Fluff Changes You've Made to PC Races

[Argyle King]

The easiest way to do this seems to be to break it down by race, so...

Dwarf

1) In one campaign, I fluffed them to more like a cross between stereotypical Soviet-era Russians and the dwarves from Dragon Age: Origins.

2) I've used the way the Chronicles of Narnia shows dwarves quite a few times. Dwarf - WikiNarnia - The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis

3) I've used Banestorm style dwarves a few times. GURPS Banestorm

Elf

1) I remember a D&D 3.5 campaign I ran in which I had an Elven empire which was modeled after Nazi Germany with a few minor influences from ancient Egypt. They took the whole idea of elves being superior to humans pretty far. It didn't stop there though; even among elves there where ideal ear angles and things like that. The closer you were to the ideal (which could be determined by measuring,) the more pure your elven blood is considered to be.

2) In my current campaign, elves are not forest-dwelling folk. They live on wide open plains in a semi-nomadic lifestyle. Being tall and lanky, they are built for sprinting and speed, and they prefer spears as weapons. Their cultural style is loosely based on some African tribes.

3) Once, as an experiment to see if any of the players would notice, I gave elves the personality of Star Trek's Vulcans.

Halflings and Gnomes

1) I've never been overly fond of D&D's vision of either of the common small-folk races, so the easiest change to make in some of the games I've run was to simply say they do not exist. Depending on campaign, they've been replaced by Woem (small Puss'N'Boots style catfolk,) Grippli, Banestorm Goblins, Nelwins, and various others.

2) On the other end of the spectrum from 1, I simply said halflings and gnomes were the same thing in a few games.

3) In the game with the Nazi Elves, gnomes were an offshoot of dwarves who were subjugated by elves and had accepted their place in the empire as being second class citizens -but still being far above how humans and other races were treated.


I'm sure there are others, but those come to mind easily.

 

[Elf Witch]

So dwarves are dimunitive spartans, basically.

...I'm now reimagining 300.

Thank you, now I will forever have seared in my brain a picture of a hairy dwarf in a loin cloth.

 

[pogre]

Elves - plagued by insanity. With all of their physical and mental advantages -why don't they dominate? 'cause their nuts.

Gnomes - Barbaric and cannibals.

 

[Dioltach]

Thank you, now I will forever have seared in my brain a picture of a hairy dwarf in a loin cloth.

Go to any Italian beach in the summer ...

In my Dying Earth-like campaign:

Dwarves are engineers and builders, but because they spend so much time digging and quarying in the poisened earth, they've also become expert alchemists and poiseners.

Elves lock themselves away in their gloomy forests, summoning demons and torturing their slaves.

Halflings were originally genetically engineered by the elves, but escaped. They live in the deserts and are cannibals, but they hate elves and will kill them on site.

Drow live in clans under the desert. Each clan worships a different type of vermin: spiders, scorpions, snakes and so on.

Minotaurs like singing acapella choruses and chewing special blends of grass and herbs.

Gnomes and kender were wiped out thousands of years ago because they annoyed the other races too much.

 

[Minigiant]

In my Six Kingdoms Game

The Dwarf Kingdom lost to the Giant kingdom and fled the mountains and hills. But they Arcane Nuked the mountains before they left. So there are:

Jungle Dwarves: Elephant riding poisoned spear chucking dredlocking wine sippers.

Arctic Dwarves: Parka wearing Water or Fire casters with planar polar bear companions in Ice castles.


The Gnome kingdom lost to the Sand Human Mage Kingdom: They put their cities on legs and walked away. Gnomes are medium creatures as they never leave their stone power armor anymore and built way too many useless warforged.

The Elves split in a civil war when The Elven Demigods started arguing .

The Red eves are barbaric, sorcerous, and emotional. And naked. Think CN pretty hobgoblins.
The Blue elves are noble, priestly, and forcused. Chainmail on babies. They are now the dwarves of this world.
The Green elves are scientific, wizardy, and creepy. Tinker wood elves with necromancy.
The Brown elves are elves that refused to fight and left for human lands. They are just long lived humans with pointy ears now.

Oh and the Minotaur Kingdom run the plane of magic. Think a race of shouty Spocks with horns, thralls, blasty spells, and axes in a Mazeworld. The strongest nonlich nonaberration wizard is a Minotaur called Chronos, Avatar of Time! and Space!.

"War is an illogical action. I'll just nuke their capital city. It will save 12,345 lives. Contating Chronos. There done. Hold on. Contacting the Grim Reaper. He does not approve. He is not thinking with reason. Hold on. Chronos is reverting the city to its nonnuked state with magic. There done." =Most minotaurs' thought processes. Calculate. Nuke. Ask for permission.

 

[Tallifer]

I often reskin the more exotic races into humans with mixed blood or a spark of the divine or a fell taint from beyond.

For example, a Genasi could be a man whose great-grandfather fell in love with the daughter of a mountain spirit. A Deva (or Aasimar) could be a man who has been touched by an angel in his cradle; or a man who has been reincarnated many times and has a psychic ability to channel those memories like a hippy chick. A Tiefling is a man whose ancestor sold his soul to the devil.

On the other hand, nowadays I strangely am required to refluff Halflings into Hobbits: many dungeon masters and recent editions portray them as tough, mercenary and bloodthirsty Rogues rather than fat little folk who dance with fairies.

