D&D General How To Reconcile the Settings

[Nellisir]

I was thinking of neanderthals and us. I'd forgotten about the denisovans, I've only read a single article on them. Not even sure if I had heard of the others. Thing is, that is still only a relatively small amount when compared with DnD fantasy worlds. Even if you just stick to the players handbook races, you have more than that. I don't find it very realistic to include dozens of races but then, like I said, I will just shrug and go "It's fantasy."

It's an interest of mine. The status of some are unclear, but I only included the ones that have a fair degree of confidence.
Keep in mind there are more - possibly many more - that we won't ever know about. An isolated population that left no physical trace for us and didn't cross back into our lineage in any quantity is gone. You need remains that have some trace of DNA to analyze, and many areas just aren't suitable to preserving remains or DNA for very long. And you need to find it. Anything currently underwater is gone. Anything scoured by glaciation is gone. Anywhere too humid or moist or wet. Anywhere without significant cave shelters. Anywhere significantly developed in the modern age.

 

[Bohandas]

So you would possibly have (albeit rare) a tiefling in oerth if they were explicitly descended from graz'zt? He has some of the earliest cannon entries for signifficantly populous tiefling lines (even though this might seriously rankle 5e players as tieflings are an exclusively infernally touched race now whereas in the grazzts rowdy college days he was causing them to exist left and right)

More to the point, I don't think Tieflings have ever been FR specific. Isn't their native setting Planescape?

 

[Oofta]

It's just a really weird argument to make, that a planet can't create enough food to support multiple sentient species.

Now, if you really want to support the idea that multiple sentient species is unrealistic, just say that whichever race is dominant will hunt down all the others, so on until only one species is left. That's what we did to the Neanderthals after all, intentionally or not.

There are still limited resources which will lead to competition between species. We don't know exactly how or why we became the dominant humanoid but I don't see a reason history wouldn't repeat itself. Although with more competition, we may not be the ones to come out on top.

But it's that in combination with other factors, mainly that I want races to be distinct and unique and not just another costume.

 

[cbwjm]

Alot of races in D&D were created not evolved. And their gods often taught them magic and other ways to defend themselves.

If D&D races existed on Earth odds are the forests of Germany and Poland wouldn't have been cleared and Switzerland would be a Dwarven redoubt.

Admittedly, I do want to create a fantasy earth style game with various races in different locales. I think that would be pretty cool.

 

[Zardnaar]

Admittedly, I do want to create a fantasy earth style game with various races in different locales. I think that would be pretty cool.

Same but could get in trouble with races like Orcs.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

What I tend to find weird is having multiple sentient species full stop. Earth has only ever had 2 sentient species (that I'm aware of) at a single time and now we're down to one.

I get around this generally by shrugging and going "well, it's fantasy" but I will still often limit selections so that I don't have to take into account too many races at once.

Denisovan, neanderthal, cromagnun, homo sapien, several cephalopods, several species in the whale super family, arguably a couple feline and canid species since we consider 70 iq "technically human level intelligence" (and that would only be the ABSOLUTE smartest dog and cat breeds and species. Some are estimated to be around that level), several non humanoid primate species, and a few birds.

Of those the ones that are likely to have exceptionally close intellect are denisovan, neanderthal, cro magnun, obviously ourselves homo sapiens, a very select few whales, a very select few cephalopods, and thats about it.

If you wanna limit it to just humanoids of human intellect, us homo sapiens, neanderthal, denisovan, and cro magnun. There was a very brief time when technically all 4 existed over lapping. This was very brief. That should tell you something.

Side note: homo sapien is generally a mixture between cro magnun, denisovan, neanderthal, and an exceedingly small amountbof a couple other hominids with the lions share made up of cro magnun. Then of the reming small amount a HUGE portion of that tiny leftover is denisovan and neanderthal with an even smaller amount being made up by very tiny quantities of other hominids sprinkled in. We are actually quite an unusual hybrid species. Quite weirdly, sub saharan africans lack neanderthal DNA. Really quite odd. Just happens to be a thing. Basically we are all cro magnun with a little sprinkling of other stuff in there though.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

More to the point, I don't think Tieflings have ever been FR specific. Isn't their native setting Planescape?

Not sure where they were absolutely first mentioned by that exact name but lords no they were never specific to FR. They were definitely mentioned before FR was itself even mentioned.

 

[gyor]

I almost never agree with @gyor on anything, but he's mostly right here. The population of Europe in 1300 (Medieval) was 79,000,000 people. If you have 100 different races (which is a hell of a lot of playable races), you still have 790,000 of that race running around the continent, not an insignificant number and well above what the UN would consider "endangered" for species of humanoid size.

In addition, you're ignoring that if you are including Underdark and undersea races, you're just ignoring two additional biomes of food-production that can support larger populations, and by extension more races.

Plus, this is just Europe. I'm literally leaving out other continents which brought up the global population to 360-432 million.

So the idea that a medieval fantasy land can't support many races through agriculture is a weak one, unless you've just arbitrarily decided to inflate all the races population size. And if you're doing that, it's on you.

And that is before factoring in stuff like the spell Plant Growth that can massively boost crop yields, races that can digest stuff that humans can't eat, and the fact that some races prefer to live on echo planes or odder places like Shadar Kai in the Shadowfell, Eladarin and Gnomes in the Feywild, Gith in the Astral Plane and Limbo, with just a small population visiting/living in the material plane. And Cloud Giants living Cloud castles, Dragons hybernating for years at a time, and more.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

And that is before factoring in stuff like the spell Plant Growth that can massively boost crop yields, races that can digest stuff that humans can't eat, and the fact that some races prefer to live on echo planes or odder places like Shadar Kai in the Shadowfell, Eladarin and Gnomes in the Feywild, Gith in the Astral Plane and Limbo, with just a small population visiting/living in the material plane. And Cloud Giants living Cloud castles, Dragons hybernating for years at a time, and more.

Lets not lose sight of the original issue. Its not realistic for there to be sustaining populations of a massive number of sentient humanoid races all in the same place. Other planes are not the same place.

 

[gyor]

Not sure where they were absolutely first mentioned by that exact name but lords no they were never specific to FR. They were definitely mentioned before FR was itself even mentioned.

No, while they aren't FR in origin, they first appeared in a Planescape product, they do not predate the Forgotten Realms.

But while Tieflings, Genasi, and Aasimar started out in Planescape, they were orphaned when WotC stopped publishing Planescape for decades, leaving FR to adopt them. I think there is now more FR lore on Planetouched then Planescape now, because FR kept getting support, Planescape did not.