In my campaign world (in which we have yet to play) I have decided to omit all the Tolkien-esque races, and have the races be:
Humans
Snouts (primitive canine humanoids) not very widespread.
Giant Flying squirrels (have yet to come up with a good name) with druidic traditions, funloving, but also wise. (Hmmm...this might be more or less a replacement for halflings/gnomes... though they will obviously play differently) Only very few are found outside the forest of Sydornia.
"demons" (not actual demons, but they look a bit like demons. Humans consider them savage and primitive, but they are actually a fairly civilized, if harsh society. They are hermaphrodites. Who carries the children is determined by status. The 'mother' is able to work through the entire (fairly short) pregnancy. Children mature very quickly. Being able to procreate quckly makes for a very battle-ready race. The thing that mostly keeps them from spreading, is their choice of living conditions. They prefer mud pools, hot springs and the like.
"The Slender Ones": a strange race of tall bald humanlike people. The look a bit like the Minbhar (sp?) from Babylon 5. These people live among the humans of the empire of Qazimir, where they have a role not unlike high nobility. They care little for the humans, and have been known to disintegrate a human for failing to show the proper respect. They are very powerful inate spellcasters, with a different kind of magic. They do not have direct power over the empire, but if one of them express a feeling about something, the human rulers will very, very rarely go against it. They did not originate on this planet.
Werecreatures: becoming a were is almost always a voluntary action, requring the consumption of the fluid from the glands of a greezer, a powerful shapechanging creature. Thereafter you must drink the warm blood af the type of creature you wish to be able to change into. Hereafter you can change only in the hour, when the sun is changing from light to dark, or vice versa. (In this world the sun is always in the same place in the sky, but every twelwe hours it changes from emitting 'light energy' to emitting 'dark energy', hence my nickname
Once you have changed, you have to stay that way for the next 12 hours. It is possible to do a 'half-change', becoming a man-beast (the typical werewolf of the movies). Most weres belong to a large cult devoted to becoming more in touch with nature. This cult controls the majority of the forest of Dysia.
Adjati: a race of gangly, translucent-skinned humanoids, that in their distant past was powerful psionics. The gods of the world, who greatly fear psionics, mindblocked the entire race, stripping them of their psionic powers, and removed the memory of the Adjati from every sentient being on the planet, including the Adjati themselves. They are now a weak and dying race. (The reason for this way of 'destroying' the Adjati involves god-level politics that I wont go into).
One the entire continent of Iridia, there is 1 (ONE!) dragon, and it's HUGE! Luckily it sleeps for about 100 years at a time, depending on the faces of the moons. Once it awakes, BEWARE!
(Hmmmm...maybe I should apply for menbership of B.A.D.D.
'Floating Death' Huge monsters that resemble jellyfish, of the type that has a bubble of air inside them, to be able to float on the surface. (I don't know the English name for them). The difference is, that these Floating deaths float in the air, with their tentacles hanging down, dragging along the ground, grabbing, and paralyzing any creature they come in contact with. It than pulls it up into its body, where the slow digestion begins. It has been reported that victims have been alive for hours and even days, lying paralyzed and looking out of the floater's transparent body, unable to do anything but die, ever so slowly...
The biggest ones seen had a body more than 30' long, and tentacles 100' long. In the villages across the world, the cry of "Floaters! Floaters!" is sure to strike panic into any but the most hardened individuals.
It is rumoured that certain creatures immune to the digestice acids, have used the floaters for tranport!
I havent thougth that much more about other monsters, since I plan to focus mainly on political intrigue, and interaction between people(s), but there will certainly be others...
I seem to have rambled on, sorry 'bout that, I guess some of this is more a 'worldbuilding' matter.
mmadsen, you have certainly started some very interesting threads recently, excellent!
darklight