 

[IstraRaugir]

In my campaign elves are the most heavily augmented race. In ancient times they were worshiped as gods by the tribes of early humans among others. After all they were practically immortal (lifespans of half a millennia were commonplace) and much more advanced in both technology and magic. Of course the elves with their natural superiority complex were keen to reinforce these ideas.
But as the young races rapidly advanced there were some who claimed the elves were just another race and that people should follow their own goals instead of serving the elves. Eventually this resulted in an uprising in which all of the pureblooded ancient elves were hunted down. The survivors were enslaved and started to interbreed with the mortal races. A few centuries passed as elves slowly became integrated in human society (as equals).
But as time went on some elves took interest in their heritage (turning a blind eye to the whole subjugating the mortal races mess) and the elvish renaissance started. A large part of the elvish population split off and decided to reinstate the elvish homelands and explore their history.
While not without tensions the elvish renaissance was mostly peaceful and so the modern elves started their own nation. However these modern elves had a drastically reduced lifespan and no longer stood at the peak of technology and magic.
(one effect of the widespread interbreeding were the elflings: these are a human minority with some elvish blood in their veins. Giving them a slight increase in lifespan and a few other elvish traits)

The dwarves in my campaign are largely unknown. There are many tales of them but save for a remote outpost in the north their entire race has vanished (though it's common knowledge that they retreated to a gigantic underground system). As they have a low impact on the campaign I haven't worked them out properly but I know one thing for sure: They have a strong revulsion for magic. This stems from their own history when they dug too fast and too deep and used magic to maintain their great halls. But due to fading spells and arcane interaction between the plethora of wards the great halls unexpectedly collapsed one day. After this catastrophe the dwarves swore off magic; relying only on the strength of their backs and their deities' support to expand their realm.

The Fellnir are a homebrew race of mine, VERY loosely based on halflings. I originally pictured them as arboreal halfling tribes but that image slowly changed into a race of its own.
They are a semi-humanoid race (they look like a mix of human, jungle cat and monkey) and live in reclusive tribes. They are rarely found outside of wooded areas where they build their homes into the treetops. While not very advanced the Fellnir put they tools and abilities to good use: They are expert hunters, athletically gifted and know the forests like the back of their hand. Fellnir rarely wage wars but when threatened or angered a tribe employs deadly guerilla tactics that can decimate conventional soldiers. Unlike most races they don't have a structured religion to worship the gods. Instead they have a diverse set of passed down stories featuring powerful nature spirits.

The Thaliara are even less similar to their parent race than the Fellnir. I initially viewed them as tech savvy gnome traders but like the Fellnir that changed over time.
The Thaliara aka Seafarers (or blueskins for the blunt) are a group of traders that sail the seas. They are a friendly bunch that supply exotic spices, fabrics and pigments to the greater kingdom at a fair price. Though they deflect any questions about their past and homeland they do so via elaborate tales of their (supposed) exploits (the phrase 'Just north of the solid gold island' was based on one particularly boastful captain). However the Thaliara are not all fun and games. Deceiving or stealing from a seafarer is met with swift retribution. And betraying their trust results in such a doggedly persistent grudge that it's often said to be smarter to "Just dangle your soft bits in front of a dragon."

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Thank you, now I will forever have seared in my brain a picture of a hairy dwarf in a loin cloth.

Not loin clothes; codpieces. Crimson codpieces. That's important.

Minotaurs like singing acapella choruses and chewing special blends of grass and herbs.

Stoner acapella minotaurs...the phrase "something new every day" takes on a whole new meaning in ENworld.

"War is an illogical action. I'll just nuke their capital city. It will save 12,345 lives. Contating Chronos. There done. Hold on. Contacting the Grim Reaper. He does not approve. He is not thinking with reason. Hold on. Chronos is reverting the city to its nonnuked state with magic. There done." =Most minotaurs' thought processes. Calculate. Nuke. Ask for permission.

...and again. Minotaurs seem to inspire a lot of DM creativity.

I often reskin the more exotic races into humans with mixed blood or a spark of the divine or a fell taint from beyond.

I'm pretty fast and loose with exotic races, too. I'm a fan of half-somethings -- I take 'dragon born' very literally for example -- but Sigil is included in my setting too, so really anything is on the table.

 

[Greg K]

In 3e,
1. Dark Elves: There are no drow. These surface elves resembling drow, but inhabit an island. They differ from standard elves only in appearance, favored class, and religion.

2. Swamp Dwarves: Several generations removed from their ancestral homelands, these dwarves lack stonecunning and the standard dwarf racial combat abilities

3. Desert Lizardmen: Their racial abilities are based around living in the desert.

4. A religious sect of isolationist elves. Their lives revolve around their community and religious practices. Young adults have a small window of time (in terms of the elvish life span) during which they can explore the outside world and decide if they want to stay there or rejoin the community. Favored class is cleric (Cloistered variant from Unearthed Arcana).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Minotaurs?

In 2Ed, I had them as a Plains Indian type culture, masters of javelins & bows, and using chariots for mobility- they were actually size L in that edition, so merely being horsemen wouldn't work. Also as size L creatures, that meant their arrows & javelins had greater range...and damage.