynesian or Maori senpai

wtf i typed senpai

F A M

I really like complelty savage and often irredeemable beastfolk. I have recently complete stolen Beastmen from Warhammer fantasy to add to my setting as the cursed descendants of the Elves who served a dark king.

How many here have considered playing Ironclaw?

I’ve played it as a player. Ask me anything.

How'd they end up with a curse like that, user?

What do you like and dislike about it?

It’s got real solid crunch. A simple to follow dice system that allows for a ton of customization and power. It does armor and gunpowder well, and the magic seemed to focus on curses and boons instead of fireballs and summoning, which was a nice change of pace.

Didn’t like? If you got a problem with furries, just walk away. This is pretty shamelessly furry. If like me you can ignore that, more power to you. The game also has an issue with powergaming, in that if you know what you’re doing you can create a living God with minimal issue.

Personally, I find delegating any race to the savage and irredeemable role a waste of time and space, but you do you.

Well, sometimes you want some unambiguously bad guys for the setting. For example, I don't care for the idea of playable undead, and I make it a point to emphasize that they're truly monstrous and nightmarish creatures. Of course, this honks off a couple of my friends who like the idea of "good" or at least "not inherently evil" undead, but they also try to defend the Forsaken from Warcraft, so it's just one of those things we argue about now and again and move on from.

After the alliance of men, Dragons, and dwarves struck down the Elven King, his followers attempted to flee to the lands of fairy. Those that were not able to escape were cursed by the gods for their crimes.

Here's a truly random question; in a "Japanese flavored" culture of ratfolk, does it make sense if said culture features ratfolk geishas?

Sure, if the culture supports that sort of thing. Who are the clientele? How do people perceive the profession? Who takes up that kind of thing? What does their work entail?

...

I kind of like Wicked Fantasy's take on the secret reptilians-they escaped the evil psionic slugmen, found humanity, and decided to try and subtly influence them towards good and virtue. Now that the human empire is falling into decline, becoming a hotbed of corruption and cruelty, they're left wondering where they fucked up, and some of them are starting to question whether they should drop the masquerade to try and save humanity (all while horrible, mutated "kobolds" are popping up, revealing that the slugmen have finally found them again).

Okay, here's a few ideas from my setting.
>Snakefolk developed a society based on acquiring knowledge, are heavily shamanistic and don't have a spoken language. They communicate through vibrations with other snakefolk, their "written" language are just carvings in solid surfaces they "feel" when crawling over them. Since their eyesight is bad, they express themselves through the creation of special perfumes that only certain creatures can smell. For a long time, they saw "limbs" as an evil thing and considered most creatures with legs and arms as abominations and enemies of nature, but eventually had to develop mechanical limbs to compete with other races.
>Axolotlfolk have an underwater kingdom in a massive swamp. They value the small joys in life and while rarely seek war, they enjoy ritual duels in which they tear each other's limbs apart in hopes of growing stronger ones. Those who are blessed by the Lady of the Swamp and undergo a full metamorphosis into land-form are tasked by the elders to go on a long pilgrimage outside the swamp and bring back glorious mementos of their travels and heroic deeds. This is how the axolotlfolk learned metallurgy from all around the world and developed an alternative to gunpowder: hyper-spring loaded guns, capable of piercing walls under water with ease.
>Snailfolk are ever-traveling merchants hermaphrodites. The young ones store goods in their shells and travel all around the world trading them with other cultures until they're old enough to enter The Joust. This a ritual in which multiple snails enter a tournament in which they fight each other using the weapons and knowledge they've gathered in their travels. When they finally meet their match, they reveal a dart-like organ and attempt to stab each other with it. The loser of this battle will either die or father the winner's children. Some subspecies are big enough to carry entire cities in their shells, making Joust season particularly dangerous in certain countries.

