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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hewligan" data-source="post: 3348703" data-attributes="member: 19688">It sounds a bit like the book I am writing. The elves tried to kill the Gods of men, and were pretty much hounded close to extinction for doing so. They have lost their high magic, and faded from view - a real border race. The dwarves live above ground as often as below, and in fact even their mountain kingdoms are all about ore extraction, with the cities largely built on to the mountains. Some shave, some don't, but they all care about appearance and are not your DnD dwarves. They are traders, filling a niche, working with whatever races they need to.I have no orcs, but I have 2 other races that fill that void. 1, the Narkash, are the traditional baddies, except that they are intelligent, often beautiful, if rather close to barbarism. The second are a deep dwelling race that have toughened back and head plates, large hands with boney, clawing fingers, flabby skin (almost like seal skin), and huge round eyes that force them to wear darkened gogles when in the sun (rare). They are not cookie-cutter evil, just intensely protective of their own, and willing to do what is required to safeguard themselves.My goblins are called Herdak. They are an underclass in the human realms. They tend to fill the slums, and often are the backbone of most illicit trades.Magic is dead, or was, but traces of it are awakening.More importantly, my hero is not a hero. I deliberately started with the old cliche -boy in exile finds out he is son of king with a unique power, and a fate to destroy some ancient evil artifact. The truth is very different from this. I wanted to subvert the standard template, and my hero quickly becomes less heroic than most are used to. His evil artifact is not what it seems, and the Elves ... well, they had a blood good point, as it happens.Anyway - I made these changes because I, like you, was getting sick of all of DnD seeming to spawn from Tolkien. I know there are some alternative settings. I owned the original Talislanta (probably still up the loft), but it did have elves - only they were colourful and bald and were not called elves. We  have all pretty much fallen under the gravitational pull of Tolkien, for the power of his work was so immense. I think for the past 10 years or so people have started to try and subvert that a little, but are still staying within the confines of his work (inc. my book). There have been some unique offerings, but nothing mainstream. At some point someone will tap into a rich creative vein and produce some unique setting that is still powerful enough to resonate with people. Until that time:1) Try Lankhmar (not the new setting - I haven't read it, I just mean read a few books and use that theme for your campaign).2) Try Darksun, if you can get a hold of it.</blockquote>

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