D&D General What 3 Races Would You Spotlight in a New Campaign?

[Yaarel]

the first three give more dark city than matrixs vibe.

I didnt see the movie. I will check it out.

 

[Shardstone]

Yeah, totally can work.

If the Yuan-ti are the Rebel Folk and the opposite of the Human Jock Folk, this says something about the Jock Folk who personify the quest of the story.

The Yuan-ti are Fiend (and Fiend-aspiring) with powers to charm and cause fear. That and their snake traits, tap into a satanic dragon vibe. Both instinctive and spiritual terror, as well as seductive and corrupting. As Rebel, the Jock is confronting and utilizing this darkside.

This would make the contrasted Jock Human more Celestial-aspiring, with resoluteness of mind, honesty, wholesomeness, and realism. Not just surviving the apocalyptic fallout, but striving to build a utopia. Then the Celestial Aasimar as the Heart Folk, would tap into religious inspiration, maybe an angelic prophet figure, a vision of a hopeful future.

If the Shadar-kai are the Sixth Folk, then their Shadowfell deathliness means death itself is the villain. Perhaps, the apocalypse resulted from a kind of nihilism. The villains might have a movie Pitch Black necromonger vibe, that preys on the souls of Humanoids as part of empire building.


Note that the setting invites a fundamentally Psionic vibe. The Thri-kreen, and Aasimar as old-school Angel, and the Yuan-ti are all innately Psionic and telepathic. The Human includes psi, but not all would need to be. Even the Warforged might be Psiforged and innately Psionic. A crystal-wielding Psiforged would give the Artificer a Psionic flavor. Maybe check out the UA Artificer with the Archivist as a Psionic subclass, with a psicrystal as the "iphone".

In this context, the villainous Shadar-kai might be normally non-psionic, and more Undead oriented. Albeit ghosts too as a disembodied mind or an echo of a deceased mind might be a Psionic phenomenon.

The Psionic + Undeath is pretty Dark Sun. It's what I'm looking for!

 

[Yaarel]

The Psionic + Undeath is pretty Dark Sun. It's what I'm looking for!

Heh, and dont forget stylish! A stylish postapocalyptic would be its own odd twist. The Badlands tv show is a kind of stylish postapocalyptic.


I was thinking about the Changeling you mentioned. In addition to the Five Folk plus Sixth, the trope sometimes has a Team Mom or a Team Dad. These Parents relate to the home base. Team Dad is the one who gathers intelligence and sends the team out on its missions. The Team Mom is the nurturer who looks after them while they are home. It might be interesting if the Changeling is both of them, sometimes literally shapeshifting back-and-forth between male and female while fulfilling both Team roles alternatingly. As Changeling, there might be a network of spies gathering intelligence and surveilling the Shadar-kai villains. Despite the gender names Dad and Mom, the tropes are nongendered, of course. Perhaps the Changeling culture esteems some kind intellect Cleric, maybe Arcana, Order, or Knowledge domain. Then the domain gathers intelligence as Dad, while the Cleric heals and nurtures as Mom. Within the postapocalyptic desolation, the Changeling culture tends to focus on building safespaces for themselves and other species.

 

[Kobold Stew]

LIzardfolk, raiding the shore from the sea and the swamps.
Gnolls, surviving in the wastes and eating carrion.
Goblins, because even when you clean them out, they somehow keep coming back, picking and stealing your stuff whenever it gets dark. And it's always dark now.

 

[Shardstone]

Heh, and dont forget stylish! A stylish postapocalyptic would be its own odd twist. The Badlands tv show is a kind of stylish postapocalyptic.


I was thinking about the Changeling you mentioned. In addition to the Five Folk plus Sixth, the trope sometimes has a Team Mom or a Team Dad. These Parents relate to the home base. Team Dad is the one who gathers intelligence and sends the team out on its missions. The Team Mom is the nurturer who looks after them while they are home. It might be interesting if the Changeling is both of them, sometimes literally shapeshifting back-and-forth between male and female while fulfilling both Team roles alternatingly. As Changeling, there might be a network of spies gathering intelligence and surveilling the Shadar-kai villains. Despite the gender names Dad and Mom, the tropes are nongendered, of course. Perhaps the Changeling culture esteems some kind intellect Cleric, maybe Arcana, Order, or Knowledge domain. Then the domain gathers intelligence as Dad, while the Cleric heals and nurtures as Mom. Within the postapocalyptic desolation, the Changeling culture tends to focus on building safespaces for themselves and other species.

Going to call it the world of Penumbra, playing off the idea that the world is on the verge of death/sinking into shadow/twilight but also implying that this part of a greater cycle and that it doesn't have to be the end of everything. Then these stylish races live in this own world, each having a hand for the way it currently is and also now interconnected as they try to survive in their adumbrated world. A big focus on the mind surviving after death, controlling reality via controlling one's perception of reality (thus magic and psionics), and a side focus on technology in the DUNE sense (gholas, axotl tanks, no thinking machines but instead people half-evolved by customs and general built up knowledge).

There will also be a big theme of heresy in the background, with heresy being a contrivance but whenever the world goes to naughty word, its due to suppressing ideas and non-traditional methods, and the world's destruction is repeatedly staved off by the heroes basically tapping into this heresy to take care of the real problems the setting currently faces. This will be reflected on a micro- and macro- level in terms of conflict, so dungeons that require going outside the box to solve; villains that are either overly traditional, xenophobic, bad actors, or that go "too far;" the races themselves also struggling with having been forced to conform to this terrible world order and like pressurecookers all of them are getting ready to blow and experience another round of evolution by integrating the shadow of the world -- the heretical beliefs themselves.

It is a setting that lends itself to cutthroat intrigue, esoteric conflicts, an appeal to expressing the self in a constructive way, and how embracing weird ideas can change you for the better (psionics, dune-esque technology).

 

[ezo]

Three races?

Humans
Dwarves
Elves

 

[Shardstone]

LIzardfolk, raiding the shore from the sea and the swamps.
Gnolls, surviving in the wastes and eating carrion.
Goblins, because even when you clean them out, they somehow keep coming back, picking and stealing your stuff whenever it gets dark. And it's always dark now.

A good scavenger wasteland world, or a world like Warhammer.