ITT: Things most fantasy does that you hate

Easily explained. Elementals and other so-called humanoid summons are abstract beings from abstract planes of existence. They take the closest form of their summoner's shape, which usually humanoid, to fully function in this reality.

How do you know it’s not the other way around and humanoids are elemental shaped?

The elemental planes are not abstract planes of existence. They are literally made from earth, fire, air and water. How is that abstract in any way?

Fire is not an element.

>Take a random word
>take another random word
>This is the name
Doomhammer
Dragonblade
Redkeep

Have some creativity people.

Ruins from forgotten ages are always fun, but I would like to see a dwarf/elf golden age for fucking once.

Neither are earth, air, or water.

So is this thread "Veeky Forums complains about nothing" the thread?

I run a game where most of the world is ruled by fascist dwarves.

>kender
I've actually seen kender done pretty well, but it requires that the DM take the reins on most of the "handling" stuff. Which is actually appropriate, since, as written in the books, kender don't actually realize they're doing it and are actually offended by the thought of stealing.

The DM I had who included kender as a player race basically ruled that, since kender handling isn't conscious stealing, the player couldn't, say, steal from other party members and then claim that he hadn't meant to. Instead, the DM rolled whenever we passed through a crowd or city or anything similar, and then recorded his results. The next time the kender emptied out or went through his pouches, he would find things without any clue exactly when or where he had obtained them. The random tables were of "interesting" things, rather than strictly useful ones, and never GP.

It was actually a pretty fun game, and that character turned out to be a blast to travel with. He could be a bit of an RNG Swiss Army Knife at times, which led at one point to my character holding him upside-down and shaking vigorously in the hopes that something useful would fall out.

I actually like shit like that, when it comes to place names, if it fits.
But I grew up around places like
>Westbend
and
>Germantown

Fucking agree. One of the most recognizable shapes in RPGs is a fucking tidal wave with bracelets.

Play with shapes and silhouettes. Design something at least somewhat unique. Not everything has to have two arms and two legs.

>user tries to appear smart, the post.

The weird thing is, between WoW and D&D, I feel like the most prominent fantasy products DON'T do that.

>cliched shit
>top tier
Begone, pleb. Liking it as a guilty pleasure would be one thing, but if you think it's 'top tier' then you're beyond correction.

>talk about using shape and form
>promptly request to ignore recognizable shapes

Patrician taste

Most placenames are like that if you get right down to it. Hell, some of the names in the area I live, translated to English:
The Gorge
Deep Sound
(Horse)Racing Field
Stream
Little Stream
Lone Hill
Clay Sound
Flat Town
and so on.

What about:
Martelmorr
Vuivrelame
Castelrog

Nobility = evil, rebellion = good.

Look up the "Atlas of True Names", it breaks down all the names of places in the world as close as they can to the original translation, it really shows how "creative" we all are, especially the GGermans

>everything has an animate, corporeal elemental
You can have paracelsian elements or you can have animist nature spirits. Choose no more than one.

Sapient and hidden lone dragons.

Why is it so fucking smart living literally under a rock for years?
Why would they even need intelligence when they don't form societies?

>Humans are plain average but still the best race
>There is a slut-race

Add to that
>Elves are immortal

>>There is a slut-race
Literally nothing wrong with this

Beings whose instincts are literally to only Ruin or Hate something, but also have enough foresight too properly plan and build armies.

Examples of slut race?
No, CoC is not a common setting

CE doesn't mean CS

>my character is an orphan

>It's a discount Warcraft setting episode

but user, in my setting they are szkłapki (tall, slim, genderless, glass-based beings), dziąski (tortoise-things) and blaszczki (flying fungus/jellyfish)

Meanwhile
>DM kills off your character's family for no real reason other than, "they were there"

I love this, but with a twist:
>greenland
is not green, its barren, ice desert
>iceland
is literally congo

I actually read a thing on how to come up with good names, and repurposing familiar names is a great way to go. It makes the names more memorial.

Players will remember the names 'Spider-spire' or 'Hammerton' much better then a "creative" name like 'Glukgishemsnide'.

What if humans were in fact shaped from one of the elements by a deity, like earth, fire, water, or corn?

Humans as the slut race seems fitting

>get a laugh at kender shenanigans

I have never played a game with a kender. I have read those stories. I did not laugh and I never, ever want to fucking play a single game with one of those faggots.

I agree. I actually want to create a setting where Elves are the most prominent, populous race, have multiple city-states, and are proto-Fascist expansionists. Dying race/dying magic was great when Tolkien wrote it, it's gotten real old now and it's much more fun when they aren't.

This is best used when different cultures have different naming themes.

>Elves always name their settlements with plant themes
>Dwarves with rock/mineral themes
>Humans name settlements after their founders

is it 2.0?

Then I hate it anyway

>how things are named in the real world is unrealistic

>Realismfag reveals his 8 INT in the process of trying to be smart.
Wow, what a shocker.

>not living on Moorcock Lane

Dolphins and monkeys will fuck almost anything, just saying

>Medieval Fantasy
>Serfdom? What's that?
>Slavery? Oh, sure, the Evil Empire practices slavery!

