Campaign Help Request: Races for Post-Apoc Sy-Fantasy

[QuietBrowser]

Post-Apocalyptic Science-Fantasy. It's a niche subgenre of the technically already niche genre of science-fantasy, but, long story short, I want to make myself a setting in that vein, inspired by the likes of Visionaries, Thundaar the Barbarian, Rifts and Gamma World.


I have the first major setting design obstacle - the interaction between Science and Sorcery - overcome. Yes, I can elaborate on that if folks wish it. But that presents me with the other major problem: races.


I'm having trouble figuring out what races to include, and I was hoping that folks here would be willing to help me talk it over and deduce what are good fits?


The basic idea in my head is that, aside from the ubiquitous Humans, races fall into at least two major categories:


The Created are those races who originate from before The Big Doom, robots, genetically engineered life forms, and so forth; these are the "science" races.


Then, you have the Goblins (placeholder name); these are those races who were created by The Big Doom, the "magic" races who were summoned (or mutated from human/animal stock, ala Shadowrun) into this world when magic so violently returned.


I was also thinking of using the racial feats mechanic to allow a way to provide "template races". For example, rather than make "Cyborg" its own race, it's a race-modding feat that represents your character having been augmented with cybernetic parts to the point of gaining the Living Construct racial feature.


So... yeah, is anyone interesteds in giving me a hand?


Incidentally, this setting of mine is not going to be full on "Macho Women With Guns D20" style tongue-in-cheek, but it's a definite throwback to the 80s/90s action-fantasy and action-sci-fi of my youth, so a bit of cheese(cake) is not unwelcome. For example, an amazon race descended from bio-engineered catgirl (or bunnygirl, or kitsune) living sex toys who survived the destruction by going feral...

 

[QuietBrowser]

or what it's worth, here's my current and extremely vague draft of races - As you can see, it's a short list and that's why I was really hoping to go over my possibilities with people here.

Created:
>Nekorons: GELF catgirls created to be living sex-toys. Now exist in two forms; "Tame" ones survive by integrating into human settlements, "Ferals" have become fierce amazon scavengers who zealously guard themselves from slavers.
>Ratlings: Lab rats who reacted better to the experimental brain enhancers than expected. Now evolved into a fluent race of scavengers and techno-sorcerers in their own rights.
>Fluffles: A bunnygirl variant of the Nekorons.

Goblins:
>Gnomoi: Small, intelligent fey beings who seem to have come from Elsewhere. Equally strong affinity for Science and Sorcerer; they're master Mekanicians and Teknotheurges.
>Tieflings: Lesser demons that escaped from their own hostile world into this one and are now enjoying their freedom.
>Nephalim: Lesser celestials that have become stranded in this world.
>Drakkon: Embryonic dragon spirits thrust into this world during the Big Doom, forcing them into lesser shapes. Come in two different subraces, essentially Kobolds and Dragonborn.

Templates:
>Cyborg: Living entity transmuted into a cybernetic version of itself.

 

[Satyrn]

I mean, other than the living sex toys, the list looks fine to me and looks to hit the sweet spot for number of choices.

 

[Satyrn]

As for other Created, have you already discounted the obvious Brain-in-a-jar-Bot?

 

[QuietBrowser]

I mean, other than the living sex toys, the list looks fine to me and looks to hit the sweet spot for number of choices.

As for other Created, have you already discounted the obvious Brain-in-a-jar-Bot?

I should have mentioned; one of my inspirations for this setting was Gamma World D20, where... well, let's just say humanity didn't exactly use its genetic engineering and AI tech wisely. Still, it was suggested to me on /tg/ that it would be better to make them more like subraces of a general "design a petgirl" based race, and I agree that's probably better.

As for Created... well, one of the things I had planned for this setting is that magic's return fried the vast majority of AI, which is one of the reasons why society devolved into post-apocalyptic ruin; you know how much we depend on AI even today? But, more human-like machines had a chance to survive, as the magic reacted to the combination of their frame and their coding to grant them full-fledged souls.

So, yeah, robots and androids are definitely one option, I just need to figure out the more specific details. For example, is there a singular mechanoid "race", or is "Robot" a generic Living Construct race with subraces based on original functions?

 

[Satyrn]

I should have mentioned; one of my inspirations for this setting was Gamma World D20, where... well, let's just say humanity didn't exactly use its genetic engineering and AI tech wisely. Still, it was suggested to me on /tg/ that it would be better to make them more like subraces of a general "design a petgirl" based race, and I agree that's probably better.

It still feels icky to me, but whatever. I'm not suggesting you not (ugh) use them.




Anyway, I agree with the suggestion from /tg/ that you make 'em all one race. I was gonna suggest doing the same thing.

 

[Eltab]

I forget which Gamma World version had Podogs descend from a big guard dog that was genetically uplifted by its owner so it could make intelligent decisions in the event of fire / break-in / kidnapping attempt. Some of the races could be based on the animals humans find useful and wish were intelligent: dog, horse, dolphin?, eagle / hawk, elephant.

Then there's the stuff you wish would never have evolved at all: killer bee swarms, giant killer bees, mosquitos (Soul Besh), T-Rex with Velociraptor young, necrotizing fasciitis (flesh-eating) bacteria, germs even more potent than Zika or Black Plague. Poison Ivy that can try to wrap you up. Pick a plant (assassin vines and yellow creepers from Tomb of Annihilation) that, if it had a brain, would find everything else living to be a natural prey or fertilizer.

 

[gyor]

If your going to have a engineered sex slave race watch out for the Sexdroid race = Metaphor for human slave trade trope which is over don't and goofy.

If someone goes to the effect of making a custom designed race/robots/bionoids race for sexual srrvice why would they make them in such a way that they hate their servitude and they hate sex? But this keeps happening in Sci Fi/Fantasy and the designers of these beings as morons is lame.

This is actually true of any race of servents, not just sex ones too, like if I build a race to build bridges, I'm not going to create beings that prefer to go fishing and that have the instinctual preference for freedom.

There is how I'd design a race that was engineered to be willing slaves.

First off an inheriant reward mechanism for service, obienance triggers reward centres of the brain, concepts of personal freedom end up tied directly to the fear centres, maybe to the point of abaddonment issues. Like what we basically did to dogs as a species sort of.

Next if a sex slave boost the natural libido related parts of the brain, and make sure the stress parts of the brain are greatly dimished, so they aren't miserable, a happy slave species is a complacenent and easily controlled race.

If its warrior servants, make them rational killers, not out of control barbarians that could turn on you and innocents in the heat of battle.

Imprinting, like a duck seeing its mom have your slave race imprint on either its owner or your species in general if its to ve collective ownership, think the Jem'hadar.

So for the most part you want 95% of your slave species emotions to be positive and even pleasurable so descent is miniumal if existant at all, and negative emotions should be reserved for discouraging particular behaviors, any desire for freedom, and for basic survival (the possiblity of being eaten by a nearby monster causes fear pushing them to survice).

 

[aco175]

You can have breeds of humans or offshoots now as separate races that are workers and thinkers. I find myself thinking that I would ask the question if I was playing- Which one is like and elf that casts magic. I keep thinking that it is like DnD, but renamed so why not use basically the same names, but add a couple more for your unique setting.