How Are Your Elves/ Dwarves/ Orcs Different?

All our elves and dwarves are human. Mechanically they're elves and dwarves, cosmetically they're 'lithe humans' and 'short chunky humans'. Same applies to goblins (desert/wasteland dwellers), half-elves, halflings and half-orcs.

One planet has orcs, but again only mechanically. Cosmetically they're savage humans/islanders with a decidley apish flavour.

Another planet has no orcs. Gnolls fill the role of savage tribal enemies and lizardmen are the 'monster' playable race, their kind being slaves to the Glorious Human Empire.

Another planet has the surface dwellers being humans of a Norse/Celtic flavour, all near mad/driven to sadism, perversion and like due to the irradiated snow fall.

Nobody has ever played a gnome or wanted to play one in our current campaign. If they did, again, mechanically they'd be gnomes and cosmetically they'd be small, gnomey humans.

I stole a thing from Zak Smith for my goblins, they being the personification of bad ideas. Whenever someone (including another goblin) has a bad idea, a goblin is born (through spontaneous biogeneration). The type of goblin is determined by the general nature of the idea. Most bad ideas result in your bog standard goblin, but particularly violent ones become a bugbear, while bad military theory becomes a hobgoblin and bad science becomes a blue (psychic goblin). Goblins do not have biological sexes, but can reproduce "normally." That is, by having bad ideas, which they are super good at.

Dwarfs are not born, but discovered and mined. A newly discovered dwarf is physically, fully developed, but dumb as a bag of hammers, and imprints to an extent on the one who unearthed them. This has led to a bit of an underdark-race (as opposed to a space-race) between the dwarf clans, and other types of creatures (particularly other underground dwelling creatures) to locate and unearth (or locate and preserve, in some instances, because dwarfs start to age when they are unearthed), and gives the dwarfs an excellent reason for digging deeply and greedily. Dwarfs do not have biological sexes, nor any way to reproduce without extensive magical interference.

Elfs are hermaphroditic, and reproduce through an innately magical process of internal alchemy which requires the cooperative exchange of biological material from three elfs. Whenever you see three elfs together, you can be sure that one of them is "miracleworking." These miracleworking elfs are highly valued as a sacrificial component in all sorts of rituals. Once the process is complete, which takes several years, the elf that emerges is essentially an adolescent, having been implanted with the knowledge of its parents, but having no real experience. The elfin reproductive process can be subverted by the host (mother), resulting in a drow elf.

Preadult orcs have a larval stage that is indistinguishable from a razorback boar. Orc chops are a thing. After a few years, these pupate and quickly transfigure themselves into adult orcs. They emerge fully formed both physically and psychologically. Female orcs are quite rare, but huge and incredibly fecund. Male orcs are your bog standard servant of Gruumsh (or whoever).

Several other types of creatures similarly are created or form through non-biological means (kobolds, for instance are created by dragons out of their blood).

As you may have noticed, none of these creatures has a real childhood to speak of. This helps to avoid the orc babies conundrum, but also serves to make each of the creatures uniquely fantastical. Hopefully giving the players something to think about when playing or interacting with these types of creatures.

Basically only humans and other real world natural animals have a normal biological life cycle. Everything else happens through quasi mystical huckey puckey.

They're all pretty much the same in my game, except that they're all centaurs.

In my setting, halfling villages long ago adopted the practice of serving pints, but humans have grown stingy (they like to call it discerning) and only serve ale in fancy 200 millilitre glasses.

Halfling adventurers are so disappointed.

However the player wants to play his race is generally ok by me. The most important difference in the races is lifespan. Knowing your expiration date greatly affects your worldview.

I did get rid of the half-dragon template, making all children of dragons Dragonborn, regardless of the other half of the equation.

For a lot of stuff I stay standard, but I'm actually in the initial phases of making a campaign setting where humans are a fallen people, halflings are reclusive stealth warriors, elves are warlike and evil, an kobolds are morally diverse sailors, and I haven't decided yet if dwarves and orcs exist yet.

I can't give you particular decisions, but I can give you tendencies.

I enjoy elves as "fey" or "fey-kin." And also gnomes would fall in this category as well.

I prefer having "half-orcs" as not half-anything but simply another variety of orc. I occasionally have the "half-human" assumption stemming from human racism explaining how orcs could be civilized.

I like having halflings not as off-brand humans but as goblinoids.

XP! XP for everyone!

No matter how close or far from standard races your campaign worlds are I find it all interesting.

My world is Mystara/The Known World so the differences aren't major. or those not aware of Mystara/The Known World the original incarnation had no half races though half elves were added in one region later. Also, there are no demihuman subraces. PCs can pick whatever. I also find the idea of subraces with different stats vaguely racist so I'm fine with no subraces.

The only thing I've added is that Dwarves speak with a North Dakota accent or like they are from the UP in Michigan. None of people who have played dwarves in my campaign spoke with a North Dakota accent. So mostly it was a chance for me to sound silly.

guachi said:

XP! XP for everyone!

