D&D General how are stories infused with a race?

[Professor Murder]

Another way to make a fantasy race stand out are unique resources, goods, and skills. Elves having access to magical skill and training others lack or Dwarves being smiths of supernatural ability are possible. You can also just have a given people inhabit lands that's the sole source of a desirable resource, like say having the ancient wood in which the Firbolg dwell have tree that produce magical fruit. This creates means of both trade and conflict and can help to set up "typical" relationships between communities.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Entitled by centuries of market economy, Customers are the bane of the land. Everywhere they settle, not unlike a plague of locust, their appetites incite other into turning everything into goods for them to consume.

Customer Traits:

• Ability Score Increase. Increase one ability score by 2, and increase a different one by 1.
• Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language that you and your DM agree is appropriate for the character.
• Creature Type. You are a Humanoid.
• Size. You are Medium. If your favorite product is fast food, you can be Large, too.
• Speed. Your walking speed is 30 feet.
• Darkvision. Countless nights spent on shopping website have given you the ability to see thing in dim light.
• Compulsive purchase. You're proficient in Shopper Tools. You can also summon any object worth less than 100 gp out of your shopping bags. You can use this power proficiency bonus times per long rest.
• Nature's Bane. You have advantage against spells cast by a Druid.
• Questgiver. Instead of going out adventuring, you prefer to sit in dark corner of a tavern (due to your natural Darkvision), smoking a pipe, and waiting for an adventurous group to hire them to do it for you.

What about Summon Manager 1/week?

 

[overgeeked]

I am bad at trope recognition one is fairly religious and cultish the other is needing a rewrite.

There you go. Find some info about religious zealots and cults. Look for general ideas about how they are viewed and play them up.

What is the physical description of you zealous / cultish race?

Another poster mentioned playing with relationships. That’s great advice. Your new race will have a history, allies, and enemies. Those will help define your race.

pure otherness is hard for anyone to rp and only works for monsters.

Yes and no. It’s hard but it’s not just for monsters.

 

[overgeeked]

What about Summon Manager 1/week?

Karen?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Karen?

Released!

 

[Mind of tempest]

There you go. Find some info about religious zealots and cults. Look for general ideas about how they are viewed and play them up.

What is the physical description of you zealous / cultish race?

Another poster mentioned playing with relationships. That’s great advice. Your new race will have a history, allies, and enemies. Those will help define your race.

Yes and no. It’s hard but it’s not just for monsters.

It was these guys if you were there,
three - eyes stare out from an oversized cranium it’s w shaped pupils scan the world rapidly, six tentacles surround its wide mouth writhing when the creature is pleased.

It lacks a nose or any trace of nostrils. Its mouth brings to mind a skeleton with the sight of its teeth and fierce appearance. a body covered in clammy skin, possessing four arms with six digits, and long legs ending in wide splayed toes that form a crescent shape.

They possess bony armour over their torsos and parts of their heads with what resembles gemstones set in them, this bone armour has parts of it the call to mind seashells and in other parts the leaves of ferns in its latticework. their bone plating comes in a variety of metallic shades, highlighted by bright flourishes of flesh.

they got an aesthetic but I can't hammer out one story let alone the three stories I would need for the different cultures to not just be making a monoculture.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

OK. Very alien physiology. Almost like aberrations.

One subculture could be religious zealots, seeking to remake the world in accord with their deity’s edicts.

And countering them, an ascetic, isolationist group.

Perhaps these beings had an empire and some want to reclaim it.

In their alien-ness, they may have desires and practices that evade our understanding. Like…a pathological fear/hated of all things with wings. Or an all consuming list for particular shades of blue. They eat things we cannot.

Figure out WHY they’re so different in form, and you might be inspired to figure out the things that flow…errr “naturally” from that.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I think we would all agree that races have stories as part of them with tieflings and the half races being outsiders, halflings being the humble people and so on

what I want to know is how they are infused and what examples there are as I want to get my custom race working properly?

If I'm reading this correctly, you're basically asking "how do I attach a story to a race that I just have the mechanics of?". Is that accurate? Like "Tieflings are often outcasts from their societies due to their Devil blood, as are Aasimar and Genasi" and you're asking how to build a race's story/identity from just the mechanics of them (not just the in-game mechanics, but also the lore-mechanics of how they came to be in the world). Correct me if I'm misreading any of this.

This was actually a part of the core premise of this thread of mine. The premise was "cultures of the player races in a world are developed through the context of the world and what mechanically sets them apart from humans". Warforged are taken advantage of in Eberron because, up until recently, they were treated as golems enslaved by the 5 nations to serve (and die) in their war so that the "normal races" wouldn't have to, Kalashtar are refugees from their oppressive homeland with mystical powers and harmful stereotypes that makes others shun them, and Shifters are persecuted due to the fact that they're related to Lycanthropes, and were almost completely wiped out by a Church-driven genocide a few decades ago.