> Asked for golden age
> Got fascists
Golden AGE, not Golden Dawn!

Though to be fair, my elves also had an ultra expansionist phase. More not-romans and not-colonialism (some sort of elven burden I guess) than fascism but still.
But that empire collapsed, but some are now rising again as not-Britannia.

As a new DM, one of my players is a genasi which i don't even know what the fuck that is and neither does the player. They just liked the way it sounded. Which is whatever, it does sound cool.

Then I find out they're like elemental people or something. I have no idea what that could even mean.

Elemental in general. I don't see why they should have corporiality really.

They're from an old dead setting called planescape. They were implied to be what happens a few generations after a creature from the elemental planes makes love to a humanoid.

Typically not elementals themselves, but corporeal creatures that live on the elemental planes, like the various genies and shit.

That's not realismfagging though?

Are you sure you aren't the one with 6 int?

>Realismfag gets defensive over being called an idiot.
Again, a shocker, never would've foreseen this shocking turn of events.

/s

>monoculture races

It's not like it's hard to come up with more stuff. The coastal orcs have turned their brutality to ruthless capitalism, the ones in the mountains have focused on their shamanism because there isn't much stuff to fight.And when the campaign has more racial diversity than the entirety of tumblr you at best get one character of each race, forcing them to represent it wholly and encouraging lazy stereotypes.

>there's 50+ intelligent races
Leading into the next point.

>only variants within a race a -noun- race or -adective- race
Showing that you are not making interesting cultures or people but entries on a list for a game. I would rather have fewer options for race and combine those with backgrounds/education.
Or embrace the human sluttyness and let me pick both parents from a bunch of ethnicities standing in for elves, orcs, etc.

>10 different little races a la dwarves, gnomes, halflings, goblin, kobold, lupin, etc.
Most people don't even manage fleshing out the important races. Just slap out the archetypes into a dwavern village and you got a decently fleshed out cast.

>All sentient fantasy races MUST have a civilization or social structure
>Bonus: It's a Not!Real World Country

>it's set in a medieval period
>there's a race for every day of the year for no reason other than to check boxes
>most sentient races are humanoid
>every kingdom is called Faldor or some shit
>they all need their own extra special map
>adventuring is this thing that people just do
>there are creatures that are named after some unique deity/creature but made mundane
>elves and dwarves are just races and not magical entities
>the names of creatures are just stolen from folklore even if it's not applicable

What about that is realism fagging? Do you even know what you responded to?

>monoculture races
The one that really bugs me is when race has a stronger bearing on culture than nation. Like, if these elves live in the kingdom of Grombletyfuck, and they aren't some kind of embassy or outpost, they should be more like Grombletyfuckers than like those elves that live literally an ocean away.

Wasn't warcraft originally just discount warhammer?

The thing that makes it really annoying is that taking just that one step extra would make propper names, doesn't matter if it's for people or places.

T. some dude from that place where the boss lives I totally forgot there's a castle in my village, oops.

could you expand upon this? how does a sentient race exist without a social structure?

Crocodiles seem to manage

Well sentience just require thinking so many animals would qualify. Although I wouldn't call them races even if playable.

And they are animal companions at best, not a "race"

Frequently there simply is only one nation of each race that isn't human, but I agree with you. My black humans have more in common with the elf-based naga they have allied with in the fight against those merfolk bastards than with the few humans comming over from pseudo-europe.

Maybe he's talking about dragons and other magical beasts? For example you could have dragons treat another of their kind just like any other creature in the wild. Or maybe the five ancients sphinxes still left in the world never gave much of a fuck to begin with, so there's no reckoning when you kill one.

I can only assume that guy means they don't have to be part of some social unit or nation. Like dwarves could be isolated and just live a life making things from what they gather themselves.

Crocodiles aren't sapient(which is probably what he meant, not sentient) though.

yeah town names are pretty boring irl, just names after whats there or who lives there. in England places like Wessex & Sussex & Essex is just contraction of west, south and east Saxon respectively. i'm from a place called Bolton. literally from bowl town, cause there's a load of hills around the worn and the town is in the bowl of the town.. even the wierder sounding ones like hall ith wood was just lazy northeners saying hall in the wood or pontefract is just latin for broken bridge, cause guess what.... people aren't imaganitive about place names

>Maybe he's talking about dragons and other magical beasts? For example you could have dragons treat another of their kind just like any other creature in the wild. Or maybe the five ancients sphinxes still left in the world never gave much of a fuck to begin with, so there's no reckoning when you kill one.
Then i chime in with my personal gripe There's just no real reason for anti social beasts to have sapient intelligence.

>My black humans have more in common with the elf-based naga

Why, though? Humans should always have more in common because we have the same cognitive faculties. Whereas other species should always approach things from a different perspective because their wiring is different. Removing the species differences means you might as well just be playing an all human setting.

I was a brainlet anons, please forgive me I misunderstood sentience

could you provide an example of how you would do animalistic elves etc?

