D&D General How far from the source can we stray?

[Mind of tempest]

I am a firm believer that restrictions and constraints spur creativity! There's nothing more difficult to work with than a completely blank slate IMO.

My hollow-earth approach is heavily informed by Mystara's Hollow World in many ways, but I want far more room for exploration and discovery. I like the Jules Verne "what is even out there?" approach to the idea.

I've never heard of Pellucidar or The Coming Race; I'll look into them.

The cacatacae from Bas-Lag are one of my inspirations for the plant folk, though I think I want mine to be more vine based.

Doing them as an insectoid-plant mix is an interesting concept, too . . .

it helps if you make more than one stereotype of plantfolk like:
the rift valley plant folk are in harmony with nature and such.
the jungle plantfolk are hyper-violent hunters and so on.
but with commonalities running through all of them.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I didn't include gods, demons, devils, angels, dragons - just the "playable races" and gave it a wild-ass guess based on browsing too many fandom.wiki pages about the Realms.

I was just thinking of PC races and similar, I wasn’t even thinking about extraplanar beings

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Most D&D games, and their derivatives, hew closely to Tolkien's ideas and themes (many of which predate Tolkien, but his work is commonly viewed as a starting point for their appearance in fantasy). The standard setup of humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings populate nearly every fantasy world created since, with some notable outliers. A few attempts have been made to break free of this paradigm; Dark Sun radically reinvented the wheel, and Talislanta tried to abandon it completely.

There's no particular need to hew to Tolkien.

It used to be received wisdom that to sell to the mass-market, you needed dwarves and elves (but no others). However, if that was ever true, at some point it stopped being true.

For the mass-market, what you need is archetypes, not specific races. People get it - if you put in a big strong race, a lithe graceful one, and so on, people will play them. You do probably need humans or something very like them if you're going to be non-niche, but that's about it. You certainly don't need dwarves or even a dwarf-type archetype (i.e. short and tough). You'd do better, I'd suggest, with a game that had say, humans, devil-people, big strong people, lizard people, and graceful plant people than you would with a setting that had humans, elves, dwarves, halflings and a couple of half-variants (which would be the Tolkien approach).

So I think when you're looking at what you're offering race-wise in a setting, there are two main considerations:

1) How tight do you want the setting to be, how specific. The tighter, the more specific, the fewer races you offer, and the less you want Tolkienian races to get in the mix (unless that is very specifically the idea).

2) What archetypes are you offering. Certain players tend to be drawn to certain archetypes, and whilst people can be very judgmental and even a bit childish about these, it helps to think about who would want to play what. Some games have races that just basically no-one is going to play, either because they don't fit an archetype, or they're an inferior version of the archetype to another race, and at that point you maybe want to question why that race is in the setting at all.

 

[Mind of tempest]

There's no particular need to hew to Tolkien.

It used to be received wisdom that to sell to the mass-market, you needed dwarves and elves (but no others). However, if that was ever true, at some point it stopped being true.

For the mass-market, what you need is archetypes, not specific races. People get it - if you put in a big strong race, a lithe graceful one, and so on, people will play them. You do probably need humans or something very like them if you're going to be non-niche, but that's about it. You certainly don't need dwarves or even a dwarf-type archetype (i.e. short and tough). You'd do better, I'd suggest, with a game that had say, humans, devil-people, big strong people, lizard people, and graceful plant people than you would with a setting that had humans, elves, dwarves, halflings and a couple of half-variants (which would be the Tolkien approach).

So I think when you're looking at what you're offering race-wise in a setting, there are two main considerations:

1) How tight do you want the setting to be, how specific. The tighter, the more specific, the fewer races you offer, and the less you want Tolkienian races to get in the mix (unless that is very specifically the idea).

