Quote from: KeithI don't use demi-human races anymore in any of our games, but when I did, I usually mapped them to a recognizable culture.  This gave me a whole crap load of shit to mine (Orks live in a medieval Venice-like city, Doge and all) and made it easy for the players to get their heads around the idea (okay we all saw Laurence Fishburne in Othello right?  Think the Venicians from that).

This kinda thinking always led me to break from the usualy stereotypes for the races. Orks as Venicians, Halflings as Byzantines, Dwarves as Mamuluks, Elves as the barbaric Franks and Humans as everyone else's bitch is one example.

Personally I prefer to use humans as human analogues. Elves, Dwarves and the like are an ideal opportunity to stretch the boundaries a bit.

Quote from: SilverlionI went back to the roots myself and twisted them up:

....

Sidda
            Often spoken of in quiet whispers, yet  rarely seen, they are feared by humans more often than not.  The Sidda are known also as the Fair folk, or the Fey. Where this race as a whole has gone is unknown even to the scant few who still wander the lands of men.  They are a lithe folk with inhuman grace and uncanny voices. They have fine beautiful features, large almond shaped eyes, and pointed ears.


Kinship Traits: Mythic Countenance:  As Sidda age they take on mythic traits of their birth name. Slowly becoming elemental or legendary primal forces over time. (Greater),

Kinship Challenge: Sorrow's Burden: Sidda feel things deeply and are moved by sorrow for the pains of the land and their people, as well as the sorrow's of all the kindred of men. They suffer melancholy rather easily due to this.

As Sidda age they take on on some primal elemental aspect until they are unrecognizable as a race of man. The mighty Oak-King  who appears as more a tree each and every year for example, stands over nine feet tall with bark like skin, and antler like branches upon his brow, he dwells currently in his forest home upon a throne of gnarled roots which span from the eldest of all Oak trees.

The Lion of the North, a snow-white lion, nearly the size of the horse, was once a powerful Sidda warlord.

The Lady of the Sea, a woman of sea foam and saltwater. She sometimes appears within an ocean wave that breaks apart instead of smashing to ruin. Like the others she too was once a Sidda.

This is EXACTLY the kind of idea I had for the starfaring ur-Elves of Wilderlands prehistory, with the proviso that their trascendent sorcerous technology granted them a proteanic physiology, enabling them to shift and blend forms at will. Most adopted something similar to extant planetary fauna, albeit hybridized to the point of something entirely new. A daring elite shifted entirely into the abstract, becoming creatures bounded only by concept or emotion. A few even elected to retain their basic (if idealised) humanoid form, which later would become the corrupted template from which humanity itself would eventually spring.

Regardless of their preferences, the technologies and rituals required to sustain the Eldar in such a fashion required vast wellsprings of physical and metaphysical power. Those whom found themselves stranded on Ghenrek following the war with the Makrab were at a stroke denied this life-sustaining force. Many died screaming, their impossible biologies caving in on themselves in violent implosions of agony. Others, better adapted to the physical laws of their new prison world became self-sustaining wonders, much like The Lion of the North you described above. The Eldar whom chose to remain in their humanoid form prospered for a while, although their poor fecundity and extended longevity made them unsuited for competition with the more dynamic, volatile races that succeeded them. Of the abstracts, nothing is known. Perhaps they too disappeared. The few scholars in the world knowledgable enough to even speculate on their fate do so in hushed tones, for foolish is the man who would question the gods.

That's the basics of Elves in the Wilderlands. For now anyway.

Quote from: Cerulean LionGo here

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=251358


And check out post # 82, for an interesting take on demihumans.

Not bad at all. I particularly like the idea of synthetic gods, it's something I've been toying with myself.

Quote from: SigmundI still think that's wierd. I'm getting into Dark Sun stuff now, with the cannibal halflings, and it's just kinda wierd to me. Not automatically a bad wierd though, if I can use it to scare the piss outa the players with it.

If you really want to scare the bejeebus out of them then lob a few kender into the mix.

*shudder*

Quote from: DrewIf you really want to scare the bejeebus out of them then lob a few kender into the mix.

*shudder*

Flesh-eating Kender..... I might like it..... yeah.

wouldn't that take some of the annoyance factor away from them?  i mean, if the kender are trying to eat you, how much time for pickpocketing and other minor irritants would they have?  

i guess they could jabber the entire time they tried to eat you.  jabber with their mouths full. . . .:what:  :eek:

Quote from: beeberwouldn't that take some of the annoyance factor away from them?  i mean, if the kender are trying to eat you, how much time for pickpocketing and other minor irritants would they have?  

i guess they could jabber the entire time they tried to eat you.  jabber with their mouths full. . . .:what:  :eek:

They annoy you, rip you off, annoy you some more, taunt you mercilessly, run away, then sneak up on you later that night and eat your liver.

