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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ptolemy18" data-source="post: 1963530" data-attributes="member: 24970">I just felt that there wasn't enough cultural variety between dwarves, gnomes and halflings, so I merged them all into one race.For this particular campaign world, I felt that I'd rather come up with lots of different cultural varieties for a few core races, instead of just having another goofy race of monstrous humanoids living every few miles along the road.I also wanted to reduce the number of races with which humans coexist peacefully... since in the evolutionary-historical example you mention, even though humans coexisted for awhile with other humanoid races, they DID eventually wipe them out either through genocide or interbreeding. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> There may be a lot of species on Earth, but there aren't a lot of intelligent species. Of course, D&D doesn't have to be that cynical, since as you point out, each race might have their own patron deity or other advantages which would keep them from getting overrun (like magical aptitude for the little races, on top of the burrowing & living-in-small-places and stuff).Here's how it breaks down in my own boring homebrew:Gnomes' main advantage, as I see it, is that they live longer than humans... which probably means that they produce more high-level wizards and clerics and experts and other classes that don't depend on physical youth (or am I over-thinking this?). <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> But anyway, I'm trying to make the 'gnomes' from every different part of the world distinct.Elves, of course, are even more long-lived and magical than gnomes... but I'm using the idea that they are SUPER-rare and basically xenophobic and just live in a few out-of-the-way places (the classical "elfland" type place). Most people don't even know about them.Orcs and half-orcs, on the other hand, just take the place of the "barbaric people who live in some godforsaken place and have grown to be really tough and short-lived since they constantly have to fight creatures even more monstrous than they are." I'm using regular orcs and the ngoloko "African half-orcs" from NYAMBE: AFRICAN ADVENTURES. Goblins and goblinoids (hobgoblins, bugbears) are the most numerous races which generally aren't accepted in human society. I'm trying to give them a lot of cultural variety too, but basically I'm acting on the assumption that although some of them are more peaceful than others, they're all sort of innately chaotic and short-lived and prone to insanity (though immune to "insanity" and "confusion" spells). This is totally the opposite of the D&D lawful evil goblinoids, of course, but it seems in keeping with the "classic" idea of goblins. I'm also assuming/making up the idea that kobolds are related to goblins, rather than being reptilians.Then after that, getting into the "races which human beings, orcs and gnomes attack on sight", we have the lizardfolk, troglodytes, kuo-toa, sahuagin, and yuan-ti, and all the other reptilians. And then trace amounts of whatever weird race I happen to feel like adding. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Jason</blockquote>

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