So 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.
Part of the thing to me is that the so called Tolkien races are really just from mythology. Sort of the reverse of what you are proposing. Ancestors and ancient people were turned into elves and such by people who moved into a region or their descendents, then eventually turned into faeries. Most famous example, how Lugh was turned into the leprechaun over time
Poul Anderson had a different take on elves than Tolkien. Anderson's are more Nordic, if I recall correctly. You might check out The Broken Sword to see what he did with them. (There are two versions of this book -- one from the 1950's and a revised version from the 1970's. I believe that the early one is considered to be more "authentic" but both are well done IMO.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Broken_Sword
https://www.tor.com/2010/12/31/swiftly-goes-the-swordplay-poul-andersons-the-broken-sword/
I like the Elder Scrolls Skyrim's technological vanished race of Dwarves/Dwemer; their volcanic-region Dark Elves are also interesting and very unlike AD&D Drow, and the magical High Elves are often quite unnerving/eerie.
I'm running Stonehell Dungeon and it has the Vrilya, a powerful race with technomagic who have a similar niche to Drow or Moorcock's Melniboneans.
I haven't made any special effort to make the races in my current game especially unique, but I have tried to make them a little more interesting than the default, as well as trying to avoid the monoculture stereotype.
The predominant humanoid races are:
Hobgoblins: As a starting point, these are the disciplined, militant, early D&D-style hobgoblins. They also tend to be smart, civilised (in the fashion of societies with a militant code of honour), charismatic and well-disposed to the use of Mentalism (Rolemaster kind-of-psionics). They rule two kingdoms to the north, as the militant aristocracy, and can be found throughout civilised lands in reasonably small numbers. They introduced the formalised unarmed martial arts to the lands. They have their own barbarian tribes further north, well distant from human-ruled lands.
Boggarts: Roughly akin to D&D goblins. Highly intelligent, but generally somewhat lacking in empathy and discipline. More numerous than hobgoblins, less so than goblins. Individuals are more likely to integrate successfully into human societies than goblins, less so than hobgoblins. No one likes a gang of boggarts left to their own devices, though. Most are slaves or subjects in the hobgoblin kingdoms, although they can be found throughout human lands.
Goblins: Gremlin-sized. Typically distrusted, frequently harassed by others and thus tending towards sniveling cowardice for the purposes of self-preservation, but capable of being staunch friends when treated well. Found in reasonable numbers most places, often in urban ghettos. A few are highly successful and respected members of human society. As with boggarts, vast numbers are slaves in the hobgoblin kingdoms.
Elves: Rare, pale, leathery-skinned, hairless, with alien, elongated features and thought to be immortal. Children are either abandoned at birth (sometimes taken in by humans or others, often just dying of exposure), or raised until early adolescence by one parent and then cast out when the parent grows restless or bored. Mostly loners. Frequently feared, as (being immortal) they are potentially quite powerful, and well disposed to the use of magic. Some humans find them utterly fascinating, and they can have a powerful, commanding presence. Capable of single-minded work towards a task for centuries, also capable of abandoning said task on a whim. They're actually inspired by a couple pictures of humanoid aliens I stumbled across on some UFO/conspiracy sites a while ago while looking for pics for an X-Com game (the pictures were used for alien/human hybrids in that game).
Garks: A tribal, fairly primitive, monkey-like race.
No dwarves, gnomes or halflings. There are a number of other humanoids hailing from distant lands, but most are unlikely to ever actually appear in the game.
The elves have been around since forever. No one's really sure what they're up to, or why there aren't more of them, including most of the elves themselves.
The hobgoblins appeared from the far north a couple centuries ago, leading armies of boggarts and goblins. They captured a lot of territory, then were struck by a plague, after which a civil war splintered their conquered lands into two kingdoms.
Garks are found in the wilderness, in gradually dwindling numbers. They are sometimes a threat to remote civilised outposts, but they have no large-scale organised society, and don't raise armies or go to war -- they're more likely to raid for livestock or attack people who wander away from safety than actually mount anything resembling an actual attack on a town or village. My group hasn't actually come across any yet. They're really only there in case I need some kind of semi-civilised or tribal society in the wilderness at some point.
I have found it somewhat challenging running a sand-box game with lots of wilderness and no standard humanoid foes to just drop in as required.