I think the novelty of demi-humans is wearing off for me.  Whereas humans can run the gambit of archetypes, demi-humans are usually portrayed in a much narrower defined archetype.  I think most fantasy and sci-fi use humans as a mirror to relate experience to us the audience.

I dislike demihumans, especially as convenient "evil" races. When I can, I try to avoid having them at all. When I can't, I try to subvert some of the standard ideas.

In the last D&D game I created a world for, I set it in a period of time where technological and social developments were approximately those of the early 16th century. Printing, guns, a new continent, gold, sugar and slaves. Since it was D&D, there was also arcane and divine magic.

There were two main civilisations in the game, divided along racial lines, but not along _single_ racial lines. Humans and dwarves lived on the northern continent together as "Emerns", worshipping totems, and politically organised as a sprawling mass of city-states, semi-nomadic clans, militaristic proto-states and feudal federations. Most other demihuman races were present only as imported slaves.

There was no cultural division between dwarves and humans per se. The dwarves did not live underground, did not talk in Scottish accents, and did not see themselves (nor were they treated as) lesser members in a human-dominated society. There had been, sometime in the distant past, a division between humans and dwarves culturally, but that was well beyond the knowledge of most Emerns (The extent of it was that one totem was acknowledged as originally coming from the dwarves to the Emerns).

To the south were the Tash. The Tash were a cohesive, monotheistic (ish) civilisation with a relatively unified governmental system, advanced infrastructure and many races living together. The Tash considered themselves an empire, and had been founded by a religious movement composed mainly of elves and hobgoblins. Elves and Hobs were inter-fertile, and considered themselves different races of a single species. Drow were a race amongst the elves who were considered to be consecrated to their god (a large volcano called the Throne).

They ruled over a number of different races they had integrated through conquest, cultural interchange and political savvy. Loyalty to the emperor and their god was more important than racial background, except for elves/hobs.

The Emerns and the Tash fought fairly regular wars with one another, but also traded extensively. Tash traders were usually allowed in Emern ports and vice versa, but piracy, punitive expeditions, crusades and occasional attempts at conquest kept things interesting and unfriendly. Both groups enslaved the other and used all sorts of race-based justifications for it.

The immediate past of this world involved the discovery of the new continent, Arkhesh (named after its discoverer, an Emern named Hesh). One of many shocking things about the discovery for the old world was finding humans, dwarves, elves and hobgoblins (amongst other species) living together. This was used as a justification by both Tash and Emerns to enslave anyone they found - they were obviously barbaric enough to consort with humans/elves/dwarves/hobgoblins and thus not endowed with the full reason of the Emerns/Tash.

The basic idea of this whole thing was to try and make cultural and racial divisions distinct from one another. In D&D they're very often identical - dwarves have a single culture which is distinct from the single elf culture which is distinct from the single hobgoblin culture. I wanted to get past that while still using all sorts of fantasy races.

Quote from: SigmundThey annoy you, rip you off, annoy you some more, taunt you mercilessly, run away, then sneak up on you later that night and eat your liver.

that's the most evil critter i've heard of!  fuck orcs, half-demons, etc.  these are my new EVIL.  thanks, man!

Quote from: beeberthat's the most evil critter i've heard of!  fuck orcs, half-demons, etc.  these are my new EVIL.  thanks, man!

No prob. Comes naturally :deviousgrin:

Quote from: PseudoephedrineSnips excellent anthropological extrapolations

The basic idea of this whole thing was to try and make cultural and racial divisions distinct from one another. In D&D they're very often identical - dwarves have a single culture which is distinct from the single elf culture which is distinct from the single hobgoblin culture. I wanted to get past that while still using all sorts of fantasy races.

Superb. I love the idea of distinct racial groups sharing a common cultural ground. Many fantasy settings seem to imply this being the case (witness the usual suspects living side by side in any stock fantasy city) but do very little to explore the ramifications.

Quote from: DrewSuperb. I love the idea of distinct racial groups sharing a common cultural ground. Many fantasy settings seem to imply this being the case (witness the usual suspects living side by side in any stock fantasy city) but do very little to explore the ramifications.

Thanks. Though the game was aborted a bit earlier than I'd hoped (I was running it as a sideline to our main campaign), the cultural quirks came up in some neat ways in play. The first clue the PCs got that a certain NPC Emern pirate was planning to screw them over was discovering that one of his wives was a Tash elf - something unthinkably debauched to them.

I'll have more info and insight soon hopefully because I plan to run a different campaign set in the same world to introduce some new players to D&D. The first campaign (with my older, more experienced D&D crew) focused on the transposition of the characters' vengeance from Emern to Arkhesh (rapists and slavers in the old world were hunted down after fleeing to the new), but this second one will (hopefully) go a bit more into piracy and picaresques.