The point that I'm trying to get across here is that the race's "story" is built by three main things:

1. Their lore-based identity that sets them apart from humans (Warforged are "living constructs" with souls, Shifters are lycanthrope-folk, Kalashtar are psionic humans bonded with an alien entity, Planetouched are part-demon/elemental/celestial/fey, et cetera.)
2. How they came to be in the world, typically in a manner that is different from the origins of humans in this setting (Warforged were created by a magical corporation to serve in the Last War, Shifters are descended from Lycanthropes, Kalashtar were created when Quori fled to the Material Plane to merge with humans, Planetouched are the result of inter-planar crossbreeding, and so on.)
3. What game-mechanics set them apart from humans (Warforged don't have to eat, drink, breathe, sleep, and so on, Shifters can become more "feral" temporarily, Kalashtar don't dream and are telepathic, Planetouched have some characteristics of their otherworldly parent.)

From what you described in a recent post, this race answers these questions like this:

1. They are heavily devoted to . . . something. Cult-like. This would probably end up making them be hated/disliked by most other races, especially ones that don't worship the same entities/gods.
2. They seem to be connected to the Far Realm based on their description. Even if they aren't, their physical appearance alone is probably going to result in the people of the world not being all that fond of them.
3. They have four arms. Think about how that would influence their culture. They would be great artists, warriors, and spellcasters if they set their minds to it. Their mouths' tentacles writhe when they're happy, so they wouldn't have any emotional response to seeing someone smile, and would instead have that response based on the tentacle-writhing motion. They don't have a nose, so they probably wouldn't have any sense of smell and wouldn't care about living in filthy environments. (This could further alienate them from other races, with them having the stereotype of being filthy, emotionless monsters that worship an evil god/entity that want to end the world, or something similar to that.)

I hope this helps.

 

[aco175]

It was these guys if you were there,
three - eyes stare out from an oversized cranium it’s w shaped pupils scan the world rapidly, six tentacles surround its wide mouth writhing when the creature is pleased.

It lacks a nose or any trace of nostrils. Its mouth brings to mind a skeleton with the sight of its teeth and fierce appearance. a body covered in clammy skin, possessing four arms with six digits, and long legs ending in wide splayed toes that form a crescent shape.

They possess bony armour over their torsos and parts of their heads with what resembles gemstones set in them, this bone armour has parts of it the call to mind seashells and in other parts the leaves of ferns in its latticework. their bone plating comes in a variety of metallic shades, highlighted by bright flourishes of flesh.

they got an aesthetic but I can't hammer out one story let alone the three stories I would need for the different cultures to not just be making a monoculture.

If I read this to my players, they would think undead or beholder-like and likely attack it.

Trying to come up with a story should first start by finding their role and niche. With their 4 arms- are they good at something like carving or smithing? Races used to have physical traits like great strength or intelligence and the race would follow with a role.

Somehow I'm picturing the Lost in Space robot.

 

[overgeeked]

As a player, here are my thoughts...

It was these guys if you were there,
three - eyes stare out from an oversized cranium it’s w shaped pupils scan the world rapidly, six tentacles surround its wide mouth writhing when the creature is pleased.

It's related to an ilithid or beholder.

It lacks a nose or any trace of nostrils. Its mouth brings to mind a skeleton with the sight of its teeth and fierce appearance. a body covered in clammy skin, possessing four arms with six digits, and long legs ending in wide splayed toes that form a crescent shape.

Definitely an aberration.

They possess bony armour over their torsos and parts of their heads with what resembles gemstones set in them

I'm going to harvest those gemstones.

this bone armour has parts of it the call to mind seashells and in other parts the leaves of ferns in its latticework. their bone plating comes in a variety of metallic shades, highlighted by bright flourishes of flesh.

I'm going to harvest the armor bits and wear and/or sell them.

they got an aesthetic but I can't hammer out one story let alone the three stories I would need for the different cultures to not just be making a monoculture.

You won't need to worry about any story. Your players are going to attack these things on sight and try to find where the XP is hiding. Considering the physical appearance, you'll likely need a positive or at least soft introduction to these things. By that I mean introduce one as a flat-out necessary ally of the PCs. Anything less than that and they'll likely attack on sight.

As mentioned, all you need to do is pick one aspect and make each faction focus on that. One is the cultish faction. One is the zealous faction. And the third is trying to keep the peace between them. Or have each faction have a slightly different history and access to resources...which produces different enemies and allies, etc.