Which is the best option when designing a setting?

I go with 2, as much as the memesters whine about it it strikes the best balance between comfort and originality as long as you keep a decent chunk of what makes the generic fantasy races you change recognizable.

Muscular but anemic, pallid. "Ghoulish" in a single word.

>They are 90% of the population

In my setting they're more like 50%. They're the majority, but barely. There's a LOT of kobolds and goblins, they throw off the count.

Halflings are very common as well, since they're the original inhabitants of much of the continent.

Elves and dwarves are spread out but thin on the ground. They're declining, with two of the three majority-elf nations going full isolationist while both of the dwarf nations are declining powers thanks to their lethargic rate of technological innovation.

Orcs are also a falling star race, their Last Horde was shattered against armies of more civilized folk armed with pike and shot. Ever see that doujin about the proud knight lady who's army is thrashed by orcs somehow inventing gunpowder? That, but in reverse.

Gnomes, kobolds, and hobgoblins are rising star races. Gnomes invented gunpoweder and a lot of clockwork and are one of the major driving forces of technology. Kobolds are another of the major driving forces, they've gotten organized and are trading with outsiders now. Hobgoblins saw what happened to orcs and so in particular are determined to create a homeland for themselves. Goblins are welcome too.

Human-only campaigns are dull, and so are the GMs that enforce them.

Just getting different opinions. Veeky Forums isn't a hive mind, so people can chime in with maybe new and fresh take on things. I mean this is at least related to traditional gaming. Would you prefer another "thinly veiled amazon fetish thread", or "/pol/bait orc rapists wat do?" , or the new smash hit for spammed threads "magic should have a hard limit on the number of uncommons and rares you can have"?

There's no memesters whining about it, people are legitimately telling you that just because you have Orcs, BUT FRENCH AND THEY HAVE TAILS it doesn't make your setting original at all, just more garbage of the variety people aren't even used to.

I think human pcs only, other races exist campaigns can be nice. Lets you make the other races as weird and/or mysterious as you want with the human player characters acting as a metric

>Alright players, look at all these neat things I came up with
>No touching though, don't want to ruin its collector value.

I let them play whatever--the problem is how this whatever is to be made into a game (i.e. combat mechanics and such). And that is where every rpg system, whether it is GURPS or D&D eventually fails.

Yes. All of them.

I rarely if ever flesh out my campaign world. People mostly want to just kill stuff and discover where is the loot so they can kill bigger stuff anyway..

Whatever the group prefers. Every player, GM as well.

Yeah, I get how it could come off like that, but that's the only way I can think of to make nonhumans significantly different without really imposing on the player playing them

Why is originality a priori desirable?

Humans seek novelty. There is always something to learn when encountering something new, even if all that's learned is that you don't like that thing. Constantly repeating the same tropes and cliches elicits negative responses from most people, namely boredom. Boring your players is bad

I'd mix option 2 and 3.

Have 1-3 "normal" races (one of which will probably be Humans, because as sad as that is a lot of people will refuse to play anything else) that you tweak to fit your setting. I mean there's a huge difference between Tolkien Elves, D&D Elves and Warcraft Elves, but in the end an elf is still an elf and everyone understands that. If your players are the kind of people to complain that their favorite race isn't exactly the same as they are in their preferred setting, they're autistic shitters anyway. After you've covered the basics, add as many original races as your setting requires.

Option 4 is potentially cool, but only if you involve the players in your worldbuilding from the start, and I think most GMs (not to mention most players) won't have the patience for something like that.

>There's no memesters whining about it
For starters, there's you.

>operating under the assumption that everyone you play with is a retard

Your group must love you. Assuming you've ever had one.

You know damn well he hasn't. Or if he has he's probably a timid little shit who saves all of his complaints to sperg out on the internet with

I do all of them.

On the surface level, the races seem like the stereotypes.

When you dig deeper, they're very different.

Also there are rarer, weirder races knocking around at the same time, but only a few are as common as the typical races.

The first thing to do is create the hyperdimensional topography.

How many planes or realms are there?
Do they all have the 4 basic elements; Time, Space, Mass, and Energy?

Once you've sorted that out, if your model is good enough you can just use it and change the flavors around until you've done every possible combination, then start over again.

Adding to this before I exit for a while.

Once you've done that, you should decide the really behind the scenes stuff, are their elder gods, outer gods, great old ones, or titans in play, how exactly did the universe actually come to be, are their more mortal-friendly understandible gods or not, that sort of thing.

oranges are the best, that idiom is stupid

That sucks, user. Maybe try vetting for players that are more interested in serious/character driven games?

Fantasy racial archetypes are already pretty broad and if you stretch them just a little bit you can make them fit a lot without becoming unrecognisable.

I usually like to ditch the traditional fantasy races and have my own really different stuff alongside humans, but when I do it I usually limit it down to a maximum of 3 or 4 different races total, with variance in sub-species among those few.

Depends entirely on what the tone of the game is and how experienced the group is. Being new to fantasy in general would probably be a consideration as well.

If you can was poetic about 12 different kinds of elves, and you're the newbie of the group, I'm probably gonna go as original as I can. If you saw one of the Harry Potter movies once and you're the turbo nerd, there's no reason for me to go creating things when there's a ton of things someone else already did the work for.

>playing D&D

If I'm not supposed to edit races (I'm assuming this means culture and/or history as well) then what do I do if I don't want my hobgoblins to always be evil, and orcs to be dumb marauders?

