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Message: <blockquote data-quote="[OMENRPG]Ben" data-source="post: 5801686" data-attributes="member: 6677983">This is difficult to do on a strictly behavioral spectrum, but good races/spceies have a lot of back story and history put into them to make them exciting and different to play.I think one of the best examples of this is Star Wars, while the races can all communicate with each other fairly easily, there are a lot of visual and mental differences between them. In my own system, there are seven sentient species including humans. I have several paragraphs about personality and history in each of the species' descriptions, as well as very clear mechanical differences.For instance, one of the races, who are small but have a particularly slow metabolism, require very little sustenance to stay satisfied. That is, they really only need to gorge themselves once every month to two months, and drink once every nine or ten days. This can give a lot of RP flavor and side-quests. For instance one of my playtest groups were trying to barter with a native populace for food (for the party's boss) but the farmers needed enough food to survive. Rather than have the negotiations turn violent or sour, the awowlee volunteered his food ration (given by the boss) so the family could survive for the next few days. Another species, an aquatic insectoid, can hold its breath for more than ten minutes. They use this ability to hide under shallow water so that they can ambush unwary prey, similar to that of a crocodile or something like that. But, in the occasion that holding its breath is useful other than in water, such as when moving between parts of a space station that have no oxygen, this race can become supremely useful. I think also that distinguishing species is a lot about the visual appearance of said species. Elves could be mistaken for humans from a distance, halflings/kender could look like pygmies/little people/children, dwarves are stocky and can also resemble shorter humans, heck even a pretty half-orc could look mostly human. It is quite difficult to mistake a hulking insect with mandibles and translucent purple flesh for anything human. So, in my personal experience, you have to have baked in RP/history, you have to make a mechanical difference, and the species need to look particularly distinct from one another. But, from another angle, are there not thousands of cultures around the world all within the same species? Japan is quite different than the Lakota nation, which are quite different from the Vikings, which are quite different from the Mayans. All are human, but their culture is very distinct.</blockquote>

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