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It depends on how exactly you classify human species, but right now it's looking like around 100,000 - 50,000 years ago or so there were at least 5 human species concurrently. Us, Neandertals, Denisovans,Homo Floresiensis (hobbit people), Luzonensis. There are quite a few additional that are...

Just for kicks, I'm going to break this down a bit. Not arguing, just curious. Aquatic: Aquatic elf, Koalinth, Kuo-toa*, Locathah, Merfolk, Sahuagin, Triton. 7 total. Extra-Planar (non-competing for resources): Githyanki, Githzerai, shadar-kai. 3 total. You could also plunk the various genasi in...

Sometimes, for fun, I make a rule that every character must have at least one surviving parent and sibling. The orphaned angsty outsider schtick gets really old. (Plus I can kill the family later.)

Except for Nebelun, literally none of that was 2e. EGG had a pretty wonky campaign. And advocated for hand-waving the ecology in favor of fun. (1e DMG)

This is where it's often very hard to put science aside. People generally think in terms of the world they know now, and that includes evolution and a skewed sense of distance. There were literally THOUSANDS of years when our species was a) not the only sentient human species (I think we're at...

The Shadowend is pretty intensely magical, with a lot of what might be considered divine "activity". D&D alchemy doesn't fit the mix well, but philosophical alchemy would. No one (including myself) has bothered getting into it though. Artificers could be justified because The Smith's Wife, has...

I've seen the two Queen books; didn't realize it was a full on series either. I'll pick it up next time I see it around.

I have a homebrew setting, so yeah, I can find a "solution" (which presupposes a problem) to including any race...but I don't want to. The setting is heavy on Celtic, Norse, & Slavic elements. Guns don't fit, artificers don't fit*, a zillion and one races don't fit. I don't use psionics or...

I'll swear I've been looking at that book since it was published but never read it. Let me know how you like it.

In theory I stick with 6-8 races per homebrew campaign setting, with a mix of familiar and new races. In practice I only ever end up running things in my homebrew Shadowend, so no half-orcs, halflings, dragonborn, and drow (and basically no tieflings), and bridge trolls, jotunar, roane, and...

Had a sleepless night last night & read The Chinese Bell Murders (Robert van Gulk) and Abhorsen (Garth Nix). The Chinese Bell Murders was solid, as usual for a Judge Dee book. Abhorsen was...a disappointment. It very much concludes the second book. Doesn't stand on its own at all; just reads...

Oh heck, yes. Pretty much anything by Piers Anthony. On the flip side, I don't think Patricia A. McKillip is in Appendix N, but the Riddlemaster of Hed is excellent and of the right era to replace older series that have not aged...well.

Finished up Judge Dee At Work last night; more good solid mysteries. There's a lot to mine in the Judge Dee books for a campaign or adventure. I'll probably read Abhorsen next; I've had it for a little while but have been miffed because I ordered a "very good" used copy and got a beat-up...

Just finished Great North Road, by Peter F Hamilton. Very good space opera. Not a light read; the book clocks in at about a thousand pages and I only finished the last 500 because I literally was able to spend the entire day doing nothing but reading. I read Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained a...

It's A Brief History of the Normans: The Conquests that Changed the Face of Europe, by Francois Neveux, translated by Howard Curtis.

I'll get you an author soon. Right now it's in my, ah, "throne room". 😁. It's interesting reading & fills in gaps in my knowledge. Could use more maps though.

Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog, by Boris Akunin. Rather good and enjoyable, except that the translator has followed the author's and russian tradition of using all the parts of a characters name at different times in different combinations (XYZ might be XY, or Z, or X, or XYZ...), which is...

My article in Dragon magazine is still the most money I've ever been paid for RPG writing. I was not displeased. And then they announced 3e the same month my (half) article came out.... Hats off to the editors, though. I got one proposal back with notes from three different people.

Finished A Serpent In Venice. it was...alright. Fool was much better. Read The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, by Theodora Goss. It was fine but suffered from a serious case of Spunky Heroine (x5). I'm all for more female protagonists, but these were cliche and pretty one-dimensional...

Finished Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Fewer spiders. Definite undertones of David Brin's Uplift Saga and CJ Cherryh's "aliens think different" mentality. Finished Provenance, by Ann Leckie. Still not sure if I've read the 3rd book in her trilogy, but this is same universe and it...