With elves, to make them less Tolkien, I'd turn to the Hobbit cartoon of all places. The wood elves are green, gnarly, and mean. But I might also play up the whimsical side of elves and down play their pride and ancient culture long spent. In fact, their culture should be unchanging because, fairy like, it is immediate and in the now. I would ditch their long lived status, maybe the length of a fruit tree, taking a cue from RuneQuest which had elves as plants. They are unreliable but not annoying.
In my version of the Wilderlands, Elves are more like those in The Broken Sword: from the Realm of Fae, cold iron/silver vulnerability, affinity for illusion magic. Reclusive, live in small isolated communities, dreaming of the Old Realms.
Dwarves were a servitor race created by [Markabs? Orichalans? Elves?] from elemental earth magic. Skin the colors of various types of stone, affinity for geomancy, hairless except for the beards they proudly grow -- after all, what's a dwarf without a beard, right?!
Halflings aren't sneaky thieves by default, they're merchants, healers, and scholars. Typically live amongst humans.
Lizard folk are mixed -- some tribes are warlike a la vanilla D&D lizardmen, others are more like the Sleeth (http://gammaworld.wikia.com/wiki/Sleeth) from Gamma World.
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.
It's potentially more ambitious than one would think. The reason these races get boring is because most people take them all for granted without considering the implications of the cosmology of the world (which for most players is normal).
But consider how *fantastical* bog-standard D&D is - extra-dimensional beings spawned/imported/exported *hundreds* (if not thousands) of *sentient* races onto one planet.
So if I were going to start - this is where I'd do it. If Elves are not going to be "normal" Elves, then you should consider where they come from. This will inform you of your "Fae-blooded" Humans. Rinse/repeat for your other races.
What forces are extant in the world? Elemental magic? Life/Death magic? Is arcane power the same as divine magic? Any and all of these things can inform whatever changes you want to make.
As for different takes...
One of my favorite "reimagined" versions of Tolkien-style fantasy is R. Scott Bakker's "Prince of Nothing" Series. Warning: it's an incredibly dark story - but the concepts could easily be re-purposed and flipped around. His series is a iron-age quasi-Hellenic fantasy with sci-fi elements. But it's told from the POV of characters in a fantasy world that is largely human.
The "Elves" - are called "Nonmen" by you guessed it, humans. In their own tongue they're called Curunoi - and they pre-date the rise of humanity by tens of thousands of years. There is an event in pre-history called "Arkfall" where a literal ship fell from the skies. The Curunoi that discovered it, found the inhabitants to be these monstrous creatures called the Inchoroi (think the Zerg from Starcraft) and ended up waging war on them almost exterminating them. After centuries of genocide, the last two leaders of the Inchoroi promised the Nonmen the gift of immortality in exchange for peace. The Nonmen stupidly accepted - and they used their "magic" called the 'Tekne' to re-engineer the Nonmen into becoming immortal. This had the unfortunate side-effect of killing all females that underwent the process after some time. But by the time the Nonmen realized the truth - many of them had been corrupted, the Inchoroi had re-created their armies and it forced the Nonmen to upjump their pets (humans) to near-equal status (including teaching them magic) and war was rejoined. The end result - all the Nonmen left were male, with no ability to procreate. Mentally scarred from losing their loved ones, shamed at having undergone the corrupting procedures of the Inchoroi who are effectively baby-Cthulu monsters. And though they are immortal - their minds are not really capable of dealing with the weight of ages. The actual story in the novel takes place three-thousand years after the events I just relayed. Yeah - they're MESSED UP.
The Sovereign Stone setting is an oldie but goodie in this regard. Dwarves are horse-riding nomads, Orcs are seafaring raiders, and Elvish society is like the stereotypical depiction of honor-obsessed feudal Japan turned up to eleven.
I read a blog series (http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/tag/reinventing-fantasy-races/) detailing how the author thought about reinventing traditional fantasy races.
Another blog (https://ogresvstrolls.wordpress.com/) analyzed how ogres, trolls, elves, dwarves and so forth have evolved over mythology and popular culture. Particularly that myth and folklore does not have a clear taxonomy like modern fantasy.
TV tropes has an article about the five races trope (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveRaces) that covers the same overarching symbolism.
If we are talking purely about the PC races in pre-4e/5e D&D, then I have a few personal recommendations.
