You may want to check out the Swedish game Symbaroum.

Elves in that game are quite different from the usual stereotypes, but still a recognisable archetype.  They go through a long life cycle with several hibernations from which they emerge in an altered state.

It also has a take on Dwarves that is much different from the usual and goes back more to the Norse Myths (although to date there hasn't really been enough details given about them to get a clear handle on them.)

Quote from: ShieldWife;1050234So many fantasy settings have the standard Tolkien fantasy races with some minor changes, in fact often with less character and flavor than Tolkien's original work. It think it does get boring after a while, though the races are also so iconic that it can still be flavorful to present them or something like them.

I was wondering if anybody had personally created or read reimagined versions of the old fantasy races that were particularly interesting or thematic? This could include races that fit into the same general category but that don't quite match up to the standard races - like Kinder perhaps.

I ask because my husband and I are working on a setting with versions of those fantasy races (our setting are usually human-centric) with a new spin and we wanted some inspiration. The idea we've gone with so far is that the various races are bloodlines descended from faeries and humans, with varying potency of faerie blood in different individuals that leads to more or less inhuman traits and/or powers.

The big thing I did for my game was to stick more closely to mythological kobolds (instead of the Small dragon people recent D&D editions have gone with), and replace halflings with them: mine kobolds can phase through stone walls and see in the dark, hearth kobolds can create fire, and ship kobolds can breathe underwater and have a swim speed.

Haven't really changed up elves and dwarves, except dwarves slowly turn to stone as they age. I'm working on a Norse-ish setting and someone recommended _The Penguin Book of Norse Myths_ for more info on them, so maybe after reading through that I'll have more substantial changes.

For other now-iconic D&D races: devas/aasimar are just the weakest of angelic beings (ishim: they get access to a cleric Domain), and we renamed tieflings to cambions (you pick a sin you're associated with). Going with the elemental gnomes sounds like it would just be mine kobolds, so haven't even bothered with them, and half-orcs aren't a thing because we reflavored orcs to be demonic spirits wrapped in flesh so they can stick around after being summoned.

If you put a gun to my head and said "Redo your damn Tolkien tropes you lazy prick," I would go like this:

Humans.  Normal, standard mundane.  Except...
Elves.  Elves are reincarnated from Humans when Humans die.  Which means for an Elf to be born, a human has to die.  But if an Elf kills a human deliberately you get...
Orcs.  "Do you want Orcs?  Because that's how you get orcs!"
Half-Orcs happen when an Elf does the unthinkable and murders a human or half-elf infant or causes the child to die in the womb or be stillborn in an attempt to get an elf ensouled.  This means Half-Orcs are pretty rare.  
Half-Elves: when a human infant dies before being born or is stillborn, or when an elf infant dies before birth or is stillborn, their soul goes into a yet-to-be-born elf, leaving them confused and slightly deranged.
Dwarves: Outside of the rare adventuring type, nobody sees female dwarves.  Or Dwarf children.  Know why?  
Halflings: are the homey kin of Dwarves.  Halflings go off and do rituals and become miners and whatnot.  The process of digging into the roots of mountains away from the sun turns them taciturn, greedy, hard-skinned, and so on.
Gnomes are born of Dwarves and Halflings.  Note: Gnomes, Dwarves and Halflings have a great affinity for one another.

If you want a completely different feel for a setting, don't make slight subtle changes while trying to keep the heart of a race. That's just a recipe for frustration, because the standard races are so culturally ingrained you'll be lucky to shift the image in your players' heads an iota. Also, don't just add a new race, they'll get lost in the wash of the the same-old, same-old, and be diminished by the endless comparisons to existing races.

Instead, subtract and constrain. Get rid of elves and dwarves, for instance. Or pick 5 PCs races, 1 enemy race, and never have any others. That erases the preconceived notions of Default Fantasyland we all carry in our heads, and allows something different to emerge.

I posted this recently in another thread.  This is how I envisioned gnomes for a world I created recently.

