I'm sick to death of dwarves, elves, halflings, and gnomes!

[SemperJase]

On Elves, Drawves, Halflings, and Gnomes: My wife fully agrees, and will probably never again play in a game world were any of those four appear on the grounds that any game world in which any of those four appear is severely lacking in imagination. Hence, because my D&D world contains two of those four, she isn't playing in my D&D world anymore.

/B]

Ow, that is harsh. Your wife is saying you have no imagination?

Going back to the old idea that there is nothing new under the sun, I look at what people do with the material. Not which subjects they use.

One trend I don't like is that more products are going with the multi-cultural approach. Take FR. There really are no elven lands or dwarven kingdoms clearly defined. If you look at the population breakdowns in the FR campaign setting, there are x% of each race living in human cities.

That is where I like LOTR. There is more of a sense of wonder between the races because of their seperation.

 

[Black Omega]

I admit I find the association between beauty, art, aesthetic and such with evil is facinating. The most common alteration I read about to elves is them becoming the evil nasty race for a campaign. Similarly, the Crane (human aesthetic duelists in Rokugan) also often get the same evil treatment. It says something about the people involved, I'm just not sure what.

Persoally, I like elves (Usually more of the Tolkien or Steven Brust type), Halflings I ignore, Dwarves are ok. Gnomes I usually ignore but I hit on an absent minded scientist type that I can use in my campaign.

If I was ever going to do a lizardman I'd probably draw alot on the aliens from Harry Turtledove's WW II series. They were suitably non-human in a consistent and interesting way.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

In my mind, that is why the Demi-Humans work, because while not strickly human, they are human enought that we can "act" the part with little to no difficulty.

Indeed. Psychology is derived from how you perceive and interact with the world, which is, in turn, derived from your physiology. Humans and demi-humans will have more in common than they have differences. But the more exotic you get, it's going to become impossible to get into their head. (i.e. the jellyfish critters: No head to get into. But more on that later.)

Take lizardmen: They're reasonably similar to us. Bipedal, similar senses, superficially similar environment. Tell me. Has anyone explored the physiological and psychological effects of having a pineal eye in a sentient species? Shouldn't they have very rigid circadian rhythms? Can they not become psions because their third eye actually is outside? Not to mention that they have an amphibious lifestyle. That would alter their psychology as well. But even if we can't truly answer these questions, with anthropomorphic animal races, we at least have a baseline cultural expectation of what their psychology and behavior should be like (from our skewed primate perspective, of course).

Now bring back the jellyfish. Not only are they not bipedal, they have entirely different sensory and nervous systems, and they're radially symmetrical. Their psychology would be completely different. How does a player get a handle on this? Most likely, all they have to go on is the blurb the authors of that setting or race provided, so you get either 1) a bunch of jellyfish PCs who are all exactly the same, as per the book, OR 2) A bunch of human psychologies in jellyfish bodies (which is exactly what a lot of people are complaining about with demi-humans).

How is this "more creative" than using the demi-humans? It's superficially creative ("I look different and have different physical capabilities") rather than actually interesting ("I am different in the way I perceive the world and how I interact with it.)

The problem is not the races, it's the way people tend to play them. Start giving out substantial experience bonuses for playing the race of the character in a substantial way. While you may be getting human psychologies in elf bodies now, I think you'll have better luck getting players into an elvish or dwarvish mindset than an invertebrate one. At least they'll have cultural, literary, and physiologic perspectives to draw on.

 

[Desdichado]

There's nothing wrong with the standard races. A campaign should have a theme, a twist, something original. That doesn't necessarily have to be the races involved. In fact, keeping the races standard can help to focus on the theme rather than distract from it. It all depends on what you want to do.

I like fantasy that is "Tolkien-esque." I like fantasy that is "Howard-esque" or "Lieber-esque" or "Lovecractian" or something altogether original. There doesn't seem to be any need to completely denigrate one in favor of another style, though.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Mokole

One of the things I really liked about, some, of the non-werewolf race books for the Werewolf RPG were the nice hints on what playing a half-man half-shark would be like.

In terms of the lizard men, they had a nice amount of flavor text and alternate view points for were-alligators that talked about their long lives, their very different sleeping patterns, and the relationship they would have to the sun as sometimes cold-blooded creatures.

Me, I always wondered how it would change my life to be able to photosynthesise sunlight. The benefits of being a muscle based mobile creature that could process straight glucose would be amazing.

As for the radially symetrical jellyfish, I think the biggest basic mental difference would be a very different sense of personal boundaries, I think that applies to any telekinetic, and the very different idea of direction and facing that you would be dealing with your whole life.

Think about how weird the idead of framing a picture would be to you.

 

[Mistwell]

Why not just go buy Mythic Races and swap out the races you don't like in the PHB for some in there?

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Re: Mokole

As for the radially symetrical jellyfish, I think the biggest basic mental difference would be a very different sense of personal boundaries, I think that applies to any telekinetic, and the very different idea of direction and facing that you would be dealing with your whole life.

Think about how weird the idead of framing a picture would be to you.

Manipulation of your environment via mental powers rather than physical ones would be a big difference. Coming from an evolutionary tree with no investment in the young would be a HUGE difference. Why would they feel the need to form a society? to communicate with each other beyond the need for procreation? But even if we toss aside these kind of differences (by wiggling our fingers and saying "It's Maaaagic" I suppose), we're left with differences like framing. (That was a great point, btw, Dr. Strangemonkey)

How many players do you know who can realistically play a character who has that foreign a mindset?

 

[Voneth]

Take lizardmen: ... Not to mention that they have an amphibious lifestyle.

A qubble from a lizardman acfidio. Lizards may have an aquatic lifestyle, not amphibious. Beyond it use of the word amphibious for vehicles, an amphibious animal is a different species of animal to a lizard, one being the need to have moist eggs with soft shells, unlike lizards. For the longest time, it drove me nuts that "lizardmen" in DND had to soak their eggs in water. One of the main reasons I eventlualy dropped DND for GURPS is because their lizardmen lived in the desert and seemed more logical (for a fantasy game.)

Even the crocodile and alligator, which seems to be the default creatures that everyone rubberstamps as their lizardmen, keep their eggs dry in a covered nest.

 

[reiella]

Another plug at least, give Arcanum a try. Read the manual discussing the back history of the races and play with high intelligence/charisma at least once (and be roughly good), and you find alot of interesting philosophy for the dwarves and elves. Much of the steampunk theme is easily removed (well except for the history distinctions of natural selection and supernatural selection), and a handful of psuedo-logical reasons why half-elves and half-orcs can exist .

 

[JeffB]

Try Glorantha...

It has elves and dwarves..but they are basically nothing like any other fantasy worlds version..