Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1013516Conversely, I always thought there were too many kinds of elves. Having many cultures is fine, but every kind of elf basically falls into one of three archetypes: urbane high elves, hippie wood elves and edgy dark elves. Outside of D&D, their skin tone and morality varies immensely: Magic: The Gathering has nazi wood elves, among other things; Warcraft has dark skinned nocturnal wood elves, psychotic high elves, psychotic sea elves, desperate morally ambiguous dark spider elves, and even blue skinned space alien elves; Warhammer and Lineage 2 have light skinned dark elves who are still really edgy; etc.

I really liked the snow and ghost elves. I think both of them were from Dragon.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1013516Conversely, I always thought there were too many kinds of elves. Having many cultures is fine, but every kind of elf basically falls into one of three archetypes: urbane high elves, hippie wood elves and edgy dark elves. Outside of D&D, their skin tone and morality varies immensely: Magic: The Gathering has nazi wood elves, among other things; Warcraft has dark skinned nocturnal wood elves, psychotic high elves, psychotic sea elves, desperate morally ambiguous dark spider elves, and even blue skinned space alien elves; Warhammer and Lineage 2 have light skinned dark elves who are still really edgy; etc.

Wood Elves aren't made of wood. Sea Elves aren't made of water. M'aiq still wonders about High Elves.

Quote from: Dr. Ink'n'stain;1013527Wood Elves aren't made of wood.

They are in Glorantha.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1008099With demi-humans, there a few major groupings like humans, elves, dwarves, etc and numerous ethnic groups under that. With humanoids, it seems like you cannot walk ten feet without running into a whole new race of them. Many of these races are fairly one-note and become boring and predictable after a while (particularly if you constantly memorize the monster books). This is a bit too extreme for my world building to account for, so I figured I would cut down the number of races by folding the similar races into subraces to keep the same XP values/CR ratings, which also makes the existing races more diverse and less predictable. Making variants of existing monsters is a tried and true method of making new monsters, even giving superior versions like the dracomera (to the point that it displaced the chimera in some editions) or regularized templates, so why equivocate? I often run into some obscure sourcebook that introduces a fascinating race that I want to keep, so making them all into subraces accomplishes my goal the most efficiently.

If you have ever encountered the same problem, what did you do in response? Any interesting stories of monster variants you wish to share?

You've already identified the problem. And honestly if you're building the world from scratch it's only a problem insofar as you need to decide *why* these races even exist in the first place. Having sub-races only matters if it matters to you and the world you're building.

I have no problem with sub-races, weird races, re-skins etc. as long as within the context of the setting there is a reason for them to exist, beyond - Oh wouldn't it be cool to have Tieflings??

The weird thing about modern D&D is the base assumption all these things co-exist like it's one big happy freak-show. That has always bugged me since 3e (or really since the first person asked to play a Half-orc in 1e).

If this is your world - stick to your guns on what you want from your setting. If you're just looking for cool mechanical expressions you want as flavor in your game - yeah, make them sub-divisions of established races and tie them to a particular culture and give meaning to those expressions.

If bog-standard humans from locale A have regular stats, and you want some burlier humans with higher Str/Con or whatever - write them up with reasons they have those stats. Give them cultural reasons, mechanical reasons, tie it as deeply into your game as possible so that when players have the option of playing them they feel like there's meat on the bones, stuff they can dig into - even if they're not aware of it. Rinse/repeat as needed to satisfy yourself as a GM.

When you're ready to have the PC's discover new lands - you can just follow the same formula.

Quote from: tenbones;1013559If bog-standard humans from locale A have regular stats, and you want some burlier humans with higher Str/Con or whatever - write them up with reasons they have those stats. Give them cultural reasons, mechanical reasons, tie it as deeply into your game as possible so that when players have the option of playing them they feel like there's meat on the bones, stuff they can dig into - even if they're not aware of it. Rinse/repeat as needed to satisfy yourself as a GM.

If you want to do this on the cheap, start with two piles:  

A. All the races and/or cultures you want in your campaign, from the campaign's point of view--nothing mechanical.
B. All the races, sub races, half races, etc. from the rules you plan to use, with the names filed off.