2) What archetypes are you offering. Certain players tend to be drawn to certain archetypes, and whilst people can be very judgmental and even a bit childish about these, it helps to think about who would want to play what. Some games have races that just basically no-one is going to play, either because they don't fit an archetype, or they're an inferior version of the archetype to another race, and at that point you maybe want to question why that race is in the setting at all.

can you give examples?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

can you give examples?

Can you specify which part of that you'd like examples of? Do you mean the archetypes? If so happy to, but let me know.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Can you specify which part of that you'd like examples of? Do you mean the archetypes? If so happy to, but let me know.

both ideally as I know five archetypes but would like to know if more exist.

plus examples can be useful in all learning.

 

[Ath'kethin]

There's no particular need to hew to Tolkien.

It used to be received wisdom that to sell to the mass-market, you needed dwarves and elves (but no others). However, if that was ever true, at some point it stopped being true.

For the mass-market, what you need is archetypes, not specific races. People get it - if you put in a big strong race, a lithe graceful one, and so on, people will play them. You do probably need humans or something very like them if you're going to be non-niche, but that's about it. You certainly don't need dwarves or even a dwarf-type archetype (i.e. short and tough). You'd do better, I'd suggest, with a game that had say, humans, devil-people, big strong people, lizard people, and graceful plant people than you would with a setting that had humans, elves, dwarves, halflings and a couple of half-variants (which would be the Tolkien approach).

So I think when you're looking at what you're offering race-wise in a setting, there are two main considerations:

1) How tight do you want the setting to be, how specific. The tighter, the more specific, the fewer races you offer, and the less you want Tolkienian races to get in the mix (unless that is very specifically the idea).

2) What archetypes are you offering. Certain players tend to be drawn to certain archetypes, and whilst people can be very judgmental and even a bit childish about these, it helps to think about who would want to play what. Some games have races that just basically no-one is going to play, either because they don't fit an archetype, or they're an inferior version of the archetype to another race, and at that point you maybe want to question why that race is in the setting at all.

My reach is small enough that I think my market isn't going to be too "mass" no matter what I do.

1) Here's the challenge: I want to emulate the 3.5 Eberron setting, in the approach that "if it exists in D&D, it has a place" philosophy. Eberron has very distinct takes on halflings, gnomes, and elves, but also provides new and stranger options alongside havens for more traditional versions of the Tolkien 3.

Despite this philosophy, of course, Eberron wasted little space on the old guard options. Hobbit style halflings (which really haven't existed much post-Dragonlance and Dark Sun anyway IME) seem far less interesting than the fierce dinosaur riders, and even tinker gnomes look quaint next to Eberron's Zilargo secret police.

And the more I develop my ideas, the less I care about the Tolkien options at all. They don't seem tired to me, necessarily - I can make a compelling dwarf or elf or whatever the same as I can a kenku or a goliath or a genasai or whatever - but I have a rough time seeing a place for them. I guess that, in much the same way nothing stops you from having orcs or drow elves in your personal Dragonlance game if that's your thing, I can just focus on what I create and let others worry about the hobbits.

2) I had been thinking of archetypes, and looking at how some other games (i.e. not D&D or obvious derivatives) handle them. Through that lens, it's easier to see why some people have a rough time with gnomes and halflings and why they both exist. Never mind gnome and halfling subraces.

So if the archetypes are

1. Stalwart Bruiser Who Doesn't Like/Trust Magic
2. Lithe Magic-Intensive Prankster
3. Homebody Who Is Small And Sneaky

They're easy to backfill. Hell, we could just reskin existing options - "they aren't elves, they're cat-people!" - and run with it with probably no one the wiser. Though that approach runs the risk of running into Talislanta's "no seriously, that's not an elf (even though it looks and acts just like one)" issue.

So I'm looking to expressly invite people to use any D&D tropes or clichés they like, while simultaneously abandoning those tropes as much as possible. Sounds easy!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

both ideally as I know five archetypes but would like to know if more exist.

plus examples can be useful in all learning.