A gnome is the unfortunate offspring of a a dwarf and a halfling. Gnomes have hairy feet and hairy face and are neither fish nor fowl but are fortunately infertile (much like a mule.) They seem to inherit the worst traits of their parents. They are grumpy, gluttonous and greedy. They live underground like their forebears but unlike dwarves and halflings they live in mud holes and are grubby and smell gamy. In fact you will often smell a gnome before you see him.  They seem to dislike the world and everyone in it. Fortunately, there are very, very few of them.

Quote from: Pat;1050412If you want a completely different feel for a setting, don't make slight subtle changes while trying to keep the heart of a race. That's just a recipe for frustration, because the standard races are so culturally ingrained you'll be lucky to shift the image in your players' heads an iota. Also, don't just add a new race, they'll get lost in the wash of the the same-old, same-old, and be diminished by the endless comparisons to existing races.

Instead, subtract and constrain. Get rid of elves and dwarves, for instance. Or pick 5 PCs races, 1 enemy race, and never have any others. That erases the preconceived notions of Default Fantasyland we all carry in our heads, and allows something different to emerge.

Very much so.  Cook's Arcana Unearthed/Evolved is a set of optional classes and races for D&D 3.*.  Mixed in with D&D 3.*, it's mainly just Kitchen Sink turned up to 11.  Run as a stand-alone (or maybe with a tiny sprinkling of the original 3.* stuff), the differences really pop.  It's the only reason I stuck with the 3.* rule set as long as I did.

You guys have heard of Skyrealms of Jorune and Talislanta, right?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1050283Also, Eberron does a lot of creative stuff with the PC races but sadly it never proved as popular as the banal and cliche Forgotten Realms.

Yeah - I was going to mention Eberron.

I'm not a fan of every direction that they ran with, but they did do a good job of making it feel substantially different while still being unabashedly D&D.

For the races - there are things like the elf ancestor worship mixing with goodish undead, the goblinoids having controlled a massive empire in the ancient past, but now being an underclass with some hobgoblins (who ran the empire) trying to rebuild. I believe that the halflings are mongol style barbarian 'cannibals' (I don't think that they actually eat other halflings - just other sentients.).

Those are the biggest race changes that I can think of off the top of my head, though the setting added a few races of its own.

Again - it didn't do everything right, but it definitely did its own thing, and it did play with the racial vibes of several species.

Quote from: ShieldWife;1050234So many fantasy settings have the standard Tolkien fantasy races with some minor changes, in fact often with less character and flavor than Tolkien's original work. It think it does get boring after a while, though the races are also so iconic that it can still be flavorful to present them or something like them.

I was wondering if anybody had personally created or read reimagined versions of the old fantasy races that were particularly interesting or thematic? This could include races that fit into the same general category but that don't quite match up to the standard races - like Kinder perhaps.

I ask because my husband and I are working on a setting with versions of those fantasy races (our setting are usually human-centric) with a new spin and we wanted some inspiration. The idea we've gone with so far is that the various races are bloodlines descended from faeries and humans, with varying potency of faerie blood in different individuals that leads to more or less inhuman traits and/or powers.

In my Last Sun DCC Campaign:

Elves are the former Administrators of the world, who lived in super-technological domes. They're a tech-themed race, though there's also magic-users among them, though most elves today don't actually know how to build/repair their tech, only how to use it (which makes them a mostly-doomed race).

Dwarves are the former Engineers who kept the world running smoothly with fantastic machines, but they were kicked out of their underground Machine-holds by the Dark Ones when the world went to shit. Now they're a race of refugees and exiles, living for their lengthy grievances against everything and everyone, and planning doomed expeditions/crusades to reconquer their lost homelands. They know how to use and repair tech, but don't have a lot of it anymore.

Halflings are mutations created after the world went to shit (probably, though maybe they were around before, it's not totally clear), and they're a race of feral savages who live in wild places (mostly, some live in ruined cities or the ruined parts of inhabited cities). They're psychotic cannibals known for their extreme violence.