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Oh. Now I feel obliged to give an answer beyond a joking reference to the first LotR movie, even ghough it was obliquely relevant: My table essentially treats the races as we view them through the LotR movies.

For dragonborn and the like, we just use them as D&D describes. I think, simply because it means we're all on the same page, or maybe the DMs (and I'm one of them) are too lazy to bother changing things. But then, we're also not slaves to what the books/movies say, so whatever the DM introduces during play could depart dramatically - but introducing cannibal halflings doesn't change our percepetion that there's a shire full of big headed hobbits living in a Norman Rockwell paradise (now serving pints)

Dragonborn are the native race of my setting, in a way similar to Elves: Dragon gods had a massive fight, and wherever their blood landed a dragonborn rose. Though the evil dragon god won, the good dragon god's final action before death was to seal his foe away inside the planet. This is where volcanic reactions, tidal waves, and earthquakes come from. Though they are the original race, they aren't the most common after other races either came into existence (Halflings, humans, wood elves, dwarves, goblinoids) or migrated here while the planar bridges were established (All other elves, gnomes, tieflings, other Volo's Guide races.)

Tieflings and Aasimar aren't Fiend/Celestial blooded, and are instead the equivalent of "Humans" in their home plane that they have long since been cut off from. Demons, devils and angels exist here, but are few in numbers and have yet to truly establish new demiplanes, so fiend worshiping cults are small.

Goblinoinds are more dominant than humanoids, with Hobgoblins at the forefront of their kind. Eons of wars between the gods of humans and hobgoblins (and by extension, between the races themselves) have left the humanoid pantheon but a shadow of its former glory (With lesser and demi-gods forced to step up and take over for the fallen dieties) while the hobgoblins shift their focus to dwarves. The hobgoblin gods also have taken gods from other pantheons, including the Dwarven forge god (Known as the Traitor God among dwarves), the Goblin fertility goddess (The Hobgoblin god thought he had killed the goblin trickster and hunting god, then took the fertility goddess as a concubine/adviser. The trickster god fakes his own death, then revived the hunting god purely because he knew the hunting god would want revenge and thought it would be cool to see another fight between them), and the Human god of Knowledge and Magic (He foresaw the fall of the human pantheon and tried to warn them, only for the human gods to ignore his warnings. He offered his service to the Hobgoblin god in exchange for an end of hostilities for a time, and also acts as a double agent through various good aligned cults)

The age of man has long since passed, and all that remains is a handful of fractured city-states and settlements. Human culture is still as diverse as ever, but only in small groups, and nowhere near as influential. You'll also find many humans integrated within hobgoblin societies, running the gamut of the lowest slaves to the highest elected official. You still won't find humans in the highest of Hobgoblin society, but many hobgoblins would rather focus on their conquest of the world in the name of their god than the day-to-day of some cities within their nations.

Halflings are still closely tied to humans, but have more of a wanderlust than in Forgotten Realms. Halflings are more or less the "Gypsy" race, with everyone within six degrees of everyone else and a passing knowledge of someone (or at least someone who would know) of another tribe. Still, you'll find plenty of Halfling settlements near human ones or away from anyplace one would deem "Key to a military strategy".

Dwarves are still proud tradesmen, merchants, and soldiers, but aren't as tied to mountains as they are in Forgotten Realms. Sure, there are still mountain strongholds and such, but you're as likely to find wooden citadels in the forests, admiralty governed maritime islands (Some with a little Polynesian flair), and stone-carved fortresses in the highlands.

Wood Elves are the perpetual enemies of Bugbears (I'm thinking of coming up with a half wood-elf/half-bugbear race that's the result of attempts of marriage-induced peace, bugbear raids, or particularly rebellious elves and bugbears running off together), High and Drow elves still hate each other. High elves look at other races the same way Joseph Stalin looked at his own people, Drow look at them the same way most humans look at beef cows, and wood elves... kinda tolerate other races so long as they don't mess with their territory.

Gnomes are to Elves as Halflings are to Humans, only you won't find independent gnome settlements so much as "the gnome part of an elven settlement". Elves even tend to tolerate gnomes more than ant other race.

Orcs were once several tribes working on their own, but now you're more likely to see them either A: Integrated in human or hobgoblin settlements, or B: Part of the Great Host, which is a nomadic orc nation that hopes to beat the Hobgoblins in their conquest of the world. Unlike hobgoblin nations, however, Orcs seek to dominate and enslave all other races, where Hobgoblins are willing to work with other races to see their goals through. You'd still be able to find independent tribes of orcs, but when the Great Host comes they have two choices: Join or die.

Gnolls aren't tied to demons, but are still absolute nutcases.

All other races are more or less the same between the source books and my setting. (That, and I'm still working on the world, so I haven't gotten that far.)