>Foxfolk was driven out of society by other canines and have been forced to live as outcasts. They form bands of traveling monks, bandits, dancers and ninja-like mercenaries, but always have a Vulpine Storyteller, which keeps the oral tradition of their people and over the years have created hundreds of interpretations of their classical myths and stories.
>Batfolk live in massive structures and are constantly debating over all kinds of issues, and communication is the main characteristic of their society. They've created libraries as big as a whole city, and universities that could dwarf a whole kingdom. Their lecture halls are massive but thanks to their perfect hearing nobody has problems listening to their professors. Since they're young, they're encouraged to debate all kinds of ideas and learn about all kinds of topics. This society puts a lot of pressure on individuals who want to rise to the top, as everyone is expected to be a genius by any other culture's standards, which leads to bat scholars having to innovate in technology, science and the occult, only to have their peers steal the fruits of their work. While sabotaging is not necessarily accepted, the only unforgivable thing in bat society is to directly harm any family member. And chances are that everyone they know is some kind of cousin due to their reproduction rate.
>Crowfolk are a mixture of bards, historians and uncharacteristically loyal mercenaries. It is said that once a Murder Tribe considers you their ally, they'll be there to help you and the rest of your bloodline until the end of time. Warriors and assassins by nature, they're extremely lethal in battle, but also incredibly organized. The only thing a crow loves as much as the heat of the fight, is the joy of a song. Shaman crows are selected based on the beauty of their voices, and the eloquence of their writings. They believe the gods tasked them with recording the history of the world and singing it to them.

Undead are a bit different in the sense that they are regular mortals who have completed a dark ritual or have been cursed. I think the idea of a race of biological sapient beings who are locked into an evil alignment from birth and thus fit only for genocide at the hands of the good guys (like the orcs of lotr) is more uncanny morally speaking.

Didn't Tolkien flip-flop on whether orcs are intrinsically evil pretty much until he died?

I've seen a lot of contradictory stuff online. There is a quote that states that orcs who wish to surrender should be shown mercy and that prisoners should be treated respectfully. On the other hand they are literally hunted down and exterminated at the end of the LotR books and there is no mention of any of them being taken captive or spared. I think he tried to make the problem go away by saying that they were automatons or souless animals rather than actual people. I think he may not have thought the full implications through when he wrote the books.

So, these threads have produced good ideas for ratfolk, gnolls and rabbitfolk. What about squirrelfolk? Anyone have any ideas for interesting ways to make squirrel-men into a race in your setting?

>Arboreal raiders who steal and hoard food supplies, destroy homes, and generally act like dicks, but are easily tricked into walking into traps
>More a nuisance than anything else, until someone smart enough to keep the little bastards from falling for every trick takes the reins

What're some unusual ideas for beastfolk cultures, anons? Any thoughts?

For example:
Asiatic Ratfolk
Malign Conqueror Rabbitfolk (cf: Shin'hare)
Enlightened Spiritualist Minotaurs

>exclusively on bugs
go on...

>If you got a problem with furries, just walk away. This is pretty shamelessly furry.
Apart from some occasionally terrible art, I think Ironclaw actually does a pretty good job of not exemplifying what people feel is “too furry” in a setting. Nothing magical realm.

Now, SHARD, on the other hand, is entirely up its own ass with trying to do worldbuilding and justifying why anthropomorphic races exist. Plus it’s a mechanical mess rules-wise. It’s the exact opposite of Ironclaw: pretty book, pretty crappy gameplay.

>He doesn't give primitive levels of civilization to his beastfolk
PffffHAHAHA

Never heard of SHARD. What's that all about?

I'm still fleshing out my homebrew setting, but as is the three main beast races in it are the Dragonborn, the Tabaxi, and the Yuan-ti. Still trying to change their cultures and stuff up to be more original. The DB are arguably the world's most powerful "nation", balanced by the fact that they're just a collection of city states established by various "champions". The Tabaxi and Yuan-ti are Incans and Aztecs, essentially, and have a fucking burning urge to see the other wiped off of the planet because their respective gods were enemies. Typically the Tabaxi have the upper hand because the Yuan-ti have the home field disadvantage of dealing with their lizardfolk cousins, who tend to just raid the shit out of everything that moves for their tribes. The catfolk have never been able to push too far into the jungles though, where the heart cities stand.

Probably should've found the worldbuilding general desu

That seems like a fairly nice start. I don't think tabaxi ever had much of an original culture apart from "jaguar men villages in South America", so you're already on the way. Is there anything special about the champions?