"Race" as used in D&D means "species." And crocodiles are fully sentient.

True, but he asked about sentients.

Gustave is now the main villain of your campaign. How fucked are you/your players?

>it's a new fantasy setting!
>with Humans
I'm just done with this shit. I don't even bother to look any further at a new setting for pnp or vidya once I see that it's just more of this. There are already plenty of these settings, we don't need any more.

The town north of me is called "Bishop's Stortford". It was a ford over the river Stort, owned by a bishop at some point. Go figure.

A bunch of these but with pointy ears live in the woods. They never die of old age, and can rip the arm off of your average dirtfarming serf the same way you'd twist the drum off a chicken.

>humans are just flesh elementals

>Human and elves can produce non-heavily deformed, viable, breeding offspring

Because culture isn't inherent. If the clothes you see all the time have those fancy elvish patterns on them, you're going to make clothes with fancy elvish patterns.

A lot of behavior is learned. Sure, humans from elf-naga-land are going to have an easier time making inroads with foreign humans than with foreign dwarf-gnolls, but their culture is still going to have a lot in common with elf-naga culture.

>chimps
>no social structure

Oh man, now I kind of want to make some Peter Watts style non self aware, non-empathic horror-elves.

I leave not so far the port of "bankwater".

It's a bit of a special case. Like I said, the naga were once elves and elves and humans share a common anchestor. That common history is remembered differently between the contitents so it's kinda like:
>those black people whorship the devil!
>those white folk think Jar-Jar is a god!

Also the humans coming from the other continent are mostly sailors, and things coming from the sea are considered evil because of the fish people and that one massive thing that ate half of our coast.
If there was a more widespread cultural exchange, then the humans would come to much better terms.

That happens all the time in history. Chill out man.
What are you supposed to call a keep that is Red without sounding like an edgelord.

>Gustave has 300 + kills
He's at LEAST 11th level.

Gustave
Size/Type: Huge Animal
Hit Dice: 18d8+72 (153 hp)
Initiative: +1
Speed: 20 ft. (4 squares), swim 30 ft.
Armor Class: 16 (-2 size, +1 Dex, +7 natural), touch 9, flat-footed 15
Base Attack/Grapple: +16/+27
Attack: Bite +16 melee (2d8+12) or tail slap +16 melee (1d12+12)
Full Attack: Bite +16/+11/+6 melee (2d8+12) or tail slap +16/+11/+6 melee (1d12+12)
Space/Reach: 15 ft./10 ft.
Special Attacks: Improved grab
Special Qualities: Hold breath, low-light vision
Saves: Fort +9, Ref +6, Will +3
Abilities: Str 27, Dex 12, Con 19, Int 1, Wis 12, Cha 2
Skills: Hide +1*, Listen +5, Spot +5, Swim +16
Feats: Alertness, Endurance, Skill Focus (Hide)
Environment: Burundi
Organization: Solitary

>elves
>social structure

Genius.

I'm the user who postedAnd I don't like this compulsive need to create a "nation" or "tribe" for every possible being in the world. One time here on Veeky Forums in a japanese folklore thread people were asking about how "Dodomeki" society would work, the thing is dodomeki are cursed people, they're not an ethinicity, I had also seen similar stuff with lycanthropes, yetis, minotaurs and onis. Having those beings mundane enough to create their own societies removes their mythical aspect in my eyes

That's not an elf you autistic faggot. Call them chimps or just niggers if you wish. But not elves. Calling whatever you want an elf is retarded.

I love how all these criticisms always lack any sort of relevant example of your point because you don't actually have one, you are just ranting about a pet peeve.

>Fire/Water/Earth/Air elemental system
>Shapeshifting dragons
>'Knight' just means 'dude in armour' and has no connection to social standing or military obligations
>Supposedly medieval civilisation is just modern society except without electricity or guns
>Nobility and royalty are all either evil or nothing but quest dispensers
>Magic is something you're born with
>People with magic/special power/belonging to super unique race/born special in some other way are an oppressed and beaten down class

Also this in a lot of cases, though for groups like vampires it can make sense for them to live together and form small societies, even if they're a condition rather than their own race.

>lives in the forest
>like a person, but not
>horrific cannibals

All he needs is pointy ears

You have a strong case for creatures that spread by curse or infection, reproduce asexually, or don't reproduce at all. Anything that requires multiple species members in order to reproduce, however, is likely going to end up with with some kind of social interactions between species members. If they're incredibly solitary and only come together for the purpose of reproduction, that's fine, but one could theoretically argue that that already constitutes a "way that society would work."

Basically, if your kitsune happen because a fox lives for a hundred years and grows extra tails, that's fine, no need for any kind of social structure. Other than the fact that foxes already display a certain degree of sociability. If, however, kitsune reproduce via yiffing, there should be some kind of understanding of how they interact with one another.

>longsword
>one-handed
>shows a picture of an arming sword

>bastard sword
>shows a picture of a longsword

>greatsword
>shows a picture of Guts's Dragonslayer from Berserk

Hate might be too strong a word. They're more like mild annoyances.