Some aside from humans, some of the basic archetypes which people tend to want are:

1) "Big strong guy" - this could be a Goliath, a Minotaur, a Dragonborn or whatever. Basically you want a race that averages like 7' tall (at least) and is very strong. They probably also have some kind of bravery/warrior-honour-based culture.

2) "Otherworldly/fey" - Usually these are agile and capricious. They could be elves, or they could be fairies or they could be plant-people or they could be something else entirely.

3) "Animal person" - Not going to get into Furries/Scalies or anything, but people love animal-people races. D&D has quite a few, which is I think an ironic result of them not being core until Dragonborn, but being much in demand. But there's frogs, cats, multiple birds, and so on. It's honestly shocking D&D doesn't have a famous dog/wolf race, probably because it would be puke-inducingly popular - might well happen in 6E of course.

4) "Little sassy people" - Hobbits or Moogles or just any number of short, sassy, cute little beings. Certain people love this kind of thing. I blame Tolkien.

5) "Darksider" - Drow, Dhampirs, Tieflings, whatever. A gothic-looking race with a bad reputation that is at least partially unfair. They probably have some kind of weird powers which spook people a bit.

 

[Mind of tempest]

My reach is small enough that I think my market isn't going to be too "mass" no matter what I do.

1) Here's the challenge: I want to emulate the 3.5 Eberron setting, in the approach that "if it exists in D&D, it has a place" philosophy. Eberron has very distinct takes on halflings, gnomes, and elves, but also provides new and stranger options alongside havens for more traditional versions of the Tolkien 3.

Despite this philosophy, of course, Eberron wasted little space on the old guard options. Hobbit style halflings (which really haven't existed much post-Dragonlance and Dark Sun anyway IME) seem far less interesting than the fierce dinosaur riders, and even tinker gnomes look quaint next to Eberron's Zilargo secret police.

And the more I develop my ideas, the less I care about the Tolkien options at all. They don't seem tired to me, necessarily - I can make a compelling dwarf or elf or whatever the same as I can a kenku or a goliath or a genasai or whatever - but I have a rough time seeing a place for them. I guess that, in much the same way nothing stops you from having orcs or drow elves in your personal Dragonlance game if that's your thing, I can just focus on what I create and let others worry about the hobbits.

2) I had been thinking of archetypes, and looking at how some other games (i.e. not D&D or obvious derivatives) handle them. Through that lens, it's easier to see why some people have a rough time with gnomes and halflings and why they both exist. Never mind gnome and halfling subraces.

So if the archetypes are

1. Stalwart Bruiser Who Doesn't Like/Trust Magic
2. Lithe Magic-Intensive Prankster
3. Homebody Who Is Small And Sneaky

They're easy to backfill. Hell, we could just reskin existing options - "they aren't elves, they're cat-people!" - and run with it with probably no one the wiser. Though that approach runs the risk of running into Talislanta's "no seriously, that's not an elf (even though it looks and acts just like one)" issue.

So I'm looking to expressly invite people to use any D&D tropes or clichés they like, while simultaneously abandoning those tropes as much as possible. Sounds easy!

you tried remixing the archetypes as Stalwart Bruiser Who Doesn't Like/Trust Magic is well known but twist it a bit like make them hate all non-wizard non-artificer magic and spurning the gods in general, is different add a cool aesthetic and people would give it a go.

 

[Ath'kethin]

you tried remixing the archetypes as Stalwart Bruiser Who Doesn't Like/Trust Magic is well known but twist it a bit like make them hate all non-wizard non-artificer magic and spurning the gods in general, is different add a cool aesthetic and people would give it a go.

Another conceit of the setting idea is that all magic is believed to come from Lovecraftian-elder-god-style monstrosities - magic is feared and distrusted even moreso than it is (or should be) in most settings.

It's an idea I like but is on the chopping block; it has the real potential to derail the whole setting from a playability perspective. After all, it isn't exactly fun to play a character nobody trusts, even if the player "knew what they were signing up for" going into the role.