Each is accomplished in their fields in some extremely notable way. The main dragonborn religion is mostly, "Might makes Right: the religion", so those among them that distinguish themselves and grow powerful enough often inspire or subjugate enough other dragonborn to either overthrow a current champion or form their own new city. Champions rule their cities as kings, and can make up p much whatever law they want, which is why there's a huge amount of variation in law within the dragonborn confederacy. Their religion is often responsible for a phenomenon where dragonborn will serve anyone if they can beat said dragonborn up

So, executive and legislative power is contingent on challenging them. Are there any famous upsets in their history? Does their religion extend to non-dragonborn as well?

Or proving oneself to them. Most champions with half a brain will realize that they can't run a city state on their own and will appoint trustworthy-but less powerful- lieutenants to run things for them while they oversee the bigger picture. Upsets happen almost all the time, since the majority of champions keep a careful eye on upcoming threats to their rule, and will usually find some way to be rid of them when the time comes. Changes of power usually happen when an upstart is careful enough to avoid detection, and thus can't be prepared for.

The dragonborn include other races in their religion, but it's rarely practiced outside of their kind. Part of it is lack of ability to spread, they're trapped on one side by the setting's tiefling kingdom to the north, by some other religious fanatics to the west, and by ocean to the south and east, they just don't have anywhere to spread to.

Who are the western fanatics? How do the dragonborn get along with their tiefling neighbors? Any special historical events involving any combination of the three?

It's still being written, so definite, detailed historical events are still coming up the assembly line.

In regards to the tieflings, horribly. The tieflings tend to just sit back in their mountain rangeand repel dragonborn expansion efforts, though there are successes that result in tiefling slaves. Needless to say, relations aren't great, but the tieflings are too tied up with their own divine/self mandated "crusade" against a massive fuckhuge portal to hell right in the center of their territory.

The fanatic nation is called Whelk's Crossing. "Whelk" is the name that a powerful fey lord took when he started getting a few random druids and rangers to worship him, and it's all been downhill since. Whelk is actually widely worshipped (and therefore powerful) enough to make actual clerics to his name, and not just warlocks, but warlocks are more prized. He keeps people worshipping him through the same way slaanesh attracts worshippers: he heavily pushes revelry and enjoyment in life's pleasures. Unfortunately, this means that things like rape aren't actually crimes in the Crossing, something more than one outsider has discovered to their chagrin. Whelk's followers don't like nonbelievers. At all.

>I have it that Beast-Folk are shapeshifters who can take lycanthropic forms. They do this via ritual, and all have religions based on astronomy (wolf-folk worship the moon, cat-folk worship the sun etc.).
Sounds neet but it doesn't make sense to me that cats would worship the sun. Cats or not diurnal or nocturnal, however they are more active at night than the day. something else you might want to consider is that dogs are highly social pack animals so their religion would likely have achieved 80 who is indirect control the universe as for cats, even when they form social groups, are pretty independent and would be more likely to believe in a chaotic pantheon of self-interested deities.

>Then there’s a difference between ‘wild’ beastfolk who tend to live in tribal societies, and ‘donesticated’ beastfolk who are either servants, slaves, or the descendants thereof who’ve acclimated to the human cultures and religions.

I should consider this for my own setting. I plan on having various races of semi-sentient Beastfolk with Intelligence similar to friends from Kemono Friends. Smart enough to do simple tasks, use simple tools or carry a simple conversation but not smart enough to grasp more existential things or use magic. I hadn't considered human society using them for any ends but it makes sense now that I think about it. This would open the question of whether or not they would be guaranteed any rights.

I'm curious about Veeky Forums opinion on this
Another thing I'm considering for my setting is that humans can interbreed with beastkin either through rape or someone being a degenerate furry. The resulting offspring looks like they came on all characters you see in anime often with personality traits and quirks related to whatever animal they have the ears and tail of. You're often seen by the rest of society is being just short of human.

>Literal portal to Hell on one side
>Rape-happy lunatics on the other

Well, that sounds absolutely terrifying. How are the yuan-ti these days? You mentioned lizardfolk troubles?

Currently recovering after their latest attempt to conquer the Tabaxi was met with their worst military defeat thus far at the hands of Hot Stone in Muddy Valley, a former Emperor who's by now passed the throne off to his granddaughter, who has no clue what the fuck she's doing. Stone managed to kill the current Yuan-ti Anathema, who has yet to reincarnate. The sole Anathema in the setting is more powerful than a "normal" one, reincarnates after each death, and gains a new head for each new life.