- Human: the problem with humans is two-fold. Humans have nothing to make them stand out (https://comicsverse.com/stop-putting-humans-in-rpgs/), while conversely the other races have their own problems stemming directly from this (https://mythcreants.com/blog/should-you-use-non-humans-in-your-setting/).
- Elf: Elves have varied extensively through myth (https://ogresvstrolls.wordpress.com/?s=elves), but in modern fantasy there are three basic flavors of high elf, wood elf and dark elf. For high elves I recommend the Ravenflight article (http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2012/06/11/reinventing-fantasy-races-my-elves-are-different/), for wood elves I recommend copying the Lorwyn elves from Magic: The Gathering, and for dark elves I recommend this post by Tim Brannan (http://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2010/03/drow-should-be-lawful-evil-among-other.html).
- Dwarf: Like elves, dwarves in myth (https://ogresvstrolls.wordpress.com/?s=dwarves) are very different from the modern Scottish miners. Making them different could be as simple as playing around with accepted conventions (http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2013/02/25/my-dwarfs-are-different/) all the way to having them reproduce by manufacturing (http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/06/making-babies.html).
- Halfling: The only reason halflings are even a PC race is because Tolkien used them first. I find them very boring and impossible to meaningfully distinguish from gnomes. They are literally just a civilization of human midgets.
- Gnome: Gnomes don't have anything to meaningfully distinguish them from dwarves or halflings unless you go back to their mythological origins. Oh wait... they were invented by famed alchemist Paracelsus as a name for earth elementals and outside fantasy are considered lawn ornaments. You could actually have a lot of fun with that premise, as shown in the second season of Amazon Prime original series Lost in Oz.
- Half-Orc: Aside from the unsavory origins commonly ascribed to half-orcs, why can't we just have orcs as a PC race? If we have dark elves as the evil counterparts of high elves, why not good orcs (http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2014/02/17/ravenflight-part-3-the-green-dudes-are-different/)? Being a half-orc could be treated as a background trait for human characters rather than its own race.
- Half-Elf: Half-elves were invented wholly by D&D and have nothing to meaningfully distinguish them from humans or elves aside from angsting over never belonging or something. Even Tolkien did not have real half-elves, just special people who could choose whether to live as elves or humans. As with half-orcs, why can't this be treated as a background trait?
Also,
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.
The default setting of the game system I'm working on is practically built on reinterpreting the default races (and offering a bunch of others as well). I actually considered writing dwarves out of the setting (or making them a subspecies of something more distinct) precisely because they were looking just like every other version of dwarves in every other game until I finally hit on a unique take for them.
That being that dwarves have a genetic condition related to their creation that causes parts of their bodies to wear out at different rates. They combat this by replacing the parts (limbs and organs) with arcane artifice that actually improves on the original; becoming essentially an entire species of arcane cyborgs. Not all dwarves in the setting have the traditional dwarven cast iron stomachs, but when they do the odds are it's because they have a literal arcane cast iron stomach that has replaced their original.
Another example of trying to find different takes on things would be the gnomes. Gnomes are the embodied dreams of children who slip into this world through cracks in reality to have adventures. They live in Peter Pan/Lost Boys-like bands in the wilds. They are truly immortal (if killed they just reappear out of the mists in the realm of dreams minus some memories and ready to start a new adventure) as strong as adults (like many kids in dreams) and have no concept of sex (even kissing is icky). Upon learning that others aren't as immortal as they are, they are often start taking extreme risks to save others since a few memories are worth less than someone's one and only life.
Even when I go a little more Tolkein with a species than typical for D&D, it's usually mixed with something completely different as well. Elves for example are basically minor celestial beings (some high elves can even sprout wings at will) stuck living in the Mortal World (they are fixed in number and can only reproduce when one of their number must reincarnate) which is a lot closer to Tolkein than many D&D elves, but they're also extremely caste-based and their leaders are trying to recreate their perfect heaven in the imperfect Mortal World and this has led to a number of elves running away (making it even harder to maintain their "perfect" society) in search of better lives among the humans (this results in them being labeled as 'dark elves' for they've become a 'dark' caste outside of the proper celestial order and the traditional elves actively hunt them down since by killing them they are reincarnated back into proper elven society).
Likewise, orcs are hyper-aggressive humans mutated by a magical cataclysm two centuries past. Stronger, faster and with sharper senses than humans (and still just as intelligent and cunning) they are the new apex predators in the world and a real threat to baseline humans. Even more terrifying is that some orcs continue to mutate into and become ogres; even bigger and stronger and still just as intelligent.