Then mix and match items from A and B until you have something that is close enough.  Feel free to reuse from pile B as you see fit.  Or not, if that fits.  

Once you have the pairs that you like well enough, give them one more pass to see if there is anything you want to tweak or replace mechanically.  Put a little spit and polish on the descriptions to hide the surgery.  Then toss out the unused stuff from both piles and call it a day.  That's crude, but it probably gets most people at least 80% to where they want to be.  It's up to you whether or not to put in some more time to fill in the holes, and how far to go.

Quote from: Bren;1013539They are in Glorantha.

Touché, although isn't calling gloranthan elves 'wood elves' a bit redundant - nevermind, they seem to have kelp, ferny and even mushroom elves...

My favourite elf trifecta has always been Tolkien elves / Pini's elves / Storm Giants with pointed ears .

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1008116Remove meaningless distinctions.  Elves are elves, we don't need high elves, low elves, dark elves, light elves, forest elves, meadow elves, sea elves, lake elves, mountain elves, valley elves...

Yeah, we don't need things like European Humans, Middle Eastern Humans, African Humans, South American Humans, East Asian Humans...

Actually, you know what?  I'm going to bring back a confusion I have.

In the various editions of D&D (actually, Tolkien had the High and Wood Elf distinction), most of the standard races have all had several different types, Dwarves have at least 3, some settings go up to 5-6, 3 kinds of Halfling and Gnomes, and all those Elves (sometimes less than Dwarves!) but only ONE type of Humans, no matter the cultural context, so although we have Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid expressions, they are all the same.

Why is that?  (Honest question.)

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1013702Yeah, we don't need things like European Humans, Middle Eastern Humans, African Humans, South American Humans, East Asian Humans...

Cheeky lil monkey!

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1013516Conversely, I always thought there were too many kinds of elves. Having many cultures is fine, but every kind of elf basically falls into one of three archetypes: urbane high elves, hippie wood elves and edgy dark elves. Outside of D&D, their skin tone and morality varies immensely: Magic: The Gathering has nazi wood elves, among other things; Warcraft has dark skinned nocturnal wood elves, psychotic high elves, psychotic sea elves, desperate morally ambiguous dark spider elves, and even blue skinned space alien elves; Warhammer and Lineage 2 have light skinned dark elves who are still really edgy; etc.

In my DCC Campaign, so far, there are:

Hipster Elves
Smug Elves
Posh Elves
Blue Elves
Shadow Elves
Pythian Knight Elves (extinct)

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1013702In the various editions of D&D (actually, Tolkien had the High and Wood Elf distinction), most of the standard races have all had several different types, Dwarves have at least 3, some settings go up to 5-6, 3 kinds of Halfling and Gnomes, and all those Elves (sometimes less than Dwarves!) but only ONE type of Humans, no matter the cultural context, so although we have Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid expressions, they are all the same.

Why is that?  (Honest question.)

Fear of being called racist. Easier to not give different stats to different human groups.

Mongoose OGL d20 Conan did have different human races with different stats. I believe only the Cimmerians got an INT penalty. Pretty racist. Admittedly Conan does consider his countrymen a bit lame.

The new 5e Adventures in Middle Earth weirdly - since this is Tolkien - avoids using 'race' at all and calls the human ethnies, plus elves, dwarves halflings etc "Cultures" - http://cubicle7.co.uk/our-games/adventures-in-middle-earth/

Quote from: Dumarest;1008455Q: What do you do if there are too many humanoids or too similar monsters?

A: This question makes no sense. You simply don't use any that you don't want in your world and the "problem" never arises. Is someone requiring you to use every entry in the Monster Manual?

Exactly -the monster books are menus, nothing more.

Quote from: Xanther;1009179First, just cut the number of species down to a number you like. There is no need to use them all.  None.  It's your world.  You paid for the rules and content use them as you wish, don't allow them to use you.  I ditched gnomes and kobolds from my D&D games decades ago to no ill effect.

One grouping I did do was make all the "goblinoids" in D&D, goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears into one species. The different monsters represent different stages of their life cycle, that is, goblins continue to grow throughout life if well fed, plus a few other things.   Mechanically this works as you describe sub-races.

I did the same thing. I also folded other monsters together: in my campaign, the various hags are female ogres, trolls or giants.