Quote from: LordVreeg;372950Hey, my guys put the werewolf head in a bag!  
(after they used a herbal poultice preservation on it..so it was a good smelling severed werewolf head.)

my guy pickled the head of his hated enemy in a jar of brine.

Actually, I think that fantasy games work better when the setting has more exotic races than just humans along with short, gruff humans, lithe, pointy-eared humans, furry-footed humans and savage, green-skinned humans.

I'm more inclined to disallow Dwarves, Elves, Half-Elves and Halflings than I am Thri-Kreen, Tieflings, Gnomes or Warforged.

I think it works as long as the GM makes the effort to expand upon these races...things like culture, values, taboos, society, etc.

Quote from: Shazbot79;373062Actually, I think that fantasy games work better when the setting has more exotic races than just humans along with short, gruff humans, lithe, pointy-eared humans, furry-footed humans and savage, green-skinned humans.

I'm more inclined to disallow Dwarves, Elves, Half-Elves and Halflings than I am Thri-Kreen, Tieflings, Gnomes or Warforged.

I think it works as long as the GM makes the effort to expand upon these races...things like culture, values, taboos, society, etc.

Uh huh... and why exactly would that work better?

RPGPundit

Back to the original topic: I like tons of nonhuman races. No reason exactly.

Well, ok there is a reason. It's an instant roleplaying hook. Grumpy dwarf. Mysterious elf. sinister tiefling.

Quote from: RPGPundit;373093Uh huh... and why exactly would that work better?

RPGPundit

Fantasy should have an element of the fantastic...therefore I think that fantasy races serve that notion better when they are stranger and more alien than your typical Tolkien demi-humans. Especially when juxtaposed with plain old humans.

It can work, as long as the GM is operating under the assumption that while a certain level of racial tension is inevitable, people can be more cosmopolitan and aren't necessarily going to lynch someone on sight just because they have a sandwich for a head or whatever.

It comes down to personal taste I suppose...some people like their fantasy worlds gray and drab while I like mine to resemble Cirque Du Soleil on mescaline.

It's essentially Lord of the Rings vs. Perdido Street Station.

Quote from: PaladinCA;372012This could be a fantasy thing. I see this happen all the time in fantasy settings that are supposed to be centered on Humans as the dominant culture.

But in Star Wars, a galaxy that is inhabited by hundreds of alien species, my players always choose to be Humans. No wookies. No Twileks. No Transdoshans. No Mon Calamari. No Rodians. No Devoronians. No Ithorians. Zero. Zip. Nada. All Human, all of the time.

I have no idea why.

Yup...pretty much the same experience over here.  I have to insert alien NPCs into Star Wars or it would be all-human, all the time.

Quote from: Shazbot79;373099Fantasy should have an element of the fantastic...therefore I think that fantasy races serve that notion better when they are stranger and more alien than your typical Tolkien demi-humans. Especially when juxtaposed with plain old humans.

It can work, as long as the GM is operating under the assumption that while a certain level of racial tension is inevitable, people can be more cosmopolitan and aren't necessarily going to lynch someone on sight just because they have a sandwich for a head or whatever.

It comes down to personal taste I suppose...some people like their fantasy worlds gray and drab while I like mine to resemble Cirque Du Soleil on mescaline.

It's essentially Lord of the Rings vs. Perdido Street Station.

Uh huh, so what you really mean to say is "I think its hipper to like freak-races than the standard myth-archetypes our culture considers normative". Because, in case you haven't noticed, pretty well fucking EVERYONE knows what Lord of the Rings is, and what a Dwarf or Hobbit is, without much need of explanation, whereas pretty well fucking nobody knows "perdido street station".

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;373275Uh huh, so what you really mean to say is "I think its hipper to like freak-races than the standard myth-archetypes our culture considers normative". Because, in case you haven't noticed, pretty well fucking EVERYONE knows what Lord of the Rings is, and what a Dwarf or Hobbit is, without much need of explanation, whereas pretty well fucking nobody knows "perdido street station".

RPGPundit

Yes...I think it's hipper.

I think that normative races are boring and overused.

I think that Middle Earth, along with all it's bastard progeny has had every ounce of creativity that they ever had to give wrung out of them and is now the literary equivalent of a rundown roadside motel next to the world's largest wad of lint.

