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Message: <blockquote data-quote="squibbles" data-source="post: 8192957" data-attributes="member: 6937590">You already listed a set of reference works but, considering the premise of your setting, you might consider borrowing from the hollow earth genre or leaning on its tropes a bit. Even if you're doing something far from vanilla flavor, it can help to leverage archetypes your audience will recognize.Different strokes for different folks.Remember that, in addition to introducing thri-kreen, darksun retained the standard demi-humans and introduced muls--which are basically humans but big and tough. The strangeness is there as seasoning for the people who like it, but there are plenty of odd but still familiar options for less avant-garde players. That is not to say don't go for strange and off-kilter plant and mineral people, but maybe invent or reuse some humanoid creatures that are less obviously alien. They don't have to be elves. <a href="http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/192/the-seven-geases" target="_blank">Clark Ashton Smith's hollow world has snake people in it, for example.</a>I think the OSR blogosphere's <a href="https://githyankidiaspora.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/make-your-own-new-crobuzon/" target="_blank">New Crobuzon challenge</a> is a good exercise for balancing the strange with the very strange for a new weird style OSR setting:1) Take your three favorite human-ish monsters out of the Monster Manual and they are minority citizens in the city. Detail how they get along, how being in the city has culturally changed them and what niches they fill in the city. How do the powers that rule the city keep them down? 2) Take three really bizarre f[...]ing monsters and figure out how they exist in the nooks and crannies of the city and how the powers that rule the city keep these beasts from doing unacceptable amounts of damage? 3) Um…play?For your purposes, that would be the frontiers of the human enclave in the planet's interior rather than a city. <a href="https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/10/new-new-crobuzon-city-of-stones-and.html" target="_blank">Here's a page with links to some posts by other OSR types</a>.</blockquote>

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