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Tuesday, June 5, 2012

PC Races in my game world

While I’m a big fan of the Rules Cyclopedia, there’s a lot about 3.x and 4e that I like, including the various races. While I get and approve of race as class, I also like the idea of race as race. I know if someone came in with a flailsnails character that was an elven wardancer, or a dwarven cleric, or a dragonborn warlord, or a warforged mage, I’d allow it. Hell, if someone wanted to make a character native to my world (for whatever reason) and they wanted to use race as race I’d allow it.... but...

In my world, natively, the core races aren’t quite standard...

Elves and gnomes are otherworldly fay beings. They dance with fairies in the woods, swim with nymphs, and sing with birds. They are naturally chaotic, though not malicious.

Dwarves are actually sexless beings. While they appear as gendered, they procreate by creating their offspring, similar to how they’re done in Dwimmermount.

Half-elves are either elves raised by humans, or humans raised by elves, not the physical offspring of a union of the two. They are often called changelings by humans.

Half-orcs do not exist natively because my orcs are spawned from the earth in a perverted mimicry of the dwarven process. Some claim that the orcs are actually hatched from buried eggs, others claim that they grow like mold.

Kobolds are small draconic humanoids. Dragonborn are distant cousins to kobolds. Both are related to Dragons.

Goblins, gremlins, knockers, hobgoblins, and bugbears are all fay from the unseelie court.

Halflings, Nelwyns, Pecks, Hobbits (all the same thing) are the most standard of the races.


Tieflings are as per the 4e fluff, but visually more like the 2e - Humans tainted by demons, minus the whole empire of tieflings. There was an empire, ruled by tieflings, but most of the people in it were human.

2 comments:

  1. I like the idea of elves, gnomes, goblins, gremlins, knockers, hobgoblins and bugbears as fay races. I would also include dwarves as earth fairies and orcs as a fay race maybe a type of fomorian or troll. I like the idea of going back to the original source of these being which were fairy tales so they make some sense as being fairies instead of some sort off off-shoot of humanity. Being fairies makes them seem more alien and otherworldly IMO and also explains why they have obsessions like elves protecting the forest and dwarves love of metal working and mining.

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    Replies
    1. I know I didn't explicitly spell it out, but Orcs and Dwarves are both fey creatures as well!

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