Quote from: RPGPundit;373275Because, in case you haven't noticed, pretty well fucking EVERYONE knows what Lord of the Rings is, and what a Dwarf or Hobbit is, without much need of explanation,

RPGPundit

Do you include half-mermen in that?

People who don't like Tolkien are the new swine.

Quote from: RPGPundit;373275Uh huh, so what you really mean to say is "I think its hipper to like freak-races than the standard myth-archetypes our culture considers normative". Because, in case you haven't noticed, pretty well fucking EVERYONE knows what Lord of the Rings is, and what a Dwarf or Hobbit is, without much need of explanation, whereas pretty well fucking nobody knows "perdido street station".

But within Tolkien's Middle Earth, Hobbits are a weird race.  Almost no one except those close to the Shire has heard of them.  They are almost never seen in human lands.  Further, while everyone has heard of elves, they are similarly rare and exceptional in human lands.  And Aragorn's Numenorean heritage is nearly unique.  

In a typical D&D setting, you can go into a town and find some halflings or half-elves or dwarves scattered around it.  However, in the world of Middle Earth, the Fellowship of the Ring was a bunch of freaks including strange races that are unknown or legendary in a typical town they walk into.  

I think an important question is whether you are regurgitating Tolkien, or are you imitating him?  Hobbits weren't a standard myth-archetype prior to Tolkien - he invented them basically out of whole cloth.  While I'm up for role-playing in Middle Earth, I think it's completely valid for role-players (or RPG writers) to be similarly creative and come up with their own weird new races, rather than just regurgitating Tolkien.

Quote from: jhkim;373343But within Tolkien's Middle Earth, Hobbits are a weird race.  Almost no one except those close to the Shire has heard of them.  They are almost never seen in human lands.  Further, while everyone has heard of elves, they are similarly rare and exceptional in human lands.  And Aragorn's Numenorean heritage is nearly unique.  

In a typical D&D setting, you can go into a town and find some halflings or half-elves or dwarves scattered around it.  However, in the world of Middle Earth, the Fellowship of the Ring was a bunch of freaks including strange races that are unknown or legendary in a typical town they walk into.  

I think an important question is whether you are regurgitating Tolkien, or are you imitating him?  Hobbits weren't a standard myth-archetype prior to Tolkien - he invented them basically out of whole cloth.  While I'm up for role-playing in Middle Earth, I think it's completely valid for role-players (or RPG writers) to be similarly creative and come up with their own weird new races, rather than just regurgitating Tolkien.

Agreed.  And Tolkien re-inforces the point I made earlier.  If you want a humano-centric world, then populate it with humans and leave the players alone.

Quote from: One Horse Town;373335Do you include half-mermen in that?

Well, within the context of The Setting (the official setting of FtA!) the Half-mermen are meant to be the equivalent of melniboneans or viridians, what's left of a once-powerful great race that ruled long ago.
But in terms of game mechanics I specifically included the Half-mermen as an example of how you can have a non-standard race in FtA!; but you'll note I didn't fill the list of races with non-standard races.

I'm not against the idea of there being freak-races around, just of games that create a plethora of them, make them statistically superior to humans, and then at the same time present settings where Humans are supposed to be the vast dominant species of the area where PCs are meant to play and all the aforementioned races are super-rare or virtually extinct (neither of which are qualities the Half-mermen have in The Setting, by the way).

RPGPundit

What if you're just sick of seeing Dwarves and Elves all the time?

What the fuck?

 Has anybody ever gone really original with a fantasy setting?


What about tossing a "Sci Fi" humanoid race into a Fantasy setting or vice versa?

- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;373404What if you're just sick of seeing Dwarves and Elves all the time?

What the fuck?

 Has anybody ever gone really original with a fantasy setting?


What about tossing a "Sci Fi" humanoid race into a Fantasy setting or vice versa?

- Ed C.

There are levels of uniqueness.
Sometimes you can make a statement about races in terms of how culture affects them.  Culture trumps race.

I purposely have races that were once 'monster' races as playable, acculturated ones.  This always is interesting.

and adding a few different playable races.  I have a FratreCanis (DogBrother) race that is a playable race that is not typical.

Tolkien's Middle Earth is a very bad example for most gaming questions except the 'human-centric' one.