Beastmen (minotaurs, crocodin, gnolls, wolfen, ravenkin, etc.) are a wide array of species created millennia ago by the biomancers of the First Empire to fulfill various roles. With the help of the newly born Astral gods they won their freedom and overthrew men so completely that most humans adopted the beastmen's animal headed gods as their own (the many conflicting species of beastmen meant they couldn't hold together a unified empire once they overthrew the humans, which is why humans were eventually able to bounce back, though they held onto the gods of the winning side... mostly only fringe groups of humans still follow their original religion). Beastmen generally have their own communities (usually of a single type per community) apart from humans, but there's enough trade between humans and various groups that they're not exactly uncommon either.
Goblins are bat-like beastmen and a cautionary tale to the rest of the beastmen. Once they were among the most advanced of beastmen, but were conquered and enslaved by the orcs who treated them like literal dogs. After 100 generations (beastman reach maturity in about two years and live for 60-70) those enslaved by the orcs have been so broken that they are barely more than beasts in intellect and fewer than one-in-a-hundred is still even capable of flight (while free goblins can all fly). The ones kept by the orcs are still really good at clinging to surfaces and using echolocation to find you though.
Trolls, by contrast, are mutants with hideous appearances (resulting from a process I refer to as 'cancerous healing'), but are generally accepted as part of human society since they retain human temperaments.
Another factor worth noting is that I lump almost all the half-humans (half-elves, dwarves, giants, shades, orcs) under humans with slightly different racial traits than the norm.
I also left out halflings on the grounds that low-caste elves, short humans and gnomes already fill all of the halfling's niches. For a time I had applied the term to a species that was "the shadows of murdered children" (existing halfway between the mortal and shadow worlds and able to travel between them with only fragmentary memories of the child they were once attached to), but they were so disturbing that no played them and as the cosmology evolved their existence got more problematic so I ended up scrapping them and using their mechanics as the basis for the Fetch (spirits who serve the Grey Huntress/goddess of death, now trapped in the Mortal World by the same cataclysm that stranded the elves and created the orcs).
Those are my setting's takes on some of the more traditional Tolkein races anyway.
I've long since worked up my own setting-specific versions of 'classical' fantasy races, and invented new ones to fill certain niches, themes or 'gaps'.
Not that I think there's anything wrong with the classics, in fact one issue I've experienced is that certain players come in understanding that I'm running a fantasy setting, expecting to be able to play a 'traditional' elf or whatever and being disappointed when I tell them the news or "house variants" of whatever they're interested in playing. I usually try to stay limbered up and provide people what they want to play within reason, though; I intentionally leave parts of the setting vague enough that it's pretty simple to work in new kitchen sink-style elements for each campaign when necessary or entertaining.
Of course, I'm also extremely shy about describing my 'house races' openly since it feels embarrassing droning on about my personal "snowflake" interpretations of each or the new ones I've built (mostly based on less-used mythology and folklore, twisted and tweaked to my taste). So unless you play in one of my campaigns you're probably not likely to be subjected to that.
Running Stonehell Dungeon, as well as the dark elf/Nazi Thulean 'Vrilya', it also has the Mountain Trolls, who are much more akin to traditional Scandinavian (or The Hobbit) rock trolls, & very unlike D&D Poul Anderson trolls. And that's just level 5 - it has tons more odd races deeper down. :)
To the OP...
er... You mean what just about every other setting has done with one or more races?
Dragonlance: Halflings are now these fearless (innocent) kleptomaniacs. Gnomes are now wacky Rube-Goldberg-esque inventors. There were also sea elves.
Dark Sun: Cannibal halflings. Desert elves. Dwarves are extinct and only half-dwarves remain. etc.
Mystara: Sky gnomes piloting biplanes. Sea elves. etc.
Others have done elves as more akin to elementals. Dwarves as technologically advanced warmongers. Halflings as spies and information brokers. Elves as more like dryads - plant people. Dwarves as more akin to earth elementals. The roles of elves and dwarves switched with elves being deep miners and dwarves being nature lovers. Elves as effectively techologically advanced aliens. Elves as more akin to emotion vampires. And so on.
I modeled my orcs after gauls via Goscinny. Only evil, of course.
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 (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/212664/Dungeons--Delvers--Black-Book?src=hottest_filtered) 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.