Its your game. Stop listening to shitposters on an underground snail racing board.

Yeah, plenty of posters have already pointed out that hard separation between option 1 and 2 doesn't really exist.

>Tolkien Elves, D&D Elves and Warcraft Elves,
The only thing Warcraft Elves have going for them in terms of uniqueness is that they're mutated trolls. Otherwise they're pretty much interchangeable.

If your world is boring with just humans, putting in short humans in the mountains and tall fuckable humans in the Forrest won't make it not boring.

If they want to play a nonhuman, they should expect having to do things differently than a human would. I say this as a fan of having weird PC races: It's perfectly fine to impose something on the player. Maybe it's what he's looking for.

>but risk alienating and angering players who expected them to be the standard

What the fuck is the standard anyway?, I've never seen two people agreeing what makes an elf is apart from that they have pointy ears, live long and are more magical, the only race that has an actual consistent standard are dwarves.

this

It's not like Tolkien's dwarves were ale-swilling Scotsmen either. But their range of expression does seem more limited compared to the Elves. Which is fitting for dwarves, I suppose.

This shit, with possible exceptions for halflings and MAYBE half-breeds. Some parties can handle being 3 humans:1-2 half-breeds, but many more immediately instalock into what they see as the special snowflake slot, so I tend to shy away from it.

I do this so that I can use traditional fantasy races as a touchstone for players, while secretly changing them to betray expectations when that race is finally interacted with.

Elves are fucking scary in my setting.

>here everyone, play as the same homogeneous "humans but ____" archetypes that every other amateur hour fantasy setting utilizes
>wouldn't want to ever do anything different ever

Any attempt to make a fantasy race different while still playable would be IMMEDIATELY torpedoed by the player just rollplaying what they know (which is how to act like a human and/or generic Tolkien-elf/dwarf/halfling or WoW-orc)

The last time I tried to do something like this where Paladins directly interact with deities, instead of Gods just being divine batteries that exist outside of narrative importance, the Paladin literally just made Arthas, complete with a photo of the fucking lich king sword.

You joke and snipe, but let's be honest, trying to get players to do anything different usually ends in failure and tragedy.

I think that's because D&D dwarves aren't so much a culture as slight variations on a specific individual. They're basically an entire race of Gimli caricatures. That's why dwarves tend to be the favorite of bad roleplayers. You pretty much just need to do it okay once and you've got nearly every dwarf down pat

>well, in MY setting

>disparaging creativity
>on a board that's primarily about making shit up and playing pretend
lol what a fag

The best option is to create your own races. Create them to cover specific archetypes both for your game and similar fantasy archetypes; the big dumb brute warrior race, the sneaking shifty thief race, the magical intelligent but weak race, and so on.

You should also create races that still fully accommodate and must endure the standard human weaknesses. Undead or flying races often make a setting feel silly or weird or hard to balance due to their extremely strong innate abilities; keep them mortal and roughly human in terms of power, but let them have a few special abilities that arne't too overtly supernatural if you can avoid it.

As for your other options; they aren't as good. Generic fantasy elves and dwarves are fine for bear and pretzels style of games, but are too simplistic and generic for creative players and GMs. Weird totally crazy gonzo races, or many (but not all) player-created races will usually fall into the too strong or too outlandish to fit properly within what a setting needs to feel complete and whole. Humans only should only be used for VERY specific styles of game, such as Conan-esque or Age of Discovery style games. Humans only fags fail to realize that one of the primary points of fantasy is to create a diverse and interesting world is one of the most important elements, and shoehorning in humans everywhere instead of having developed and interesting races is limpwristed worldbuilding. Stop virtue signalling your HFY fetish, seriously.

My method, or the #3 method of OP's post, is the best method to creating fantasy world races. There is no better way to achieve that feeling of wonder and color without breaking your setting or causing a break in the suspension of disbelief.

Nu mou were so goddamn cute in the tactics series.

XII fucked them up so hard.

Fag

Wjat is the difference between race and species?

In fantasy not a whole lot other than that some of them can interbreed. DnD style fantasy can't seem to decide whether it's a species or a cultural group, hence why every different group of elves is a "subrace"

In the biological sense, races are variants within a species, like different dog breeds.

In role playing mages, race basically means any kind sapient, vaguely human-reminiscent creature. This can include non-biological creatures like warforged in DnD. Where the line goes between "intelligent monster" and race is at best vague.

>replying twice

>everyone who thinks I'm a prick is the same person

I don't run human only games and don't have any strong opinion on them one way or the other, but if you think a story needs monsters and aliens to be interesting, you're wrong.

That's true, but I think the solution there isn't to refluff elves, but to just actually play other games for a while. I think the reason so many people get bored with the options is because they play dungeons and dragons for years without branching out.

>Let the players come up with their own races so they get exactly what they want, and worldbuild around that even if the elements don't go together well.

This is my favorite, though obviously when making the setting there should be a basic framework and tone the group needs to shoot for. I've been in some fun games where everyone got to make part of the setting before going in and not only does it help with player attachment and info retention it's nice to have others to bounce ideas off of and create something outside of your normal scope. I've had some really interesting Dawn of Worlds games over the years and even if we didn't use our protosettings for anything after the game I can still go back and mine those for ideas or just admire the neat little narrative ride those were.

My favorite part of Warcraft lore.