Creation or Evolution?

[Mercule]

My homebrew is explicitly creation, but some races have evolved and adapted.

Two cases in particular are of note: elves, by virtue of being partially fey and their inherent magical nature, tend to "evolve" to fit their surroundings. That isn't to say all the annoying subraces exist, just that there is a lot more variance between some of the elven nations than one would expect, given the limited number of generations.

The other are yetis, which are essentially/statistically feral gargun from RoS. They are evolved polar bears, with no magic influence to their upraising, other than the nature of a fantasy world.

 

[the Jester]

In my campaign, I use both creationism and evolution to describe the origins of the various races.

In 'official' terms it depends on the campaign world. If you look at Mystara it's all about creation/engineering by the Immortals. If you look at 1e you'll find lots of references to evolution- the fire lizard as ancestor to the red dragon, githyanki and githzerai as an evolved type of human, etc. Obviously a lot of that has gone by the wayside, between not having fire lizards around anymore and the egg-laying gith stuff.

 

[Pinotage]

Divine creation with microevolution (finch beaks and such) is the way I do it.

Yip. Same model I use. I have in the past also dabbled with the idea of a world or race created by an extraplanar race of not necessarily divine beings, but powerful ones. That way you have 'godly' created creatures, and 'power' created creatures. Microevolution or interspecies breeding or magically created creatures almost go without saying in my worlds.

Pinotage

 

[Dr. Harry]

How about in your world: have the races evolved into their present state, or did the gods (or whatever) create them as is? How about the various subraces?

As a caveat, I prefer a more low-magic world, because I'd like the players suspension of disbelief to be as easy as possible, and more importantly the players should be able to reasonably be able to smoothly shift into thinking "in-world".

My absolute favorite creation story is Tolkien's, from the silmarillion. In my world, humans and natural creatures evolved, with the powers who were charged with acting as stewards for them manifesting in the world as the humans are ready for them.

The introduction of magic allowed for some catastrophic & even created "mutations", ad enabled Lamarkian evolution (where features can change because the creatures "need" them to change over generations).

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Depends on the setting, really-- its cosmology and history. Dark Sun, for instance, is thoroughly steeped in themes of evolution, and there's numerous examples of mutation. There is even a magical artifact (in structural form) that causes large-scale mutations in anyone injured in its vicinity.

Obviously, the post-apocalyptic influence of Dark Sun imposes certain evolutionary concepts.

Most fantasy settings, however, do not feature evolution-- in subraces or otherwise. The races were created as they are by their gods, and any change hence comes from the evolution of sociology, not physiology. Since this social evolution is heavily influenced by the gods, through their priests, it could be considered the long-term strategy of the gods in their struggle for supremacy.

As a rule of thumb, unless the setting is based on societies and cultures that can be compared to post-Darwinian Earth, life was created as-is by the gods (or other powerful entities). Artificial evolution, such as imposed by the Illithids, is a common feature of aberrations and cannot be linked to any kind of physical law. (I'm seriously pondering whether or not the Xixchil qualify as Aberrations, as envisioned by Beyond the Moons.)

What I'm having problems with is when there is an intersection between settings which hold contradictory views-- there's a project on Planewalker called Urban Planescape, that involves a modernized form of the Planescape setting. Some interpretations simply involve a technologically aware Multiverse, while others involve the reintroduction of our real-life universe to the Planes. I'm personally working on a crossover between the Star*Drive and Planescape settings.

If one world (or worse, universe) contains a fossil record that clearly indicates the existence of proto-humans (Int 3-4 primates bridging the gap between animal and humanoid) and another provides clear evidence that the humanoid races were created as-is by the gods, how do you reconcile this?

For example, in my crossover, I have decided to conflate the races of Kobolds and the T'sa. The T'sa, it turns out, are the long-lost metallic tribes, deprived of their magic (and a good deal of their coloration) by the loss of most magical energy to our galaxy. I've decided that the Oortlings (another victim of Illithid bioengineering) were originally derived from the Fraal/Thaal. I'm still working out the details of the I'krl/Illithid relationship, but I've decided they are not one and the same.

I'm just trying to figure out how to reconcile these-- and worse, the exsistence of identical species in alternate universes in which humanity was created, as-is, before they even evolved in our universe. (Thankfully, most Primes seem to set the creation of humanity within the last 10k years.)

 

[demiurge1138]

I like the idea of evolution and creation co-existing. The gods may or may not have set evolution into motion, but they are known to take its products and shape them into more pleasing forms (as in, forms that worship them).

Demiurge out.

 

[carpedavid]

Divine creation with microevolution (finch beaks and such) is the way I do it.

It's worth noting that macroevolution is simply the accumulation of enough microevolutionary changes to be able to call something a different species. From a natural selection standpoint, if you've got one, you've automatically got the other.

At least, that's how it works in our physical world. In a fantasy setting, all bets are off. In my world, in particular, I've got four "elder" races that were created by the gods. Those species evolved into sub-races based upon environmental conditions.

They also interbred with other creatures (who, in a non-fantasy setting, they wouldn't be genetically compatible with (not to mention physically compatible with)) to produce the "blooded" races: half-elves, half-demons, half-dragons, etc. In my world, half-elves/demons/dragons mate to produce more half-elves/demons/dragons.

To echo fusangite's statement, though, many of the old notions of evolution (or even of the origin of life: spontaneous generation, anyone?) would work quite well for fantasy worlds.

 

[Tonguez]

My setting uses a system of Divine Evolution

ie the gods are divine ancestors and all things in the world are their children/grandchildren etc ad infinitum

On this basis the god Tangaloa had a son named Punga who had a daughter named Mokoalii and a son named Mangoroa.
Mokoalii is the ancestor of all Dragons, while Mangoroa is the ancestor of Sharks and Sea Serpents. One of Mangoroa's shark progeny is Sekola the mother of the Sahuagin

Punga is also ancestor of reptiles, octopus and abberations and the patron god of half-orcs

As an aside the Linnaeus taxonomy (Family-Genus-Specis) a lot of us learnt at school is a creationist model (established in 1741) based on the theory that each created type (Genus) is able to modify its self to suit the environment (species) so (for instance) we have canis lupus (wolf) and canis familiaris (dog) both evolved from the created canidae (Family) whether this translates to homo aelifdae superior (High Elf) or Draco Argentium well thats up to you

 

[Wilphe]

I'm just going to have to say:

"Hyperspeed Lamarkian Evolution" and "Insane Wizards"


Musn't forget the Insane wizards.

 

[Baron Opal]

For me it's a combination of Creationism and Lamarkian evolution for the majority of sophonts. The mind flayers, sahaugin and many other abberations are from Darwinian evolution.

Something about that dichotomy amuses me.