As for lizardmen, they're literal pondscum. They hide away in the depths of the jungles and marshes and raid Yuan-ti roads for resources. They constantly fuck with logistics and are as hardy as roaches when it comes to attempts to exterminate them. In times when the strength of the Tabaxi wanes, they're the only thing that keeps the snakes from exterminating the catfolk.

Are there any other groups or races in the area, or is it mostly just a catman/snakeman slugfest with lizardmen making off with other people's stuff all the while?

A bigass seafaring merchant kingdom has a strip of land along the Tabaxi eastern coast, and the Triton will sometimes hunt shit that far north, but other than that it's leftovers from when an uber powerful Lich threw a bitchfit at the concept of life and nearly threw the world into darkness and undeath. Even then, they didn't actually get affected that much, since the undead were mostly trying to just drive straight for the tiefling's portal to hell

Do the catmen have good relations with the merchants? Has their proximity influenced their society or culture in any significant manner?

Yes, and yes. Before the merchants came, the Tabaxi basically just sat on mountains of gold and precious minerals and didn't give two shits about the outside world. It was sort of hard to ignore the snake men trying to genocide you for existing. When the traders showed up, it completely changed the balance of power to favor the Tabaxi, since now they had an easy lifeline to the outside world that now understood what sort of shit would be coming for them if they fell. Ever since, the Tabaxi have enjoyed their fair share of (purchased) foreign soldiers to add to the meatgrinder, not to mention foreign materials and techniques.

>Another thing I'm considering for my setting is that humans can interbreed with beastkin either through rape or someone being a degenerate furry. The resulting offspring looks like they came on all characters you see in anime often with personality traits and quirks related to whatever animal they have the ears and tail of. You're often seen by the rest of society is being just short of human.
Personally, I tend to go with human/beastfolk interbreeding follows the logic of children being either one race or the other - hybrids in the style that you describe are a distinct rarity - and such children are most likely to be the species of the mother. If I want to get a little magical realmy, I also invoke the Gender Equals Breed trope.

What this means is that, if you have a man knocking up a catwoman, roughly 80% of their kids will be catfolk, 18% will be human, and 2% will be catgirls/catboys in the kemonomimi style.

If gender equals breed, then the catfolk born to such a union will always be female, the humans always be male, and the hybrids will most likely be female (with males probably being rather effeminate looking).

So now that their ancestral enemies are buying and producing modern weapons and hiring foreign mercs, the yuan-ti are probably looking for their own edge, right? Are they capable of infiltrating human society, or is that impossible for them?

Already asked in /wbg/, but might as well cover my bases. Need some advice or ideas for expanding one of my beastfolk races.

I have a nation of Egyptian crocodilemen in my setting. I have some stuff fleshed out; the main deity of their pantheon that they are named after, death beliefs and why they embalm their dead, their relationship with the local nomadic Gnoll tribes, a rival kingdom in the southern jungles of blood and feeding worshipping Aztec crocodilemen, and how the royal family is set up. But other than that, they are mostly stuck at Egyptian and crocodilemen.

How do they keep themselves fed? What forms the basis of their economy? What sorts of goods can they grow, mine, or otherwise collect? Do they import or export anything in particular? How do normal citizens live? Are there specific qualities common to family units? How do they feel in regards to priests, merchants, soldiers, or any other significant professions?

So, I just found out that the MtG plane of Kamigawa has both kitsune and ratfolk called "nezumi". If we get a Plane Shift: Kamigawa article at some point, what're the odds we might get one or both races for 5e?

Are they still ambush predators?

Pretty good odds; they added ram-minotaurs and jackal men for one of the Plane Shifts, they clearly don't balk at writing up the nonhuman MtG races.

Amonkhet was nothing but beastfolk; eagle-folk, ibis-folk, actual snake-taur snake-headed serpentfolk, sheep-minotaurs and jackal-folk. Great stuff for those of us who like beastfolk in our D&D. I got a lot of mileage out of that Plane Shift.

...Wish they'd bring out a Kamigawa one soon.